Companies advertising with AdWords, and marketers that specialise in PPC are often in the unenviable position of having to keep track of a constantly changing, and constantly growing industry. Google spends a lot of time switching things up in the digital environment, by making constant changes to its algorithm and platforms. However, the good news is that you don’t necessarily need to keep track of everything.
Rather than wasting important business time trying to listen to all the conversations that are happening around digital marketing at once, why not reduce your learning curve, and get straight to the heart of your PPC marketing tactics? While some of the following PPC tricks might already be a part of your advertising arsenal, the chances are that you’ll also discover a few hacks that you haven’t thought of before.
Grab a pen, and get ready to upgrade your AdWords experience.
1. Make Sure You Optimise Quality Score
While some people suggest that quality score isn’t very important, the truth is that it can make or break your PPC campaign. Your quality score will not only impact your ad ranking but your click-through rate too. In fact, Google rewards advertisers with high-quality scores by giving them a lower cost per click, and a higher position in the ad network. Additionally, quality score can affect how often your ads appear, and which keywords you’ll rank for. Every point you earn for your quality score translates to a 9% increase in impression shares.
2. Make the Most of the RLSAs
Remarketing Lists for Search Ads, or RLSAs, are fantastic for when you’re looking for a chance to bid on incredibly broad terms, like navigational terms or competitor names. These broader terms are often problematic, as they negatively affect your quality score by earning very few clicks. The good news is that when you apply RLSAs to the scenario, you only target your previous site visitors in search when they’re seeking information on related terms.
3. Write Emotional Ads
Nobody wants to write a bad ad for their business. In fact, many of us convince ourselves that our ads are pretty good, even if we don’t have any evidence pointing to that fact. However, the truth is that many ads do suck. The best way to improve your ad performance is to get to know your customers and figure out what they want most. Learn as much as you can about your customer’s emotions, and what they love or hate. This will help you to respond to their pain points, and show your users your unique value.
4. Try Remarketing
If there was only one PPC trick that every company should know about, it would definitely link to the power of remarketing ads. Conversion rates generally suck, which is the sad truth of online marketing. A huge number of the people that visit your website simply won’t take any action on behalf of your business. The good news is that remarketing allows you to get back in front of your lost visitors with the targeted messaging they need to see to do something for your company.
5. Use In-Market Segments
Although remarketing is a powerful strategy for people looking to upgrade their PPC marketing campaigns, it’s worth noting that this technique comes with its own collection of challenges. One of the biggest challenges of remarketing is that you need to have an audience in place to remarket to. If you’re a smaller business without much website traffic, you might struggle to find the right place that you can direct your advertising efforts towards. In-Market segments allow you to target people who are already in the market looking for your products and services!
6. Access “Bid Multipliers”
Instead of wasting your entire marketing budget on buying as many clicks as you can, you should be looking for a way to collect the best clicks for your business. Bid multipliers are solutions that allow you to attribute the greatest amount of value to clicks at certain times of the day. This is a strategy that’s commonly known among marketers as dayparting. By using bid multipliers, you’ll also have an opportunity to adjust your bid according to the device that your searcher is using. This means that if you discover that the clicks that come from mobile devices are most valuable to your business, then you can adjust your marketing efforts accordingly.
7. Check Out Ad Extensions
Sometimes, finding the best solution for your PPC strategy means playing with some of the different options available. Google AdWords now features a range of ad extensions that you can access to make the most of your campaigns. For instance, adding seller rating extensions and social extensions can be a great way to improve credibility and trust for your business. At the same time, offer extensions that let your customers take advantage of deals can help you to get more sales by targeting specific buyers.
8. Discover Video with YouTube Ads
More than a billion people use YouTube on a daily basis. This means that this social site is a great way to expand the potential of your PPC campaigns. There is a range of pre-existing formats available that you can use to transfer your ads to video form. With YouTube ads, you can target specific keywords, channels, interests, and search histories according to your needs.
9. Track PPC Campaigns with Keywords
If you want to make sure that you’re getting the most out of your PPC campaigns, then you’ll need to ensure that you’re tracking them at the keyword level. Make sure that you monitor your campaigns carefully, and isolate any keywords that aren’t performing as they should be. If your ad group isn’t performing as it should, then try creating a separate group for keywords that don’t work as well, to see if they perform better on their own.
10. Access the “First Mover” Advantage
Finally, the AdWords platform is constantly changing, with hundreds of evolutions taking place every year. If you’re one of the first advertisers to be aware of a new function or change, you can take advantage of that by getting lower bids, and enjoy less competition. All you need to do is stay up to date on the latest PPC news.