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PPC Management For Small Businesses

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Being a small business owner in this highly evolved digital age, you can’t be blamed for always being on the lookout for new strategies to boost your revenue. There are many solutions on the Internet claiming to provide a booming ROI; none is as effective as Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, which you can easily use for your business.

The concept of PPC is extremely straightforward. It just involves three steps:

  1. You make an attractive ad.
  2. People like your ad and click on it.
  3. You pay for every click you get on your ad.

However, to be able to click on your ad, people need to see it first. Everyone knows that the top position gets the most clicks and views, so it’s only natural for advertisers to strive to bid for the top position. The higher you want to see yourself in the ranking, the more you will have to pay for it.

Choosing the Right Platform

There are some PPC platforms out there today, but as you need one that is popular among people and drives targeted traffic, we would recommend starting with Google AdWords. Targeted traffic means that the most relevant potential customers will see your ad.

The essence of PPC is simple; you pay for every click on your ad. Google AdWords is an auction-based system where advertisers secure a single ad space after a tough competition, and so you will have to pay more for clicks that are pointed by competitive search term.

It must also be noted that Google Adwords is more expensive per click as compared to other PPC platforms because Google not only enjoys more traffic than any other site on the web but also offers a vast array of analytics and various other tools to help you analyze and manage the results of your campaign.

Facebook Adwords

Google Adwords Plus Facebook

These two platforms used together can create a better chance to get beyond the expected. This combination can improve your Adword visibility if you convert your facebook´s audience members because it will increment your bids.

How to do it?

  • Run your Facebook ads and once you have data, decide which is your top converting Facebook ad set;
  • Tag the URLs in this ad set with Google Analytics UTM tracking code, using one of the tag elements to label it as ‘top converter;
  • Create a remarketing list in Google Analytics based on the traffic source matching the Top Converters campaign;
  • Apply this list as an RLSA across your desired search campaigns.

It can be used for brands that handle a high volume of conversions from Facebook ads, and it can also be layered alongside other RLSA bid adjustments for your  PPC converters.

Optimized Results

Different tools are available to help with your PPC management. Some popular tools serve more than one function while some focus on particular tasks or limited aspects of PPC management.

The key aspect of any successful PPC campaign is keyword research. It’s no wonder that most of the software provides ample information on keywords. Calculating the volume of competition for any keyword ahead of time can prove to be of great use. Another benefit is to be able to identify which keywords your competitors have been using for their success.

Properly managing your PPC expenditures and tasks for the most efficient ad buys will transform your bottom line. It’s especially important for small businesses because you can get the most out of your time and effort, leaving you free to concentrate on other things. Here, you will find some tips to make the best of PPC management.

Preliminary Research

Preliminary Research on PPC can be a difficult ad market, so make sure you know what to expect. Use the tools available to you to check out the competition for the keywords you want to target.

SEMrush

SEMRUSH is a great tool which has a free version that gives a good amount of data. We looked at a favorite hot spot called 3 Natives to see how their stats look.

Semrush Organic Competitor Search

  • Some additional resources

Moz and Similar Web have trial accounts where you can pull a wealth of data.

If there are too many competitors, then it could be hard to stand out. Too few, and you might not get enough traffic to be worthwhile. Find out how well your landing pages convert visitors: the better they are, the more PPC will pay off. That will mean you can afford to pay more for PPC or get into tougher markets. Don’t try PPC just because you can: have a specific and concrete plan based on your strengths. Proper PPC management means maximizing your ROI by using all the tools available to you.

  • Landing Page

Remember that expending time to construct the best possible landing page for the best possible visitor experience is well worth your while. An effective page is essential if you want to make the most of your PPC.

Landing pages would be created to cater to the offer by adding a call to action elements in the rights places. The main goal would be to convert visitors into subscribers, then subscribers into customers.

Never exceed your budget

Never Exceed Your Budget

Before starting any campaign, have a set budget in mind. No matter how well the campaign is going, stop when you hit your spend limit. That’s a signal that you need to step back and evaluate how well things are going. It’s tempting to extend a campaign that looks successful, but you are better off stopping while you are ahead so you can learn what worked and what didn’t. That will inform your next campaign. Hard limits also prevent you from overspending out of an emotional reaction to the campaign outcome.

  • Get to know your channels and what you convert best in.

With Google Analytics you can track sales or leads by channel and even by keyword, so you know what is converting. Make better-educated decisions by evaluating your bottom line.

Google Analytics

Always Be Testing

AB Testing lets you split traffic between multiple designs and see which one works best. Whether it’s the ads themselves or the landing pages, every campaign should contain one or more experiments. Tweak and adjust to hone in on the best designs and copy. There are several AB testing products that have an array of features. If you commit to testing, you’ll ensure that you learn something from every campaign no matter what the outcome is. You’ll get a knowledge return on your investment. Keep a running note of how different elements succeed or fail with different visitors.

