5 PPC Tips & Secrets

Welcome, we hope that this article will provide at least one nugget of information that will help you in your journey with your online marketing and PPC management. The list that follows is a simple primer of small items that we often run into with new clients. After a short audit and implementation, we can see very quick returns that often cover our agency fees.

If you are currently running any PPC campaigns, please review the quick list below and make sure that you are integrating the various strategies or have considered each. Our goal is to help you maximize your budget output! If we can help, please contact us and let us know.

Lakeway Bee Cave Austin PPC Management

Getting Started with 5 PPC Tips & Secrets

  • Conversion Tracking

    While this should not be listed as a secret, the data that you get will ensure that you are only bidding on the terms that are impacting your ROI directly. Conversion tracking includes the creation of a conversion pixel which is loaded on your website to track the various PPC channels. Google, Bing, Facebook, etc. all have unique pixel conversion tracking codes and you need to make sure you are using them to get the most from your online marketing PPC budget.

  • Stragegy

    Your campaign and bidding strategy will make or break the success of your campaign. The wrong strategy could cost you dearly in the short term or worse, bleed out your budget on wasted clicks for months or years. Having the right strategy includes maximizing the terms and campaign / group structure for your keywords. One of our favorite models is SKAG (single keyword ad groups); this helps refine your quality score to ensure efficient bidding. Even better is the A/B SKAG approach; which create group of exact match terms to drive conversions up and cost down!

  • Ad Extensions

    Ad Extensions offered by Google Adwords offer a number of benefits and not using them is simply costing you. Ad extensions can add your phone number, address, service list, products and more directly into your ads! This increases your ads real estate on Google paid search results and helps to infuse a more complete message for your business. This drives up CTR, time on site and conversions.

  • Negative Keywords

    It is too often that we audit campaigns and quickly find bids on terms that would never convert. The use of negative keyterms ensures that we are not bidding on non-relevant or terms that lack conversion details. If you are selling “football helmets”, you would never want to market the keyword “helmets” alone. This would create a huge lost opportunity because your budget would be used up by people looking for motorcycle helmets, lacrosse helmets and more. Negative keywords help you refine your search terms to maximize your spending.

  • Split Testing

    Split Testing is often the one thing that is either ignored or simply done incorrectly. We have seen split test after split test that looked at a single factor, like the title of the ad. However, split testing can impact any content that can be modified – title, ad copy, links, link urls, onpage title, images, colors, etc. There are so many variables that can be tested that if you aren’t running some basic split testing – we recommend getting started. We have found that a simple design and approach is much better than something that is too wordy or offers a complex design. Simple really is better in most cases.

Now that we have reviewed 5 quick PPC tips & tricks, we wanted to circle back to the original intent of this article. Did you know that the majority of article readers are here because of our online marketing automation. Often, the idea of automation can be daunting or downright scary. Our goal is to shift that focus away from fear and towards the opportunity of automating various aspects of your online marketing strategy. Since we are focusing on PPC (pay per click) tips & secrets, we have outlined a bonus section below which quickly covers the basics of PPC automation.

Bonus: PPC Automation & Bidding Tools

Did you know that there are automation tools built right into Google Adwords! You can adjust bids and more based on the data that Adwords collects. Ultimately, the system they offer is better than doing nothing – however, there are some very robust solutions available in the marketplace and we would like to cover this a bit. Our teal leverages a number of systems, however the core of our system is based on Acquisio; which is an automated campaign management tool that helps manage budgets and bids. This tool effectively does that same work our team would do – but on auto-pilot. However, there are still a large number of factors that must be considered before you automate your workflow. First, you have to have a plan and perhaps a data set that will back up your method for automation. Otherwise, automation could do the same “wrong” thing a few hundred or thousand times. A good plan will help create the incremental improvements on CTR and ROI that would otherwise take more time.

Often, the good automation tools are too pricey – so hiring an agency that has a track record to improving PPC KPI will help you find your edge in the market and on Google, Bing, etc. Our team can help audit and provide a solution to not only ensure you are maximizing spend, but also improving your campaigns regularly to combat system changes, competition and more.

Let’s connect today and chat more!

Online Marketing Automation : Did you Read? (past SEO article)

Did you read our last article about 5 SEO Tips & Tricks? That blog came prior to this PPC article through the marketing automation engine. If you are interested in reading about SEO Tips & Tricks, you can access the article below. If you have read this far, thank you. We would love to chat with you and see how we can help your business.

5 SEO Tips & Secrets