Improve Your PPC Marketing Campaign on Google

15 Ways To Improve Your PPC Marketing Campaign on Google

Running a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing campaign on Google is one way to increase your visibility online. Having your website show up at the top of search engines means that your company will be seen by your target audience before your competitors.

Having your ads show up at the top of Google requires more than just money to bid on keywords. Google assigns each ad a Quality Score based on the keywords you are targeting. Google says it looks at a variety of factors to measure how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user’s search query. A high Quality Score means your keyword will trigger ads in a higher position and at a lower cost-per-click (CPC).

1. Start with the campaign structure andcreatives. Separate your branded terms from your other terms so that your ads’ creatives can be more easily controlled. Searches for your branded terms should always trigger ads with strong brand-based titles and messaging instead of your more traditional ads for industry terms.
2. Bid on your branded terms, slogans and all their variations. While most everyone bids on their own branded terms, few remember to bid on slogans, alternate spellings and typos. While correctly spelled brand searches may often lead to your company’s organic search listings, casting a wide net ensures you capture searchers who are actively interested in your brand but might otherwise not be able to find you. These bids are especially important for capturing word-of-mouth referrals.
3. Bid on branded terms in your industry. Brand based search terms are a common method of navigation and often have very little competition. Even high-volume branded terms often have only a handful of competitors and are usually available with low minimum CPCs. Make sure you follow the advertising platform’s terms of service and avoid using anyone else’s branded or trademarked terms in your creatives.
4. Bid on your domain name and variations. Domain searches are also a popular means of navigation and generally less competitive. Bidding on your own domain name makes it more difficult for your competitors to appear prominently and bids for variations of your domain name are a great way to ensure you capture all potential visitors. Just like misspelled branded terms, offering searchers easy access to your website, despite their challenges with typing or spelling, is a great way to start their visitor experience on a positive note.
5. Bid on your competition’s domain name and variations. Select a few of your competitors whose products or services align closely with your own and present searchers your brand’s core messaging. Just like bids for your own domain, be sure to include variations like “domain.com”, “domaincom”, etc.
6. Bid on tradeshow and conference names. If you company spends a great deal of time and money on industry events, reinforcing your industry presence via PPC is an excellent way to maximize your investment. Start by creating a nice landing page for each event that explains your company’s involvement and then tailor your ads’ creatives to include a summary. Ads appearing just before and just after each event are an excellent way to seed event attendees with your brand and reinforce your participation.
7. Bid on the names of your company’s awards. Whether your company has just been nominated for an award or you’ve just won your industry’s most prestigious honor, drawing attention to your achievement is always beneficial. Be sure to create an informative landing page that also includes links to further background reading on the award or nomination.
8. Bid on the names of your organization’s key employees. Running ads for the names of your key industry and customer facing employees increases the likelihood that a positive brand message reaches the searcher.
9. Take the high ground. While it would be quicker and easier to only create a couple of groups to target several groups of terms, investing the time to create highly-targeted landing pages and ad copy is critical step that can not be overlooked. Don’t bother trying to run a pay-per-click branding campaign if you aren’t going to fine tune the details if you do you are just exposing your brand to more people, not building value.
10. Get rid of ads with a low Click Through Rate (CTR) – Your CTR is an important part of calculating your Quality Score. Ads with low CTRs lower your Quality Score, which means it costs you more to run the same ad. Also, Google assigns Quality Scores to ad groups, so a low CTR can also affect future ads. Be sure to constantly test slightly different wording and pick ads with the best CTR to bring in more customers and lower your CPC.
11. Remove keywords that aren’t helping – Bidding on highly keywords that are relevant, but very general, may hurt your keyword performance. Large companies may be able to outbid you on the more general keywords, so try to focus your keywords to be as specific as possible.
12. Add content to your website and landing page – When creating a website or landing page for your PPC campaign, use extremely unique content and constantly update the information. One way to do this is to create a blog for your website that is updated regularly. It not only shows you at being an expert in your specific field, but it also creates new content that will help improve your Quality Score.
13. Include information about your company – Having a clear “About Us” page on your website and a privacy policy for anyone who gives your company their information helps improve your Quality Score. Transparency is a key factor in calculating a company’s keyword Quality Score.
14. Have fast-loading pages – A slow-loading landing page equals a bad user experience to Google. Things like large images, animation, and flash graphics can all slow down your page load time. Also, if your website goes down and Google sees that, then that will hurt your Quality Score as well.
15. Changing advertising frequency/rate settings. Advertising can be adjusted in AdWords to not just advertise for certain days and hours of each day, but the amount for CPC can be adjusted to raise or lower bidding rates for certain days and hours. The setting is within each Campaign settings area, under Advanced settings->Schedule and choosing Ad Scheduling, the selecting “Bid Adjustment” inside the scheduling option.