Ever wonder why your PPC campaigns aren’t delivering the expected results? Without proper management, you may overspend or miss many opportunities to gain ad results. This blog post will help you break down the basics of PPC management and share actionable tips to monitor your strategy for success.
Table of Contents
What is PPC Management?
Pay-per-click (PPC) management is about tracking PCC advertising campaigns and optimizing its ad spend. The goal is to grow your business sustainably by attracting visitors to your website, boosting sales, and engaging with customers through well-targeted ads.
It involves planning and executing strategies for paid ads, including:
- Choosing the right keywords
- Deciding on SEM strategies
- Writing effective ad copy
- Tracking performance metrics using specific tools
- Optimizing campaigns
- Running A/B tests
Companies may handle PPC management in-house with their marketing team or hire an external advertising agency to manage it.
Benefits of PPC Management
Many businesses underestimate the impact of proper PPC management. However, effective PPC management offers numerous benefits that optimize your campaigns and drive better results. Let’s explore some of the key advantages below!
1. Increased Engagement
Effective PPC management can boost your online engagement significantly. Managing PPC ensures that your ads are reaching not only more people but also the right people who are most likely to interact with your brand.
Through careful targeting and data-driven adjustments, PPC management helps improve ad relevance and increases clicks, comments, and shares.
2. Cost Effectiveness
Moreover, your brand can save more money when you manage PPC closely. By keeping track of your ad’s performance, you can see which ones work well and which ones don’t.
Thus, PPC management focuses your budget on strategies that deliver results, cutting down on money wasted on ads that aren’t effective.
3. Increased ROAS
Another key benefit of pay-per-click management is its ability to improve your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), the profit you make from your ads.
A PPC manager will regularly optimize your campaigns based on their performance. For instance, if they find that a specific landing page layout leads to higher conversions, they can adjust your other landing pages to boost your overall profits.
4. Strengthened SEO efforts
PPC helps you understand how users search for your products or services. By reviewing search query reports from your campaigns, you can gather valuable keyword insights to strengthen your SEO strategy.
For example, you can shift expensive PPC keywords to your SEO efforts to cut costs. If certain keywords are hard to rank organically, you can target them in your PPC campaigns to gain better visibility.
Additionally, if your competitors rank for keywords you’re not targeting, you can include those in your PPC campaigns to appear in those searches faster.
What PPC Management Process Involves?
It’s important to understand the steps involved in managing a PPC campaign. Here’s a closer look at the key tasks in the PPC management process:
#1 Researching Keywords
When starting a PPC campaign, brands usually begin with thorough keyword research.
They identify a target audience for their products and find the most frequently searched terms related to those products. Tools like Google’s Keyword Planner provide useful insights, such as monthly search volume, competition level, and bid range for placement.
Moreover, PPC reports help you track how your ads are performing. You can use this data to refine your keyword strategy over time and focus on the ones with the best potential to drive conversions.
#2 Strategizing Channels
Marketers typically choose websites to display their PPC ads. While search engines like Google are the primary place for PPC ads, they’re not the only option. Google is just one of many channels. Bing and social media networks like Facebook are also part of PPC advertising.
Companies often choose their advertising channels based on the products or services they offer. For example, they might place ads on an affiliate network, where other businesses that sell similar products can help promote their content.
#3 Monitoring Campaigns
PPC management requires marketers to track keywords to see which ones trigger ads. By identifying which keywords aren’t working well, they can choose new ones that might perform better.
Marketers also keep an eye on the cost of each keyword compared to the company’s PPC budget. Since a campaign’s needs can change, marketers regularly monitor and adjust them day by day.
#4 Analyzing Competitors
Competitive analysis is an important part of PPC ad management. It lets you see how your competitors run successful ads and use that information to create relevant ads that perform better. The analysis focuses on:
- Bid amounts: Track what your competitors are bidding on PPC ads to see if you can adjust your bids to get better results within your budget.
- Keyword selection: Your competitors might be targeting keywords you haven’t thought of. Although you shouldn’t copy all their keywords, this can give you new ideas for your campaign.
