How A Solid PPC Marketing Strategy Can Lead To Successful Campaigns

Boost your conversions and perfect your campaigns with our ironclad PPC marketing strategy guide.
Written by Jess Kirkbride

How To Perfect Your PPC Campaigns

But that’s only if you get them right.

You can’t just quickly make up some ads, shove them on Google (because that’s all you know) and hope you get more traffic.

41% of clicks go to the top three paid ads in search results. The only way you can get there is through investing time and effort into creating winning PPC ads, no matter which platform you use.

Not sure how? Here’s how you can improve the quality of your ads, get seen by more customers and outrank your competitors.

 

Improve your Google Ads performance in minutes

 

Improve your Google Ads performance in minutes

 

Improve your Google Ads performance in minutes

Google Ads

97% of consumers use search engines like Google to find a local business.

We all do it. Think about how many times you turn to Google on a daily basis, when you’re looking for a restaurant, to repurchase your favourite perfume, to find a new hairdresser.
Whatever it is, we all turn to Google.

This is because we trust the results. We know Google will filter the most relevant results for our search query, and that the first result will often give us exactly what we’re looking for.

It’s the reason people are 52% more likely to click on an ad if it’s at the top of the results page.

As a business, you can’t afford to be anywhere that isn’t the first page. Even if you’re not at the very top. The second page isn’t going to bring you the customers you want.

Think about it. How many times do you click through to the second or third page on Google? You might click on the second or third ad, but you wouldn’t click through to the next page.

None of us would.

Now, let’s take a look at Google’s algorithm.

Let’s say you open a dance academy.

You’ve been teaching dance for years but since you’ve recently moved cities, it’s too far for your old students to travel. Which means you need to bring some new students through the door and get some adverts out.

Your classes start from ages 4+ to 18+, so you need to reach people of all ages. You turn to Google to create your ads. You plan on using Facebook Ads too, but Google Ads seems easier to start off with.

You set your location and targeting to Manchester. Now, when someone searches for dance classes in Manchester, Google has to decide which ads are shown on the search results.

In an ideal world, only your ad would show. There would be zero competition and customers would come flying through the door. Especially since you’re offering free trial lessons, discounts for bringing a friend and free refreshments.

But, just like when you’re spoilt for choice with online shopping, there are loads of established dance schools in Manchester. And they’re all bringing in new customers through Google Ads.

If other advertisers bidding on the same keywords as you, such as ‘dance classes in Manchester,’ you’re automatically entered into Google’s Ads Auction.

This is where Google looks at your maximum CPC (cost per click) bid and Quality Score to determine what’s shown and where.

Your Quality Score is made from the relevance of your ads, your expected click-through rate and landing page experience to ensure you’re providing value to your customers.

It’s a crucial part of Google Ads as it measures the quality and relevance of your campaigns. The higher your Quality Score, the more people that will see your ads for the best possible price.

Now you know the secrets, all you need to do is create top-quality ads and Google will help to increase your profits.

Want an easier way? Optimise your Google Ads quicker than ever before with automation, or follow our top tips to PPC advertising success.

1. Choose the right keywords

Keywords are the foundations of winning ads.

But that’s only if you use the correct match types.

Keyword match types help to define how a users search query matches your keyword. Without them, your customers would search for ‘high waisted black leather trousers’ and Google would bring up results for red shoes.

There are four different match types you can choose from:

Without using any of the above, you won’t be able to target your ideal customers. You’ll be wasting your budget on people who aren’t even looking for your product or service, which will render your PPC campaigns useless.

Long tail keywords

50% of searches are longer than four words. If you don’t include them in your PPC advertising campaigns, half of your customers won’t see your ads.

These searches are known as long tail keywords.

Put simply, if you’re selling a zebra print reversible bikini, don’t just write about bikinis. Thousands of websites are selling bikinis so it’s unlikely your ad will rank at the top.

It’ll also reduce your chances of driving qualified traffic to your site, as people searching for ‘bikinis’ probably don’t know the exact one they’re looking for.

They just know they need one and want to get inspired by what comes up. This is called the interest stage of a buyer’s journey.

In contrast, the people searching for a zebra print reversible bikini know exactly what they want. They’re further along in the buyer’s journey and are in the consideration stage, which means they’re much closer to reaching the checkout than other users.

Plus, because long tail keywords face less competition, they are often easier to rank for and cost less to advertise on than simple, generic phrases.

Still not getting the most out of your budget? We know why.

 

Improve your Google Ads performance in minutes

 

Improve your Google Ads performance in minutes

 

Improve your Google Ads performance in minutes

Negative keywords

If you don’t already know what these are, here’s a quick example.

