How to Optimize PPC Campaigns

Paid search has long been a fast-track way to generate traffic and leads. I personally prefer a mix of organic and paid strategies, but if you need results today then PPC alone can be a shortcut to success.

But like most aspects of online marketing, PPC has changed significantly over the years.

It wasn’t too long ago when you could drive cheap traffic to nearly any web page using a paid search campaign. But Google has adjusted so that the quality score of your destination page matters, meaning you could potentially get no traffic no matter how much you spend per click.

Cost is another big change that we’ve seen in recent years. It’s getting more and more expensive to run PPC campaigns, and many businesses and up paying a ton of money for the wrong traffic.

That’s why you need to optimize your PPC campaigns accordingly, and that’s exactly what I’ll teach you how to do in this guide.

Start with Keyword Alignment

One of the most common mistakes in setting up PPC ads is the organization of the campaigns and groups that don’t focus on an actual advertising intent. Sometimes hundreds and even thousands of keywords are used for the same ad and lack any logical groupings.

This is a big mistake, as Google discourages this and will increase your click costs by assigning you a lower Quality Score (more about this later). Aside from the extra cost, when you don’t group the keywords by an association, it becomes more difficult to identify the steps of the sales funnel and to bid strategically for the ideal ad position.

Every business has a sales funnel, and it’s rare that a majority of your prospects would purchase a product or service without any prior exposure to your selling process. One of the core purposes of marketing is to reduce objections during the early selling stages. Ads that speak directly to a prospect’s interests and land on a page that addresses their concerns right from the start can help reduce the length of the sales cycle. Be sure to provide a call to action that is appropriate to the prospect’s interest.

Here’s an example:

In doing your keyword research on search terms, you may have noticed that a number of long tail searches are being done. Look for the informational type of searches such as “best widget” or “benefits of using xyz.” Prospects using these search terms are looking for educational materials, and trying to close the sale too soon will just turn them away. Respond instead with an ad and a landing page that highlights your solution’s benefits and has a call to action that focuses on case studies, “how to” guides, or an ebook with tips. The tone throughout should be about providing helpful advice, not trying to sell.

Maintain a “Scent” for the Searcher

Another important principle in optimizing your PPC campaigns has to do with maintaining the user scent. Much like a dog tracking the scent of another animal, when prospects start shopping by clicking on your PPC ad, an expectation is established.

They anticipate that after clicking on your ad, they will find a web page with wording and images that match their initial search. They expect this “scent” will continue all the way to the “thank you” page for a completed sale or a lead request.

When there is a disruption in the scent trail, their attention can be diverted and off they go in another direction, clicking over to a competitor’s site and away from yours. Reviewing website performance metrics such as bounce rate and the number of page views will help provide insights into whether (and how much) your website is losing their interest. So you need to audit your entire sales funnel from the ad through the thank you page to ensure you’re maintaining scent all the way through.

Let’s say you are advertising for “puzzles,” which is the keyword at the top of the sales funnel (because prospects haven’t indicated whether they are looking for a crossword, jigsaw, or online puzzle).

Their real intention is still unclear to you at this point, so pre-qualifying your prospect at the ad stage will be beneficial. Your ad copy should contain “jigsaw puzzle” if this is one of your key offerings, because it shapes the expectation for the next step in the sales funnel.

If someone searches for the term “puzzles” and your landing page does not highlight this as a central concept, then you create enough user confusion to reduce your conversion potential.

Not paying close attention to how you maintain scent reduces your creditability and increases visitor frustration. Even simple mistakes such as bidding on the plural version of “puzzles” over “puzzle,” and only showing one puzzle instead of many choices with your graphics, could be creating a negative impression. The more exactly you match the landing page to what the searcher is expecting to see, the better.

Understand Your Quality Scores

How important is managing scent and associating keywords to specific ad groups? Google believes this is a top priority for optimizing campaigns and has developed a reporting tool called Quality Score to help focus advertiser attention.

Google is continually changing its organic search algorithm to create a better search experience by improving search relevancy and extends this same goal to PPC advertising. The more relevant the ads that align to searches in PPC, the higher those ads will rank, even at a lower cost.

Quality Score is sometimes a mystery for many advertisers, but Google is providing metrics to help improve the overall ad quality. Here’s a quick summary of how Quality Score works and what matters to you.

Google claims there are over 100 factors that go into determining a Quality Score, which is reported on a scale of 1 to 10. An ad’s click-through rate and how well your ads performed in the past are two of the main factors, but many other behind-the-scenes factors, such as landing page relevancy, are combined for the scoring. The rating scale they share with advertisers is a summary of how well their ads are doing.

Values of 7 to 10 indicate a positive score and you should be enjoying the best cost-per-click (CPC) rate possible. Values of 4 to 5 represent an average rating, an indication that making changes may or may not improve your Quality Score. Finally, values in the range of 1 to 3 mean your ad groups and landing pages will need serious attention. Also, ads with a 1 or 2 rating may not be displayed by Google and could require you to bid up and pay much more to have them displayed.

Here’s a nice visual I found from WordStream that illustrates how our Quality Score can impact your CPC:

The most important action to take with Google’s Quality Score information is to review it. Google provides this reporting mechanism so advertisers can understand how to make their ads more relevant.

You can export quality score reports for analysis via a spreadsheet. Develop an action plan for improving top targeted or top-performing terms to reap the most immediate benefits. An improved quality score should reduce your CPC spending and help increase the number of sales or leads.