- Ad copy: It’s important to review ad copy. If you’re targeting the same keyword, analyzing competitors’ ads can help you see what gets them better placement and results.
#5 Optimizing Campaign Strategies
Marketers can improve their strategies by looking at key factors in each campaign. For example, they can track which ads help increase a company’s ROAS
Marketers also optimize their approach by identifying which demographic groups are more likely to buy the product. For instance, if a restaurant wants to target people living nearby, marketers might research keywords that are relevant to these potential customers.
#6 Split Testing
Split testing involves comparing different parts of PPC ads, like images or text, to see which one helps drive more website traffic from a keyword search.
Marketers use split testing to create a more effective homepage for a company’s website and improve the ROAS of a PPC campaign. It also helps establish best practices for future advertising efforts.
You can test different versions of your search ads, landing pages, keywords, and other campaign elements. But remember to test one element at a time to get the most accurate results.
How Much Are PPC Management Services?
In 2024, businesses spend about $100-$10,000 on PPC advertising monthly. Businesses usually pay $0.11-$0.50 per click on platforms like Google Ads and Microsoft Ads.
However, this amount doesn’t include the cost of hiring an external agency or an in-house team. Now, let’s explore two common pricing models for PPC management:
In-House PPC Pricing
In this approach, your internal team is responsible for planning, executing, and optimizing the campaign. This often incurs significant costs, mainly related to staffing.
Salaries are the largest expense. If members of your marketing team are tasked with handling PPC, their salaries should be factored into the overall cost of the campaign.
Otherwise, you may need to hire additional staff if you want to avoid pulling existing employees away from their primary duties. Bringing in more employees adds extra salaries and benefits, increasing your overall expenses.
PPC Management Agency Pricing
In addition to working internally, you could turn to a PPC management agency for help. A good agency will save time and handle your campaigns in a specialist manner on a prepaid basis.
PPC management agencies typically charge anywhere between $501 to $3,000 a month. This range varies per company according to factors like business size, industry, agency expertise, and the work scope.
Also, agencies can have fixed-rate packages or percentage charges for PPC ad spend, depending on their model.
6 Effective PPC Management Strategies For Your Business
Effective PPC management requires strategies like smart targeting, budget optimization, and ongoing adjustments to ensure maximum impact for your business. Let’s explore some proven strategies to elevate your PPC efforts.
1. Refine Your Audience Targeting
To manage your audience targeting, your brand should stay up-to-date with trends in the audience’s search behavior and intentions.
For example, look at what websites your target users are visiting and what they’re engaging with on social media. By tracking these changes over time, you’ll get a better understanding of their preferences and interests.
Tools like Google Analytics, Google Ads Audience Insights, and social media platforms such as Meta’s Audience Insights can help you gather this valuable data and refine your targeting.
2. Craft Your Landing Page
Landing pages are key parts of a PPC campaign as they provide a focused experience that guides visitors toward purchasing or signing up.
In PPC management you have to design landing pages to hold the visitor’s attention on the content. When a person clicks on a PPC ad, he should be directed to a landing page immediately.
For example, visitors coming to your beauty products website have to be sent through to a landing page detailing the ingredient list, the benefits, as well as before and after photos from customers.
3. Optimize Your Site for Mobile
Since many people browse on their phones, it’s important to ensure your site is mobile-friendly. For many advertisers, most traffic comes from people on their mobile phones. Visitors are 5 times more likely to leave if your site isn’t mobile-friendly.
Netflix is an outstanding example of optimizing ads for mobile viewing. In 2023, Netflix earned the prestigious Drum Mobile Award for its engaging mobile ads inspired by the series “Black Mirror”.
PPC management goes beyond adjusting the ads. Your landing page, website, or blog should also give visitors the best experience.
You can improve them by:
- Designing a responsive website.
- Using a fluid grid and images to ensure content is readable on any device.
- Optimizing navigation for easy one-handed use.
- Making text easy to read without zooming.
- Ensuring the site loads quickly by reducing image sizes and removing unnecessary files.