Let’s say you’re selling some luxury, up-market wine glasses. Custom-made, tall, fancy, narrow. They’re perfect for special occasions like weddings, baby showers and engagement parties.

But, people looking for wine glasses aren’t always specific with their searches. Some people just search for ‘nice glasses’, which brings up results for prescription glasses and sunglasses.

You don’t want to appear in these ads. If you do, you’ll be wasting your budget on customers who just need a new pair of sunglasses for their holiday. You only want people looking for deluxe wine glasses to find your business.

Solving this is easy. Simply add ‘-sunglasses’ and ‘-prescription’ as negative keywords and your ad won’t appear in those searches again.

You can read our tips on how to reap the benefits with negative keywords here, before getting started with Google’s Keyword Planner.

This can help you:

2. Write amazing ad

As you’re probably aware, there’s not a lot of room for error with Google Ads. You only get limited characters, so you can’t afford to write about your entire business or add in extra words for the sake of it.

If you’re going to take anything from this article, take these three tips for:

Your headline:

Your display URL:

Your description:

Want a deeper insight? Read our guide on how to write copy that will attract your potential customers. You can also optimise your performance through Adzooma’s Opportunity Engine, a smart piece of automation software that generates 50+ suggested improvements for your campaigns.

All you have to do is write your ads, and we’ll get to work boosting your ROI.

Subscribe to learn more

3. Link to a high-quality landing page

Your landing page sells.

Of course, your ads grab people’s attention. Customers might even call your business straight from your ad, but your landing page is how they’ll view your entire inventory. It’s how they’ll gain trust in your business.

Think about how many times you’ve been searching for a product online. In this case, some navy denim shorts.

You type it into Google and end up finding the perfect pair. They’re from a brand you’ve never heard of but you love them anyway. We’ll call it Fashion Boutique.

The only problem is, the site isn’t that great. The products look amazing but all of the pages take ages to load. It’s difficult to navigate around and there are no contact details.

You’re instantly put off, so you save the hassle by going to find some shorts elsewhere.

Now, imagine you’re that brand.

That customer isn’t going to spend their night waiting for your website to respond. They aren’t going to trust your business if you don’t even give them your email address.

You’ve spent hours perfecting your ads for it to just go to waste. You tested different variations and created a brand new range (including the denim shorts) that your target audience will love.

But the quality of your landing page is what really matters.

Your ads won’t do all the work for you. Nor will your products sell themselves. It’s all about creating a landing page that’s filled with relevant, top-quality content.

By doing so, you’ll improve your Quality Score, boost your ad rank and ultimately increase your ROI.

4. Make full use of ad extensions

How can you shout your benefits from the rooftop and get more clicks? Ad extensions!

Ad extensions give your ads more prominence by allowing you to include additional benefits in your ad text. They’re perfect for attracting more attention and persuading people to take action directly from the search results, such as calling your business.

Ready to boost your conversions? Here’s how Google Ad extensions can ramp up your results, along with a few best practices you should keep in mind.

And you don’t even have to pay for them. They’re 100% free, meaning you can get more visitors to your site without dipping into your budget.

This is fantastic for your business as (like we mentioned before), you only get limited characters when advertising with Google Ads.

You can choose from:

  • Sitelink extensions
  • Callout extensions
  • App extensions
  • Structured snippet extensions
  • Location extensions
  • Affiliate location extensions
  • Message extensions
  • Price extensions
  • Promotion extensions

Ready to boost your conversions? Read our in-depth guide on Google ad extensions, including our top tips to choosing the right ad extensions.

Microsoft Ads

Microsoft Ads reaches 63 million searchers that aren’t on Google Ads.

If that doesn’t give you enough reason to start using it, we don’t know what will.

That’s 63 million people who could see your ads. 63 million people who could click through to your site, choose your business and boost your sales.

Even better, Microsoft Ads is much cheaper than Google Ads, with the average CPC (cost per click) being $7.99 compared to Google’s $20.08.

And you don’t even have to create your campaigns from scratch. Simply import your Google Ads data and expand your reach through Bing, Yahoo and AoL and their partner sites without any hassle.

All you have to do is create an account and follow our golden tips to succeed with Microsoft Ads.

1. Take control. Unlike Google Ads, Microsoft Ads allows you to edit your network, location, ad scheduling, language and ad rotation settings at ad level. Take advantage of this and save time by adjusting and testing different ads rather than editing the entire campaign.