Make Sure All Paid Ad Sources Feed Into Your Funnel

It almost feels like most businesses assume all PPC campaigns should be tied to Google. And while that’s definitely a good option, you shouldn’t be relying on Google as your only option for paid traffic.

There are plenty of other options for paying to promote on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and beyond. These are continuing to improve and are definitely worth testing.

So keep a budget for a variety of paid options.

You should also make sure your TV, radio and print campaigns feed the funnel and do so in a trackable way.

For example, make a specific offer in offline ads that goes to a web page that you can only get to from those ads and look for an overall spike in traffic and sales during an offline spend. The online dating sites are especially good at this and they watch their media buys in each different market and ramp up or down based on media-directed signups.

If this isn’t handled properly, it may seem like your advertising isn’t working properly. Let’s consider something like Magazines. While not provide the power they used to in terms of the printed component alone, they now provide huge benefits in the form of the content footprint they offer you with a high-quality, highly visible link to your site.

Media sites are content-rich by nature, and Google tracks how connected you are to these mediums and how often you are in the news. By doing public relations and being part of various media listings, you can boost your organic search ranks by proving to Google that you are a “player” or a thought leader. The corresponding bump in organic ranks has a trackable value, giving concrete added ROI to a traditional media spend that non-digital ad agencies may not fully understand.

It may seem like a lot to consider at once, but that’s truly what it takes if you want to optimize your PPC campaigns effectively.

Don’t Hire a One-Trick Pony to Manage Your PPC Campaigns

There’s nothing wrong with outsourcing your PPC initiatives to an expert. But one of the quickest ways to lose money is by selecting a firm that will just manage your PPC and do nothing else.

It’s possible the job you are currently doing is good enough if all you want is basic PPC management. Google is designed to be self-service and provides many helpful management features.

Google’s own keyword tool even helps out by automatically create and segment groups for your campaigns. This is a great starting point, and no one knows your business better than you. So you can spend the time to refine these logical groups on your own with some trial and error.

But if you can’t dedicate the time or are unhappy with the ROI you’re getting out of a one-trick provider, then hiring an integrated marketing firm with experts in PPC is a sensible idea.

Screening for a PPC Manager

The PPC services firm may wow you with their experience managing millions of dollars of PPC spend, using advanced tools for bid management, or a supposedly tight working relationship with Google.  Also on the checklist are their years of experience, certifications, and expertise in managing multiple PPC accounts.

That is a good start, admittedly, but how is their track record in generating business from PPC? How do they integrate PPC with other efforts? If they can’t produce clearly documented examples of how their services will produce more sales or leads from their specific management techniques, then improving your ROI will remain out of reach.

As the cost of PPC increases, just managing the account is no longer good enough. In search advertising there are many automated features designed to manage your ROI objectives. Good PPC management firms will continually draw from an integrated “bag of tricks” to ensure PPC campaigns will deliver results.

There are many decisions in PPC that can create costly mistakes, and experience is the best preventative medicine in avoiding these surprises.

Selecting a PPC Management Firm

A great PPC firm is one that has that necessary experience and more importantly, can produce a plan to sell products/services for your business.

You should be able to talk to them about your unique value prop and how are you getting sales and leads today and at what cost. Make sure they truly understand your product and branding.The conversation should also include your business objective, who your customers are, and why they want to do business with you.

Search advertising is about selling a message, product, or service and not just about spending money with Google. If the PPC firm does not have this core principle firmly understood, then they only manage PPC.

Paid Search Basics

Alongside your optimization efforts, you still need to nail the basics of PPC to be successful.

Research shows that a blended strategy of PPC and SEO together works best. Pay Per Click Campaigns, if selected, are set up immediately to establish immediate paid ranks while the “natural” optimization is building.

Here are some of the basics you should know:

• Campaign: A set of ad groups (ads, keywords, and bids) that share a budget, location targeting, and other settings. Your AdWords account can have one or many ad campaigns running.
• Ad group: A set of keywords, ads, and bids that is a key part of how your account is organized. Each ad campaign is made up of one or more ad groups.

Example of PPC Cost Analysis

Here’s a quick and abbreviated way to run a cost analysis of potential keywords in your PPC campaign:

You can start with a smaller budget if you’re just getting your feet wet and plan to manage things on your own. Then you can increase your spend as you start getting results.

Key Skills For Managing PPC Campaigns

• Keyword research and selection
• Persuasive writing for the ads
• Using multiple versions and A/B testing
• Selecting the right landing pages
• Campaign tracking set up
• Conversion tracking
• Uploading and submit the keywords and ads
• Ability to adjust account settings (daily max spend, match type, countries, etc.)
• PPC bid management
• PPC monthly analysis
• Ongoing testing and adjustments to campaigns based on performance
• SEO and PPC alignment

Final Thoughts on Paid Search Optimization

There’s a lot to consider when it comes to running PPC campaigns effectively.

Gone are the days where you could just spend money and be guaranteed to get traffic at a low cost per click. Today, you could easily burn through money without getting the results you’re looking for.

So take the time to learn how PPC works and apply the tips I’ve highlighted above. You can always outsource this to relinquish yourself of the ongoing burden. Just make sure you partner with someone who knows what they’re doing—and avoid falling for a one-trick pony.

If you need help with PPC, my team here at McDougall Interactive would be happy to consult with you about your needs. Book a consultation today.