A successful PPC ad campaign is not about a huge budget (even though this helps), but about the relevancy of your ads for the type of audience you want to reach. Therefore, there’s no wonder why over 45% of small businesses list pay-per-click ads as their number one marketing strategy when looking for new customers or launching new products.
Still, if you’re not careful, you risk investing your already tight budget in unsuccessful ads. Moreover, it’s rather easy to go overboard when you don’t have all the factors to paint the picture of your campaign’s performance levels.
So, to help you keep your PPC budget under control, here are the top three steps to take:
#1: Monitor Your PPC Ads’ Performance
When you monitor your ads, you follow KPIs like the Click Through Rate (CTR), Cost per Conversion (CPC), and Quality Score (among others). This way, you’ll know if your money goes in the right direction or you’re just financing underperforming ads that don’t bring people onto your page.
However, before you can properly monitor your ads, you have to start by correctly defining PPC monitoring for your specific needs. Once you do that, you’ll be able to identify the right PPC monitoring tools and keep your spending focused on growth.
This aspect is crucial since, if left alone, ad engines can make a mess out of your budget without bringing any tangible benefits for your profits. When you monitor the campaign correctly, you’ll be able to plan the budget based on the best times of the day, seasonal events, and a multitude of other factors.
#2: Focus on the Purchase Stage of the Funnel
This step is about the type of keywords you choose for your ads (the ones that will attract possible leads into your conversion funnel).
A typical conversion funnel starts with the research phase, where users search for information on the type of products they would like to buy. During this phase, people will search for things like “best lawn mowers for small-sized gardens” or “compact lawn mowers reviews”. These keywords are valuable for increasing traffic and brand awareness, but they don’t bring much revenue since people don’t know what they want yet.
Now, as they learn more about the type of products that will work best for their needs, customers will start looking for specific brands and model names. These are called transactional searches and have an increased rate of conversion (aka, the purchase stage of the funnel).
So, to keep your CPC low and increase your ads’ relevancy and CTR, focus on the keywords that are most likely to bring leads interested in making a purchase.
#3: Perfect Timing
Your audience is not online and buying 24×7, so your ads shouldn’t be either. The best way to promote yourself online is to identify the best time when you can maximize brand exposure for the target audience.
For this, you can create your own ad schedule that follows custom rules (which you can create). Still, it’s important to first identify your leads’ busiest periods online and focus your ads budget around those times. This takes a bit of trial and error, but with the right tools, it’s not that difficult to figure out.
Wrap Up
In conclusion, a well-designed PPC campaign can bring amazing results without having you spend a fortune on ads. You just need to take some time and observe the target audience’s online habits. True, this means investing in a few monitoring and management tools, but this is a worthy investment that will help you focus the budget in the right direction.
Author:
Victor Green