2. Create relevant content. 75% of Microsoft Ads customers are over the age , and 40% of their users range from 35-54 years old. This means you can reach an older and more educated audience, with content that’s directly aimed at their demographic.

3. Build trust. Make use of social extensions to highlight how many followers you have on social media. This will show potential customers that you’re a genuine, well-founded business and help to drive more engagement.

If this sounds like too much work, we’ve got the perfect solution.

Adzooma will soon be compatible with Microsoft Ads, allowing you to manage all of your campaigns in one easy-to-use platform.

Rather than doing all of the above, completing more research and spending months trying to boost your profits, we’ll do all of the hard work for you.

Simply sign in, connect your accounts and let our AI-powered Opportunity Engine analyse your data. In just a few seconds, it will find a ton of amazing suggestions to improve your campaigns. You can implement them all in just one click.

And that’s just the start.

Adzooma’s custom reporting feature allows you to track your results and generate simple, detailed reports in minutes. If you’re happy with them, you can save them as templates ready for next time – saving you from time-consuming manual work.

You can even create automated rules so that when something changes in your account, your preferred action will be taken. This could be increasing your budget if you don’t receive a certain amount of clicks for that day.

Ready to save time achieving maximum results?

 

Improve your Google Ads performance in minutes

 

Improve your Google Ads performance in minutes

 

Improve your Google Ads performance in minutes

Facebook Ads

If you aren’t advertising your business on there, well, why not?

Just like Google, millions of people scroll through Facebook every single day. It’s the reason 6 million businesses advertise their products there, and there are over 80 million business pages set up.

The question is, how do you get the right customers to click on your ads?

Luckily for you, Facebook has much better audience targeting than Google. You can reach customers based on their demographics, interests and behaviour, which means you can get your advert in front of the people that matter the most.

Like Google, Facebook also measures the quality of your ads through their Relevance score. This rates your ads on a scale of 1-10 depending on how well it’s received by your target audience.

The higher the quality of your ads, the lower your costs and the more people get to see your ads.

Where Google looks at your landing page and expected CTR (click-through rate), Facebook’s Relevance Score is mostly based on expected positive and negative customer feedback.

You’ve probably provided negative feedback yourself without even noticing – such as when you hide an irrelevant or dull ad on your feed. When you’ve interacted with an ad, you’ve provided positive feedback which will increase the advertiser’s Relevance Score.

In return, their ads are shown more frequently to you (their audience), which essentially means more traffic to their website.

That’s what you want. For your ads to be shown as much as possible to increase your chances of selling your product or service.

You can read our guide on how to create successful Facebook campaigns .
But, creating your ads is just the first step.

You wouldn’t dress up for a night out and put a full face of makeup on just to sit in and watch TV. Nor would you go shopping to buy video games you’re never going to play. That’d be a waste of time, effort and probably money – just like creating top-quality ads your customers aren’t going to see.

You need to reach your target audience when they’re online, in their exact location. If you don’t get that right, it doesn’t matter what’s in your ad.

1. Choose the right objective

To see results, you need to set the right objective. It’s that simple.

If you want to expand your reach, you need to tell Facebook that. If it’s more app downloads you’re after, you need to make it clear. You can’t just set any old objective and hope it works in your favour.

This is how you can get started.

Facebook Ads offers three broad categories of objectives:

Within these categories, you can choose from traffic, engagement, app installs, video views, lead generation and more.

You can even set your objective to be to connect with more people on Facebook Messenger to encourage interest in your brand.

Our advice to you? Test, measure, repeat.

Take a look at your business and decide exactly what it is you want from your advertising. If you aren’t entirely sure, choose the objective that’s closest to your goal.

Test it over a period of time. If it doesn’t bring you the results you want, try a different one or different combinations of your campaigns. Repeat this cycle until you’ve found the objective that’s most successful at bringing you rewards.

Or, Adzooma can do it for you.

Our intelligent platform makes reaching your goals easy. Simply choose which campaigns you want to optimise and we’ll find the best opportunities to improve your performance. Most can be applied with a single click.

2. Knuckle down on your targeting

You don’t want to advertise to every single person you know. Or an entire country.

As well as costing loads of money, you’d be trying to sell your product or service to people who aren’t interested. Which takes us back to the days of newspaper ads.

Back in the day, you’d stick an ad in your local newspaper and hope to get hundreds of customers ringing your phone the very same hour.

The problem was, you didn’t know who was actually seeing your ads. You knew thousands of people were reading the newspaper, but that was it.

This is where Facebook’s audience targeting comes in. Helping you to find the right niche, it’s perfect getting more eyes on your ads, increasing your CTR and boosting your conversions.

