What are great Pay-Per-Click campaigns made of?
The absolute magic formula for PPC success
remains unknown to PPC experts. We would like to tell you that we have
the magic book of tricks and know what potion combination will give you the
perfect PPC campaigns but, we cannot. What we can do however, is recommend a
few things to set you up for success as you build out your campaigns. Here are
some of our go-to solutions that help us achieve outstanding results for our
clients.
1. Become Close Friends with your Campaign’s Search Terms Report
Once called
the Search Query Report in AdWords, now called the Search Terms Report (STR) in
both AdWords and Bing Ads, this fantastic tool is one every PPC expert should
leverage. The tool is great because it helps advertisers optimize for both
visibility and clicks. One key advantage
is that it provides new keyword opportunities to target by presenting a list
of words and phrases which users searched to trigger your ad. It is great for
expanding your keyword list to include more long-tail keywords and phrases
which users are actively searching for.
Not only does this tool help expand your keyword
list, it can also help tighten the list to include only keywords or phrases you
want to appear for. Such keywords and phrases
can be excluded from your campaign and added to the negative keyword list. A
classic example would be seeing a term like “cheap wine glasses” within your
search terms report. You know very well that you do not want to be found for
the keyword “cheap”, so you include the word cheap into your negative keyword
list.
2. Get Familiar with the Auction Insights Report
This report you great intelligence that can be used to gain competitive advantage. It measures up to 20 competitors ranked by
some KPIs such as impression share, average position etc. It can reveal who the
top advertisers are that are bidding on similar keywords and how often they show up on
the search engine results page (SERPs) in the same auction you participated in.
This report is great because it helps you familiarize yourself with the
competition and can give you a sense of the big spenders. We recommend viewing
this at least every month just to determine what your bidding strategy should
be.
3. Try out the Dynamic Keyword Insertion feature (DKI)?
Dynamic Keyword Insertion is a
feature that assists pay per click managers to increase the CTR for ads. This wonderful
tool lets you tailor your ad according to the customer’s search query. DKI is a
feature that can automatically place keywords from your ad groups into pay per
click ads. The intention is to be able to match keywords with the searchers
queries on a search engine. Essentially, the feature modifies the text of the
ad with matched keywords and makes the ad more relevant to the target
customers. Additionally, it allows you to compose unique and exclusive ads for
a large variety of keywords. It functions in such a way that the searched
keywords are highlighted to draw a user’s attention to your ad. This eventually
leads to more clicks and a higher click through rate.
A
key drawback of the feature is that with the slightest of the typos your ad can become
inappropriate, irrelevant and violate AdWords Policies. We have also found that
the feature works poorly with Broad Match type Keywords as it can make your ad
highly irrelevant on most of the searches. Thus, the best match type to combine
with this feature is the phrase & exact match types.
4. Test, Test, Test… and Test Again.
This is
something that is reiterated time and time again on various SEO blogs and
search engine articles, however it is so important that it bears mentioning
again. Creating a successful PPC campaign is a long game that hinges on testing
a variety of variables to see what works and what doesn’t. Variables such as ad
copy, bid amount, landing pages, call-to-action, offers etc. are usually
tested.
Google
allows you to create multiple Ads within a single Ad group. These Ads will
automatically be rotated. Reports are then generated to show which worked the
best in terms of ROI and CTR. Do not hesitate to get rid of the Ads that are
not performing well and keep refining the ones that are working.
Bottom line?
What works
for one brand or industry might not exactly work for another. The key is to
stay plugged into your PPC campaigns by keeping a keen eye on what works and
what needs to be changed. Try out various features and see what effect they
have on your campaigns. This, we think is the secret sauce to PPC success.
Sources
https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2472708
https://www.en.adwords-community.com/t5/User-Articles/Dynamic-Keyword-Insertion-A-Great-Way-To-Increase-CTR-But-It-s/ba-p/52502#
http://blog.elasticgrid.com/9-tips-for-optimizing-your-adwords-campaign-the-power-of-adwords-part-3/
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