Pay-per-click is a widely used digital marketing technique in e-commerce to promote a business via online advertisements. In this PPC Campaign process, the advertisers pay a specific search engine to appear as a noticeable top result. The payment between an advertiser and a publisher occurs whenever someone clicks the advertising link. An obvious example of a PPC campaign is Google Ads. But be aware, we cannot consider every PPC account a successful PPC campaign.
Because of its complexity, it might be challenging to establish a PPC with campaign optimisation. Likewise, without the right optimisation, the PPC lacks a significant impact on promoting a business online. And many people will eventually waste their money on pay-in ads.
Due to this insignificant impact, people might think PPC is inefficient for their business ads. But with little assistance and patience, a PPC campaign effectively promotes any business online. Let’s unravel what we must do to ensure our PPC success.
Elements that Make Your PCC Campaign a Success
To establish a successful PPC campaign, we need to understand the remarkable key elements. Each of these PPC campaign elements must work in concert with each other for the best outcome. Let’s take a look at these elements to devise PPC best practices for ensuring PPC success.
Keywords
A PPC platform uses keywords to determine where the ads should appear. Keywords are terms and phrases that we type into the search engines to discover relevant content. Some of the commonly used keywords are as follows:
- Generic: Popular search terms that have a high volume of search results. They are also known as Head Keywords or Short-tail Keywords with 1-2 words.
- Long-tail: More specific and less competitive search terms compared to generic keywords. They are most likely to be phrases with 3-5 words.
- Transactional: Used by people who are ready to buy and looking for purchases. They include common terms like for sale, bargain, subscribe, rent, and pay.
- Location: Used for location-specific searches that show results based on the specified geographic location. They include common terms like city name and near me.
Advertisements
To get the public’s attention to a product, a successful PPC campaign (platform) uses ads, short for advertisements. The ads usually display the company’s headline, objective product or service, URL, and description. However, a PPC campaign ad can contain no more than 145 characters.
Bidding
The PPC advertising platforms publish ads based on the highest keyword bids. The bid states how much a business will pay the publisher for a click on its ad. The publisher will display the ads of the business that offer the highest bid near the top of the results page.
Landing Page
The webpage where the people go after clicking the ad link is what we call a ‘landing page’. It is responsible for promoting the desired product or service of a business with detailed information. It provides clarity on the product and encourages the visitors to purchase.
Conversion path
We refer to the series of actions taken by the new visitor of a landing page as a PPC conversion path. The action can be anything like entering shipping information or requesting information. Mostly, a conversion path involves a landing page, content to promote the product, and a call to action.
How to Make Your PPC Campaign A Success
By far, we have discussed the elements that make a successful PPC campaign. However, PPC success doesn’t rely on important elements alone but on PPC strategies as well. Below are some of the PPC best practices for effective PPC campaign optimisation. Let’s take a cursory look at them.
Managing the PPC Campaign
Managing a company’s PPC campaign involves overseeing the PPC campaign plan and budget for effective advertising. Effective PPC management improves the returns on campaign investment. The five crucial steps in creating and managing a successful PPC campaign are as follows.
- Setting a definite goal,
- Usage of relevant keywords,
- Creating a captivating ad,
- Optimising the landing pages,
- Reviewing the campaign.
Optimised Landing Page
For a successful PPC campaign, the creation of optimised landing pages for ad links is dominant. A landing page should be simple and easy to read and navigate because landing pages have a direct influence on the number of people becoming customers.
A disoriented and unclear landing page may confuse people, which will result in loss of customers. Hence, a good landing page must contain relevant details to the advertising product and be particularly targeted.
Pair Broad Match With Audience Targeting
Broad match is a keyword-matching technique used to reach a large scale of audience without an extensive keyword list. It enables a company’s ad to appear in searches by relating the meaning of the keyword. But, the broad match bears the peril of wasting money on low-converting traffic.
