The ongoing growth of digital marketing with a kickstart due to covid-19 has made it necessary to advertise products and services online. The internet has grasped the hold on the ways marketing is done and has overpowered traditional marketing because of the several convenient features it provides to the target audience. Online platforms have brought advertising activities to the tip of our fingers. There are several ways in which digital marketing is carried out, some of which include SEO marketing, PPC advertising, social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing etc. This blog will focus specifically on PPC marketing and how to manage it efficiently to get maximum benefit in our PPC campaigns.
What is PPC?
In the online marketing world, there are mainly two ways in which a company performs its promotional activities, SEO and PPC. While SEO is search engine optimization and is mainly done to attract organic traffic to the website, PPC stands for pay-per-click, in which the online advertisers bid on relevant keywords to showcase their PPC ads on the appropriate advertising platforms. The advertisers choose the most suitable keywords closely related to their product offering to showcase or advertise their product on the search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, or other online PPC marketing platforms. Every time a visitor clicks on the PPC ad, a fixed amount gets deducted from the company’s linked bank account.
What is PPC management?
PPC management needs to address several important factors to sustain in this highly competitive market and get the optimum result for the efforts applied. PPC management is tracking and examining the PPC campaign, carefully monitoring the outcome of the PPC ads to make strategies that will enhance the ongoing campaigns, benefit the future movements and fulfill the desired PPC goals. PPC campaign management can be done by the businesses themselves or by taking extensive support and guidance of an expert PPC agency.
The how of PPC management
Several important aspects need to be taken care of to conduct an effective PPC campaign management; each and every factor holds its monistic weightage that can’t be neglected at any cost.
• Choosing the right kind of audience - To make the PPC advertising cost-effective and receive the maximum conversion, selecting the right set of audiences is one of the most important and primary tasks to be carried out. The product might be a masterpiece of its kind, and the pay-per-click advertising might be very engaging, but if it is not produced before the correct target audience, then it will not give the required outcome. This is why it becomes essential to pick a suitable audience.
• Thorough keyword research - After selecting the target audience, you need to conduct keyword research to use the best relevant keyword that your target audience might use when looking for the product that your PPC ad might offer. There is more to it than just keyword research, doing the required keyword analysis, having the knowledge of the search volume, and if a high search volume necessarily means that it is closely related to your PPC ads offering. Also, having an idea of using the long-tail keywords and selecting the negative keywords to boost the overall keyword research and keyword analysis process to achieve maximum benefit of the PPC marketing and manage it effectively.
• Matching the keywords with the user's search terms - Even though search terms and keywords are closely related to each other, they are not the same. User’s search term is the combination of alphabets used by them in the search bar of a search engine to find the answer to their queries, while keywords, on the other hand, are selected by the company or by the PPC agency by bidding on the relevant keywords shown in the list of keyword research results.
The aim of the company (if conducting keyword analysis and research by themselves) or the PPC agency (if the company takes the help of an expert in this field) is to match the user’s search term with the selected keywords. The focus is to match as closely as possible to increase their chances of appearing on the search engines for the desired search query. It helps in saving unnecessary PPC ad click costs from the unwanted audience or the users who will not click on the call-to-action.
Suppose your XYZ digital marketing agency only deals with content marketing and email marketing and you have bid for generic keywords like a digital marketing agency, digital marketing, etc., for your PPC ad. E.g., if a user is looking specifically for an email marketing company and searches for it by typing email marketing company in the search bar. In such a case, there is a good chance that your pay-per-click ad will appear in the user’s search result. It is because digital marketing is still relevant in email marketing. But suppose you have bid for specific keywords like content marketing and email marketing. In that case, you might have secured the best chance to show up in the user’s search term-based result, achieved conversion for PPC advertising, and justified the PPC campaign cost paid.
That is why it becomes essential to correctly match the keywords with the user’s search terms for effective PPC management and achieving the company’s PPC goals.
• Selecting the channel of promotion - It becomes essential to decide which channel to choose to promote the PPC ads. There are multiple platforms where you can advertise your ads in digital marketing. Google is one of the leading search engines and definitely gives more traffic than its competitors, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Also, there is a wide range of options on social media platforms. Deciding which channel to choose for the pay-per-click ads is a complex task and requires extensive keyword research, understanding the target audience’s preferred digital channel, etc. The selection of channels can also be carried out with the expertise of any reputed digital marketing agency. The advertiser can then focus on creating exceptional ads for the PPC campaign.
