Launching your first PPC campaign? Here are our top 5 things to avoid.
Whether this is a deliberate attempt to gain greater exposure or a misunderstanding of what terms will be relevant to a campaign, you will end up paying a premium for little return. Bidding on irrelevant terms will reduce your quality score which leads to a lower ad rank. The end result? You pay more per click and your ad will show less often. Also, who wouldn’t click off your site after being tempted by an Ad and expecting to see something completely different?
Instead, create a keyword list that is highly relevant to your product/service and incorporates search terms that your target audience is likely to use. The keyword planner on Adwords can help you to do this.
How much budget you assign to your PPC campaign and how much you bid on search terms should be extrapolated from how valuable a conversion is to your business. Different campaigns will have to spend different amounts to achieve a positive ROI. If you are bidding on expensive keywords with low search volume but your leads are highly valuable, then you may have to invest more to see ROI. Alternatively, if your click spend is greater than the value of your conversions then reduce your budget and work on improving your keyword list, targeting and quality score in order to improve ROI.
PPC generates a huge amount of data on how your campaign is performing, allowing you to see where improvements can be made and what is limiting your success. This means you can constantly optimise your campaign to remove keywords that have poor ROI, assign more budget to keywords that are performing well and see what areas of your account might need a little TLC. Becoming familiar with your data is essential to PPC success, so make sure you spend time understanding which metrics are most important for your goals.
A common concern when building a PPC campaign is how many keywords to have per ad group. Whilst Google recommends using 5-20 keywords per ad group, this is only suitable in some circumstances and makes it difficult to write ad copy that’s relevant to all of the keywords. A solution to this problem is to use single keyword ad groups. By having one keyword per ad group you can tailor ad copy to specific keywords meaning a better quality score, higher ad rank and lower click spend. These benefits are certainly worth the extra time it takes to implement.
“Search Network with Display Select” is the default setting for new AdWords campaigns. This means your ad will be shown on both the Search and Display networks. However, these two networks require completely different approaches to strategy, budget, messaging and many other factors. It is far better to have separate campaigns for Search and Display. So, if you are focusing on the Search network change this setting to “Search Network Only”.
Our top 5 areas should have you set on the right track towards success. But remember to:
Above all, don’t leave your campaigns to run on their own! Your spend in PPC requires investment not only in financial terms but also in time to ensure your ads reach the right audience, stand out above competition, and ultimately deliver success.
Find out more about our PPC services by emailing us at hello@fingo.co.uk, or give us a call on 01372 749 200.