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Improve your campaign’s effectiveness by using these tips.
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a powerful marketing strategy for generating sales leads, boosting website traffic, growing e-commerce sales and increasing online brand awareness. Across industries, search advertisers pay an average of $5.42 per click and convert roughly 8.18 percent of those clicks into leads or sales, according to WordStream’s analysis of more than 13,000 search campaigns. PPC is often a digital marketing must. For example, it allows newer businesses a visibility they might not earn organically since paid placements sit above other results.
While PPC is undoubtedly effective, executing a paid advertising strategy can be challenging and requires a carefully crafted approach. We’ll share proven ways to improve your PPC strategy and point out common mistakes to avoid.
PPC advertising is a form of digital advertising in which the brand is charged based on performance. If nobody clicks on their ad, it costs nothing. Each time someone clicks on the ad, the advertiser is charged. According to Wordstream, the cross-industry average is $5.42 per click, and competitive categories can run far higher: for example, attorneys and legal services average $9.87, and home improvement $8.33. The goal of PPC advertising is to drive traffic to the brand’s landing page or website for brand awareness or lead generation.
Pay-per-click advertising can be done with banner ads, but the more commonly seen format is text-based ads on search engines such as Google. While some digital advertising media may have a fixed price per click, search engine cost per click (CPC) is determined by the degree of competitiveness for the specific keywords chosen by the advertiser. Competitive keywords that have a higher search volume will be more expensive because a greater amount of people are exposed to the ad. Social media platforms have PPC ads in various formats, including images with text, videos, carousel ads and text ads.
On Google, pay-per-click ads are shown above organic search results with the word “Sponsored” above them.
Businesses that want to do pay-per-click advertising on Google would use Google Ads. Facebook, X and other social media platforms also have PPC ads.
Your campaign’s effectiveness depends on various factors, including how much you spend, keyword organization and PPC landing page optimization. Consider the following strategies for improving your PPC approach.
Choosing the right keywords is an integral part of a successful PPC strategy. Terms used by people ready to purchase — those containing brand names, product specifics or phrases like “affordable,” “reliable” or “free shipping” — convert at substantially higher rates than broad research terms. Bidding on generic phrases burns the budget on people who are still browsing.
Use Google Ads Keyword Planner to research and select the most effective keywords. You’ll find it under the Tools icon, in the Planning section. Understand that your competitors will likely bid on these same keywords, so focus on terms that encapsulate the buyer’s intent rather than generic ones that won’t bring in quality leads.
Long-tail keywords are usually where that intent lives. Many individuals and businesses stick with short-tail keywords (containing just a few words) because these terms are general enough to cover broad topics — “best auto insurance,” for example. However, this strategy is a recipe for blowing your advertising budget with minimal results. You’ll target a vast audience and get many clicks, but your campaign won’t be focused enough to reach your target audience. A five-word phrase like “commercial auto insurance for contractors” attracts fewer clicks, but the people who click are closer to buying because your solution meets a specific need.
Whenever someone clicks on your ad, you are charged. Sometimes, however, they are actually looking for something completely different. For example, someone who wants to apply for a job posting with your company may see your ad and click on it. Although there is no probability of making a sale from this person, you still pay for the click. Inputting a negative keyword prevents people searching for certain phrases from spotting and accidentally clicking on your ad. In this example, you could include your company’s name and the phrases “jobs” and “open positions” as negative keywords.
You can also use negative keywords to narrow in on shoppers looking for a specific or specialized product. If you sell waterproof rugged hiking boots, you could use “fashion boots” or “high-heeled boots” as negative keywords. However, many advertisers skip using negative keywords, and miss out on higher conversions. For instance, a WordStream study, showed that accounts with at least one negative keyword averaged a 13 percent monthly conversion rate, compared with 4.6 percent for accounts with none.
Every PPC strategy depends on knowing which clicks actually turn into business. Before you adjust a single bid, confirm that Google Ads is recording the things that actually matter to your business — form submissions, phone calls, purchases, bookings — and that each one is assigned a value. When you’re spending money to attract visitors, you need to be focused on successful lead conversions, and effective customer tracking measures are what make that visible.
Value matters as much as volume. If you count only form fills, a campaign driving phone calls will look like it’s failing and you may switch it off. Once values are attached, you can steer bidding toward revenue rather than raw lead count.
>>Looking to connect ad leads to your sales process? See our picks for the best CRM software.
You will get the best ROI for your pay-per-click campaign if you send traffic from each ad to a custom-built landing page rather than to your website’s homepage. A general website can be overwhelming to someone who has a reason for clicking and expects specific content related to that intent. PPC visitors sent to your website will result in the same amount of traffic but less time spent on your site and fewer conversions.
The design of the landing page should reflect the keywords in the ad and the interests of the person who clicked it. This makes the landing page specific to the viewer’s motivation and increases your chance of getting this person to take action, whether that is filling out a lead form or making a purchase. It also allows you to easily track conversion metrics for each ad to see which ones are most effective.
Check the page on a phone before you spend anything sending traffic to it. Mobile now accounts for roughly half of global web traffic — 49.4 percent, against 49.1 percent for desktop, according to StatCounter. That makes mobile device marketing a baseline requirement that includes responsive layouts, fast load times and tappable forms.
Relevance is essential to getting an ad group to score highly on the quality metric. Every ad group you utilize must have a particular purpose. It’s far more effective to create unique ad groups for keywords when you want more conversions and clicks than to target everyone with the same ad. Ad groups are best utilized when there is a narrow target audience, especially when only a small percentage of online consumers think ads on a site apply to them.
Use market segmentation to differentiate your ad groups by customer journey placement, location or demographics. For example, if you have a real estate company, a first-time homebuyer will have different needs than someone looking to downsize once their kids have moved out.