You can even target people based on major life events such as anniversaries, weddings or moving house.

Sell diamond rings or hand-made custom bouquets? Target people who have just gotten engaged. Luxury, designer or up-market furniture? Target middle-class people moving to Chelsea.

There’s no point advertising high-end items to first year students or 1960’s vintage fashion to 16 year olds. Target the right customers at the right time, and you’ll get the best results for your business.

Don’t limit your targeting to the point where you’re only reaching eight people, though. You still want to up your sales.

You can see how many people you’ll reach when you set up your campaigns. But for reference, the best audience size for Facebook is around 500,000 – 1,000,000 people.
The best part? All it takes is a few clicks.

Just like Adzooma.

Our innovative platform makes improving your PPC campaigns quick and easy. We’ll analyse your account 24/7, constantly generating opportunities that you can apply in seconds.

Compatible with Google Ads and Facebook Ads (and soon Microsoft too), you can optimise your campaigns in one screen and easily see which areas need the most work.

It’s the only PPC management service you’ll ever need.

Subscribe to learn more

3. Create visual content

It’s much easier to remember visual content than written content.

In fact, if someone tells us something, we only remember 10% of it just three days later. If there’s an image involved? We remember 65%.

This is because it gives us something unique to cling onto. We hear and read things pretty much every day, but we don’t always see an amazing image or video.

How many times have you had a debate about whether the dress is pink or blue? Or forwarded a funny video you saw to your friend.

So many. It’s the reason 81% of businesses share video content on Facebook.

Because they stick in our mind. They get us talking, they start discussions in the comments section and give people a reason to tag their friends. Before they know it, they’ve gone viral and they’re even being shared on Twitter.

The reason being, visual ads are more memorable and engaging for your audience. They stand out on their feed, grab their attention and prompt them to stop scrolling.
But that’s only if they’re relevant.

Savvy internet users know an ad when they see one, and they aren’t always impressed. Nobody wants to see an ad every 10 seconds, but it’s even worse when they’re irrelevant.

You don’t want to be the brand that post pointless ads just to keep your platforms active. You want to be the brand that’s known for posting bold, powerful, and daring content with engaging videos thrown into the mix.

4. Make your CTA’s count

CTA’s are the most powerful part of your PPC campaigns.

In fact, including CTA’s in your campaigns could improve your click-through rate by at least 127%.

Why? Because online advertising is competitive. Every man and their dog is starting their own business and the big brands release new products every day.

You’ve probably even seen your friends, friends of friends and influencers selling clothes or promoting products online. They wouldn’t post all their items without saying how you can purchase them.

The same applies with wedding invites. You wouldn’t go through the hassle of designing beautiful cards, perfecting the text, and getting your guest list down to 30 without adding RSVP at the end.

If you did, you’d basically be sending out a leaflet. A leaflet about your wedding, detailing all the information without asking people to respond.

That’s what it’s like creating ads without CTA’s.

Put simply, you can’t get your customers onboard without them.

The good news is, Facebook provides a range of tried, tested and successful CTA buttons to help you perfect your PPC campaigns.

But, that doesn’t mean you can’t create your own CTA’s for the rest of your ad text. You can still tell people to ‘buy now’ in your description for extra impact.

The only difference is, Facebook’s pre-set CTA’s are clearly highlighted to catch people’s eye, draw them into your ad, and convince them to take action.

This makes Facebook a great way to advertise your business online, along with Google and Bing, which can both help to boost your PPC advertising profits.

 

Improve your Google Ads performance in minutes

 

Improve your Google Ads performance in minutes

 

Improve your Google Ads performance in minutes

Perfect your PPC campaigns with ease​

Many businesses make the mistake of creating their ads and leaving them to work on their own. Don’t let that be you.

It’d be like going from brunette to blonde, stripping the dye out of your hair and leaving it orange. It’d be pointless because you wouldn’t have reached your end goal.

Similarly, your ads are meaningless if they aren’t working hard for your budget.

Whichever PPC advertising service you use, remember to test your ads and keep on top of your performance. It’s how you’ll boost your conversions, increase your profits and grow your business.

Don’t have the time? We can help.

Integrated with both Google Ads and Facebook Ads, you can keep track of all your PPC campaigns and optimise your performance from one screen.

Our Opportunity Engine will carry out a smart, 24/7 analysis of your account and generate suggestions to improve your ROI (return on investment). Line all your opportunities up, review them in one go, and action them all with one click.

Save time manually crunching the data by running easy-to-digest reports. Filter each report based on what you need to see, and complete them by adding your own layout and logo.
Sound like something you need?

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