4. Create Native Ads
Native ads are less intrusive than other ads because they blend with the content on the website so that users can access them without feeling interrupted. This prevents advertising fatigue and encourages increased engagement from users in turn.
A case in point was Mercedes’s engaging ad titled “The Rise of the Superhuman”. This sponsored content felt like a normal weekly quiz section of the newspaper. Thanks to this native ad, Mercedes reached a broader audience and showcased itself as a brand that offers more than just traditional car ads.
To create effective native ads, there are some best practices to adhere to. First, ensure the ads align with your brand’s style and tone. It should offer useful information or entertainment to the audience. Adding hyperlinks will also help drive traffic to your website.
Moreover, it’s essential to use a variety of formats and make sure the ads are responsive across different devices.
5. Monitor Ad Spend
It’s important to track a company’s ad spending every day to see if it’s getting a good ROAS. You need to make sure the ads are generating enough sales to justify the money spent on the PPC campaign.
For instance, if you’re running an ad and notice halfway through that most of the spend is going to low-performing audiences, you can quickly pause those and redirect the budget to better-performing ones. This simple adjustment can help lower costs and improve results without increasing your budget.
You should use specialized software like Marin Software or ClickUp. This software can help track a campaign’s performance and show you which ads are ranking highly on search engines or social media platforms.
6. Plan Long-term Campaigns
You might want to think about creating a sustainable strategy for your PPC campaigns.
Short Google Ads campaigns, for example, won’t provide you with enough data and insights for future improvements. Instead, a business can set up a 6-month campaign to promote its services.
This allows them to test keywords, refine targeting, and adjust bids based on performance trends over time. By the end of the campaign, they will achieve a lower cost per click (CPC) and higher conversion rates, thanks to ongoing optimizations.
Regularly updating your ads and targeting new keywords can help improve your PPC efforts. For example, you could use split testing on existing ads to figure out if adding fresh content can enhance your landing page’s results.
3 Common PPC Management Mistakes And How To Avoid Them
With experience running PPC ads, we have discovered that even skilled marketers can fall into common traps when managing PPC campaigns. Here are three common PPC management mistakes and Mega Digital’s tips to avoid them:
Ignoring Negative Keywords
Negative keywords are important because they prevent your ads from showing up in unwanted search terms.
One of our clients, an art seller, used to face challenges with irrelevant clicks. Instead of “oil paintings”, the store appears in a search for “acrylic paintings”, which meant a waste of money in clicks that would never mean anything.
Our client then took the advice to list negative keywords and filter out unrelated traffic. After that, she was able to minimize wasted spend and maximize ROAS.
So think about what’s relevant to your product, check on your search term reports, and add specific negative keywords. Regularly update your list to keep it effective.
Inaccurate Location Settings
Setting the right location for your ads helps you reach the people who matter most. Is your business local or national? If you get it wrong, you might waste money on clicks from people who can’t buy from you.
For example, if you run a bakery in Chicago, targeting people across the entire USA will be a waste. You’re paying for clicks from people who can’t visit your store. On the other hand, a national online store needs to target the right areas to avoid missing out on potential customers.
Therefore, you should use settings for specific cities, regions, or countries. If there are areas you don’t ship to, make sure to exclude them from your ads. Also remember to track where your leads and sales come from, and adjust your targeting based on the results.
>>> Read more: Google Ads Location Targeting – How to Set Up Geotargeting
Wrong Bidding Strategy
The bidding strategy is in fact an engine for your campaign. Some of our clients made a mistake in their selection and it took customers everywhere but not to their destination.
Hence, start by identifying your goals. Try out various bidding strategies until you find the best one for yourself. Keep measuring and adjusting your bids accordingly and fine-tuning over time as you learn more.
Wrap Up
Good PPC management is crucial to drive meaningful results and maximize your ROAS. Make sure you understand the process and have the right strategies. In this way, you could optimize your campaigns toward the desired audience for achieving specific business goals.
To stay competitive and reap long-term benefits, regular monitoring and adjustment are necessary. Start implementing these today and see increased performance!