Running a PPC campaign on faith virtually guarantees a waste of your money. Instead, use A/B testing to see which elements generate the most clicks and conversions. A/B testing involves creating two similar ads (ads A and B) and changing one element at a time to see what works best. Test all campaign components, including the ad’s headline, targeting and message, as well as the landing page’s headline, copy and design.
Most PPC campaign changes take about 30 days to produce reliable results, so audit monthly rather than reacting week to week. Even the most highly optimized ads will eventually get old and stop being as effective. When you keep the same targeting, some people see identical ads over and over. Refresh your ad copy periodically — headlines, images or video, and body copy — then repeat the testing process to identify what worked.
Automation has changed PPC, and you should use it in your strategy. Smart Bidding sets bids auction by auction against a goal you define like a target cost per acquisition or return on ad spend. Performance Max runs one campaign across Search, YouTube, Display and other Google surfaces. AI Max extends standard search campaigns to relevant queries you haven’t targeted.
Automation rewards good input. So ensure you provide accurate conversion values, well-maintained negative keyword lists and strong creative. Generally, automation outperforms manual bidding, but if you feed it a broken conversion setup, it will buy you the wrong traffic.
Set a defined budget and a fixed evaluation window before judging an automated campaign, and keep some manually controlled search campaigns running alongside it. Those manual campaigns can help show which specific queries drive results — insight that fully automated campaign types can obscure.
People first click an ad to receive more information about a product or service, thus beginning the marketing journey. These potential customers are drawn to your ad’s focus and must receive value from your business to become customers.
Those further along the customer journey require a different approach. They know what your company provides and have an established buying intent. Consider retargeting these prospects and focusing on keywords suited for them. For example, if you have a social media marketing service, use terms such as “hire a social media team” instead of the more generic “social media agency.” Retargeting is vital because prospective customers typically need multiple touchpoints with a new brand before purchasing.
>>Building the email side of that effort? Compare our recommendations for the best email marketing services.
Geotargeting can help you make full use of each click. Different audiences from various locations have unique preferences. Geotargeting lets you run various campaigns in different places, allowing a degree of customizability in your marketing efforts to meet diverse preferences and needs. It also lets you exclude areas you can’t actually serve, which stops you paying for clicks that could never convert.
Ad scheduling works on the same principle, but set it from your own numbers rather than general rules about the best day or hour to advertise. Those patterns can vary widely by industry and audience. Segment your campaign reports by day of week and hour of day, find where your conversions actually occur, and weight bids and budget toward those windows. Revisit this quarterly, because patterns can shift as your mix of campaigns changes.
Google Ads have a daily PPC budget, but they don’t discriminate by ad or ad group. That part is your job. As your testing identifies weak ads and ad groups, pause them so the budget flows to the ones that convert.
The opportunity here is larger than most advertisers realize. WordStream found that the average Google Ads account spends over $3,000 a month and wastes roughly $1,127 of it — close to a third of every dollar going to clicks that never convert. Recovering even part of that is cheaper than raising your budget.
You may also want to use some of your budget to try different advertising platforms where you have less competition and get more bang for your buck. When you discover a better performing platform, shift all or part of your budget to it.
Assets — which Google previously called ad extensions — are free additions that expand your ad and can improve your click-through rate (CTR) and conversions. Some are automatic, while others need to be set up manually. Here are some to consider:
To avoid wasting money on PPC ads, steer clear of the following common mistakes.
Although a PPC campaign will generally lead to an uptick in web traffic, this shouldn’t be the only goal. When your keywords or promotional offers are too general, you’ll get plenty of website visitors, but most won’t be people who are genuinely interested in or able to buy your product.
Each PPC campaign should have specific, measurable goals that directly benefit the company. For example, if you’re new to PPC, you should focus on generating more quality leads. Perhaps you keep customers on your website, but they don’t buy. In this case, improving conversions may be your goal. You may have visitors who come to your site and make a purchase but only spend a small amount of money. In this case, your campaign’s goal may be to increase buyers’ purchase amounts.
You can have the most effective PPC ads in the world, but if your site or landing page is poorly designed, slow or confusing, those visitors will bounce, and you’ll waste your PPC budget.
Speed, website design and clarity matter. Ensure your overall website and landing page are clean and fast, with intuitive navigation and clearly written copy. These factors make a good impression on customers and make it much more likely that they’ll take the desired action.
You can measure results against the key performance indicators (KPIs) in your PPC dashboard, including click-through rate, conversion rate, cost per acquisition and cost per click.
Based on your offering’s pricing and customer lifetime value, you can decide which KPIs are most crucial and make decisions from there. For example, maybe your cost per acquisition is high, but you sell a high-end product that customers regularly reorder, so your customer lifetime value is also high. In that case, as long as your conversion rate is reasonable, you are likely doing the right thing.
Although it’s essential to analyze KPIs, it’s also crucial to examine your PPC campaign as a whole. Are you spending more on advertising than you’re earning from new business?
Measure the ROI of your PPC campaign (net profit divided by ad spend), and find your return on ad spend (revenue generated divided by ad spend). Perhaps your ads are being shown to existing customers who are just scooping up your free giveaway, or maybe your campaigns are not as effective as they could be.
Pay-per-click advertising rewards attention to detail more than budget. The accounts getting the most out of it are not the biggest spenders — they’re the ones measuring conversions accurately, eliminating wasted spending and testing each variable. Ensure you scrutinize every nuance of your ad campaign, and take the time and effort to present an optimal strategy. Your successful PPC campaign will be worth the trouble.
Wes Smart contributed to the reporting and writing in this article.