AB Testing

  • Here are some online AB Testing tools:

https://vwo.com/ – Bright Vessel’s personal favorite.

https://www.hotjar.com/

Remember Negative Keywords

One of the most important things you need to do in a campaign is STARTING with a negative keyword list. Including negative keywords can help you refine your audience. It’s common for keywords to have multiple potential meanings and contexts. You don’t want to attract an audience that has no interest in your product: high-quality leads are more likely to convert.

Negative Keywords

Try some negative keywords to help sort out searchers looking for services or concepts unrelated to your business. You’re paying for every click. Don’t let that money go to waste and use negative keywords to increase the relevance of the Ad for the visitors who do click through.

Employ Tracking Services

Depending on which platform you use, there should be several ways to use analytics to guide your performance. For example, both Google AdWords and Google Analytics provide an in-depth examination of your outcomes from the ad and site level.

Employ Tracking Services

Don’t use these to adjust a campaign in progress: that would taint the data from your experiments. Instead, view the data after the end of the campaign and only then draw conclusions. Otherwise, you risk overreacting to an early trend instead of letting things play out.

Be Disciplined

An important way to control the amount of time and attention you put into PPC is to have a set schedule for management. Set a time frame that you are comfortable with where you will close out and make adjustments based on the analytics reports. This could be daily, every three days, every week, or at any other frequency. But once you choose an interval, stick to it. It’s easy to lose time poring over the numbers when you should instead move on to something that needs your attention. It’s also a good way to help you stick to your budget.

Consider Bid Management

Investing in a bid management system can simplify and streamline your bidding process, but some of these solutions are expensive. It’s up to you to know your needs and your budget and decide if the benefits are worth the cost. Consider your growth prospects and place the upside regarding additional revenue. The more complex your campaigns are, the more likely you are to need bid management. You should also take into account the fact that you might need stronger bidding if you have low margins because those slim margins might be wiped out with a bad bid.

Expand Your Keywords

Your keyword list is not fixed. You should feel free to attempt to expand it if you feel that the addition could boost your conversion or lead generation. A good way to do this is to use the search query report. That can tell you what people are searching when they interact with your ads, which will give you a broader view of their needs and interests. If you see anything in those searches that you can target, then you may be able to get more leads or higher-quality ones if you invest in them.

Relevancy is a MUST. Here are some items to take into consideration:

  • Make sure your Adgroup is relevant to the terms your adding
  • Terms should be relevant to the landing pages
  • The Ads should have the new terms in them
  • Each new keyword set should have its own Ad Group
  • When you add new terms, you need to increase the budget

Dayparting

Dayparting

Dayparting is the practice of subdividing your budget so that only a certain percentage of it can be spent at certain times of the day. For example, your reports might show that you get almost no conversions from leads you generate after midnight and before 7 am. In that case, use dayparting to reduce how much you spend in that interval: no point wasting money on bad leads. It helps you focus your dollars on the most efficient times of the day, so your money gets you more return.

Simulating Google AdWords

Simulating Google AdWords

Simulating Google AdWords and other platforms have a simulation tool you can use to experiment with your ads before spending any money. You can see how your outcomes would change if you changed your max bid for different segments of your audience. If you want to see if it’s worth it to bid more in a prime segment, try simulating first. It’s not a full replacement for real data, but you can at least see if a different bid seems worth a try.

Amazon PPC

Amazon PPC

Another platform possibility is Amazon, since it is where the shoppers are, and an overwhelming amount of people begin their product searches on that platform, you can’t miss the opportunity to be in that position one way or the other.

In order to reach the top spot on Amazon’s page, you have to know how Amazon ranks their products. The real formula is a total secret to even the most seasoned sellers, but there are some definitive factors that are weighted more than others.

  • If the product is in stock
  • Text match relevancy
  • Quality of images, number of reviews, whether or not a product is fulfilled by the seller or by Amazon also play into search rankings
  • Amazon’s algorithm cares about recent sales

Amazon ads allow you to laser target specific keywords on your various products and push them individually to achieve the best ROI. To do that, however, you’ll need to create a different ad group with a different keyword ad for every product variation.

Start by taking a high-level view of your products. Each different product has their own campaign, while each product variation within that campaign has its own ad group. If you’re running an ad on gloves, for instance, every glove would act have its campaign, while each variation of those gloves has their own ad groups. The idea is to figure out which keyword works for each variation, so a granular approach is best.

Overall

There is no particular formula to be successful in digital marketing. Therefore, selecting the best PPC management will guide you to succeed. Bright Vessel is a Google Certified AdWords partner and manages small to large budgets for clients. If you need help, you can contact us for free, no obligation consultation.

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