Pay-per-click advertising is a high-stakes market in which it often seems the big spenders rule. Actually, it’s true: businesses with big budgets do better in PPC campaigns than lower spenders. PPC campaigns with strong budgets make it that much easier to beat your competition.
The finance and insurance industry annually spends more than $4 billion on PPC ads; the retailer sector, which includes Amazon, Walmart, and other eCommerce sites spends around $3 billion. The travel and tourism industry shells out over $2 billion.
You don’t have to spend billions to get the results you want from your PPC campaigns. Depending on your industry or market segment, you need to have a strong enough budget to be competitive.
For example, if competitors average spending $10,000 per month and your spend is at $2,000, you risk a 20% impression share compared to the competition’s 80%-100%.
Along with increasing your investment, there are other things you can do to stay on top of your campaigns and optimize ad performance. Here are a few suggestions for getting better results:
1. Create More Tailored Landing Pages
Potential leads respond better to personal messages. It speaks to their specific needs (and matches the ad they clicked). Fall short on this and the reader will end up confused, unsatisfied, and looking for the back button. Emulate the big spenders by investing time in developing more targeted landing pages that result in increased traffic.
2. Monitor PPC Campaigns Daily
Make it a priority to look for PPC activity patterns in your markets. Pay attention when bidding competitions are low. Check for competitor campaigns that aren’t fully budgeted, have ads which don’t appear consistently, and/or PPCs that disappear certain times of the day.
To measure the performance of your ads, look to your key performance indicators (KPIs), which will differ depending on your marketing goals. Common KPIs include:
Conversion rate measures the number of conversions directly generated by your ad.
CPC (cost-per-click) measures the amount of money you’re spending on any given campaign based on the number of people who click on the ad. This helps determine whether your budget was high, low, or exactly right.
CTR (click-through-rate) is calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the total number of views, or impressions.
3. Consider Using More Ad Extensions
You may avoid ad extensions because of the time involved creating them, but they can improve your CTR—and adding them comes at no cost. The big guys use about 30 ad extensions for every text ad they create. These powerful snippets give readers additional information and value to help push the competition’s ads and organic results further down the SERP (search engine results page).
Extensions can be store addresses, star review ratings, specific click-to-call buttons, and so on. Site links for different products and services you offer attract prospects and an opportunity for linking back to your site.
4. Get a Handle on Bidding
The position of your PPC ad is determined by your ad rank, which is calculated by an algorithm and influenced by your bid and relevancy. So it’s no surprise the highest ad rank takes the top spot.
To maximize your budget efficiently, you need to focus on:
- Determining the daily spending of your campaigns
- Confirming the number of times your ad didn’t display because of low-budget issues
- Taking immediate action to convert your best-performing ad groups into campaigns
PPC bid management is one of the more complicated areas of PPC marketing. Bidding automation is an option that can save you valuable time on day-to-day bid monitoring while taking the guesswork out of setting bids to meet your performance goals.
Taking a Victory Lap
How much should you budget? That depends on how your ads are performing and your demographic targets. Google’s Analytics tool helps you quickly determine a competitive daily budget based on average CPC rates and your targeted audience (city, region, state, or the entire country).
Improving PPC performance doesn’t always mean increasing your budget but it may be necessary to gain a competitive advantage. Atkins Marketing Solutions uses the latest techniques and technologies to help build focused PPC campaigns for your business.
Reach out online today or call us at 714.904.4453. When you learn more, you’re taking the first step toward claiming first place in the PPC arena.
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