To overcome this risk, we have a workaround that pairs broad matches with audience targeting. This workaround shows a company’s ad in a search only if the search comes from the selected targeted audience. This strategy helps increase brand or product awareness among the intended crowd.
Get New and Optimised Keyword Ideas
The foundation of every successful PPC campaign is the keyword ideas. The PCC campaign keywords influence audience targeting, strategies, and even the budget. Thus, we must include new and optimised keyword ideas in the campaign for PPC success.
We can use various keyword planner tools to create an enhanced keyword list. And using this list, we can create keyword-specific advertisements rather than generic advertisements. Additionally, we can personalise the content of the ads by inserting dynamic keywords from the searches.
Generate a Negative Keywords List
One of the PPC Strategies that minimise the unwanted clicking on the advertising link is generating a negative keywords list. Negative keywords are terms and phrases that help exclude the ads from appearing on the result page.
The usage of negative keywords restricts a company’s ad to a specified keyword that only focuses on what matters to the customers. It guarantees that people outside the targeted audience won’t click the ad links without necessity and prevents a massive money loss.
Engaging Ad Content
For a successful PPC campaign, creating captivating ad content is equally important as using keywords. We should create the ad content using descriptive, specific, and appealing language for better understanding.
Additionally, using catchy headlines that describe the products or services is prominent. And the ad content shouldn’t contain vague or vulgar words that mislead the customers. Be mindful of creating ads that promote the product within the characters limit.
Choose the Budget
The ads must reach the targeted audience to unveil the full potential of the business. To do so, having the budget to cover the highest bid of the platform with the desired audience is crucial. Thus, executing a PPC campaign with the right budget plays a vital role in PPC success.
Additionally, having a pre-planned budget for the PPC campaign can help oversee the strategy and goals. However, there is no static number for a PPC campaign budget because when the goals and platforms change so does the budget.
Smooth Conversion Path
During the PPC conversion path process, it is possible for the users to become distracted and confused. As a result, most visitors exit the landing page halfway through the conversion process. This will lead to money loss as the business will pay for the visit, but it won’t get any purchases.
The ratio of the users leaving the site to the users completing the process is the abandonment rate. We must reduce the abandonment rate for campaign optimisation. Thus, the landing page must ensure a smooth conversion process for new visitors, thereby increasing the revenue.
Reasons for the Decline of PPC Success
PPC campaigns often fail because it is not something that you do only once. They need to be managed regularly to ensure effectiveness. And it will require the advertisers to stay on top of their marketing for some time. Some common reasons behind the decline of PPC success are as follows.
- Lack of updating the keyword list,
- Fail to review the crucial keywords,
- Absence of regular account activity,
- Lack of modifying the landing pages,
- Fail to compensate with customer shift.
Keep Up With Changes
There will be notable changes in how the PPC will work over the next few years. Significant features like automation and AI will be more universal. To keep pace with these changes, we should modify and enhance PPC strategies, ad content, and landing pages.
We must upgrade the target audience who shows interest in the advertising product. Likewise, the PPC campaign must optimise the site for new services and new keywords. We must monitor and raise our bidding as well.
Wrapping Up!
The PPC campaign is an influential advertising tool that improves a company’s online distinctiveness. But PPC success doesn’t spring out of nowhere. Many people may tend to think a PPC ad succeeds overnight. But, in reality, a PPC campaign takes an average time of 3-9 months to become successful.
For instance, the early stages of the PPC campaign focus on collecting information for the ads, improving the keywords, and audience targeting. Moreover, there are so many competitors in this rapidly growing field of digital marketing.
After knowing how things work, the mid-stage focuses on experimenting with new PPC strategies, ideas, and techniques. The last stage involves optimised tracking of potential customers using the collected information.
Make no mistake, establishing a successful PPC ad campaign can become very challenging. But no worries, we are here to help. For assistance in establishing a PPC campaign, visit 6sMarketers. Remember, persistence is the key to PPC success.