• Optimized text and visuals - Your PPC ads can be of any category, including classified, display, or display classified, but the text, images, and videos used in the promotion should be optimized as per the advertising channel guideline. Optimized and creative text and visuals manage to attract the user and increase their interest in the PPC ads. Also, if the ads contain a creative element, it gives an upper edge over the competitors.
• Analyzing competitor's PPC marketing strategy closely - Focusing on own PPC marketing strategy is important but focusing on the competitor’s plans for their PPC campaign management and marketing is a must-required task. Analyzing competitor strategies not only gives insight into the exceptional features of their PPC campaign but also provides valuable data on the loopholes. The keywords they bid on, the channel they choose for promoting similar products through PPC advertising, the outlook of their PPC ads, etc., are more than valuable to get an idea about how to manage a company’s own PPC marketing efficiently.
• Comparison between variables of PPC campaign - A/B testing of the variables of different ads of the PPC campaign to decipher which elements of the ads are getting the desired results and fulfilling the call-to-action and which elements need to be changed to increase the effectiveness of the PPC campaign ads. It is a very vital technique as the focus on the essential elements between the two variables can be increased and the low points can be eliminated.
• Optimizing the landing page - The destination that the user reaches after clicking on your PPC ad is the landing page. Optimizing the landing page is important because it is where conversions take place. The PPC marketing’s call-to-action is achieved. You may use a heat map and confetti map to track your website performance and place your CTA accordingly.
• Determining the PPC goals - The PPC goals may differ from brand to brand and from campaign to campaign. Identifying your company’s PPC goals and working on improving all the essential elements of the PPC campaign to make it effective is very much required. Specifying what the company wants from the advertising is necessary for the marketing team to design an impactful PPC campaign.
• Targeting the audience through buyer personas - Dealing with multiple segments of the target audience becomes easy when their personality traits and characteristics are researched thoroughly to create buyer personas and then design PPC ads that are relevant to their understanding and comprehension. This will lead to more conversions as the preferred audiences are targeted specifically with enhanced efforts.
• Making a feasible budget - A feasible budget is not just estimating the amount your company will spend for a PPC campaign. But it is taking care of every factor that will help in controlling the budget effectively and eradicate any type of money wastage that can occur during the PPC marketing campaign. Keyword analysis, suitable target audience, promotion channel, time of running the pay-per-click ads, etc., are some of the essential factors of consideration that may help to make a feasible budget and keep it in control.
The why of PPC management
Now, we know how PPC management is done and the critical elements for carrying it out effectively. Apart from the how of PPC management, the why of PPC management is equally important. The understanding of why there is a need to manage the PPC campaigns efficiently is vital.
• Enhancing the user experience - Good conductivity of PPC campaigns by managing it well considering all the essential aspects of managing it efficiently results in a positive user experience and generates satisfaction. When clicking on a PPC ad, the users wish that it leads to a relevant landing page that fulfills their search intent. Also, the data in the PPC ad is optimized and generates a sense of satisfaction for them. Giving the audience a good and satisfactory experience becomes easy if the overall PPC management is up to the mark.
• Increases the sale boosting ROI - The increase in sales through proper PPC management boosts the return on investment. Every company desires to generate revenue and the appropriate handling of PPC ads leads to the conversion, giving them their desired result of PPC advertising.
• Leads to data-driven decision - Data collected by conducting the PPC campaign helps make decisions backed by facts rather than the company’s assumptions. This leads to better future marketing plans and more effective results.
• Helps in continuous growth - Growth is what makes a company stable in any business. Through effective PPC management, achieving the company’s PPC goals gets easier, helping in making better PPC strategies in future campaigns and ultimately leading to continuous growth.
Final thoughts
The growth of digital marketing and the popularity of PPC, as well as SEO, has made it clear that this is the future of marketing and every company now wants to conduct these marketing methods correctly and benefit their products, services, or website promotion and that is why proper handling and management of PPC is so essential. PPC management becomes vital to receive the best outcome of the PPC ads and can be taken care of smoothly. If the critical factors to efficient management are not neglected by the company that is offering something through their pay-per-click ad or by the outsourced digital marketing agency, specifically a PPC agency. In that case, the PPC campaign will surely provide fruitful results. Several digital marketing agencies have specialized knowledge in this field and provide multiple online marketing services, be it outsourcing PPC, SEO services, social media marketing, market research, etc. and can always be contacted for better execution of online marketing plans.
References
• PPC for beginners: 20 tips to improve PPC campaign performance
• PPC for beginners: The ultimate guide to PPC advertising