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Managing Keywords in a PPC Campaign
Posted by: | CommentsYou may think that once you have a PPC advertising campaign put together there is nothing left to do but collect the money. This, unfortunately, is not the case. Even after establishing your campaign there is a lot of work to do. Maintaining a successful campaign will require a lot of management of various areas. One such area is your keywords.
You will be using two different types of keywords. These are general, broad ranged keywords and the more targeted keywords.
General keywords are those that attract a large crowd of searchers for a certain topic but not necessarily a niche within that topic. For example a broad based keyword could be “home business.” This will attract a lot of searchers. However they may not be interested in your particular niche and you will get few sales or leads.
People using the niche keywords are more interested in your specific field. However, the niche keywords generally attract much less traffic. This decrease in traffic is usually offset by an increase in sales conversion.
This basic understanding of keywords will help you manage you PPC campaign. A lot of the time, a struggling campaign can be caused by poor keyword performance. You need to make sure that a keyword is not only bringing people, but also sales. Without the sales, you may as well be flushing your money down the toilet.
Make sure to keep a close watch on your keywords. By using software provided by the PPC engine, such as Google Adwords, you can track how much traffic each of you keywords is bringing to your site.
Another factor you need to look at is the conversion rate, or the number of clicks required to generate a sale. This ratio will be much lower for the broad keywords and much higher for the niche. Since you pay for each click you will need to evaluate the value of your keywords.
This sales conversion will be used to measure whether your bidding is appropriate. If you are spending more on clicks than you are making per sale you will want to consider making changes. Otherwise you are losing money, and that is the opposite effect you want your PPC campaign to have.
Another thing to consider is keyword trends. The word which people use to search for a particular topic can often change. When this happens your keywords will become more or less effective. Due to this you may need to alter bids to change positioning of those keywords.
As the trends change you may find a keyword is not pulling its own. Now however, you will be able to evaluate the keyword and make changes to fix its efficiency. If you feel a keyword is performing too poorly to be revived at this time, it is recommended that you merely put it on hold for a while instead of deleting it. Trends may swing back to a place where that keyword will work again in the future.
Adjust and Optimize Your PPC Ads
Posted by: | CommentsWhen you manage a PPC advertising campaign, you will need to constantly tweak it in order to maximize your profit. The following will explain in depth the three major areas which you will need to tweak in order to keep your campaign running smoothly.
The keywords in your PPC advertising campaign are critical to its success. This is one of the main areas you should address when it comes to adjustment. Keyword performance should be analyzed and adjustments will be made to improve it. You can add new matches and keywords to draw as many sectors of your market that you can to your website. Poor performing keywords should be put on pause as you do not know when they might come in useful again. This is because searchers change the sets of keywords that they use to look for a topic.
How you bid on these keywords is also vital to the success of your campaign. Bidding will determine the position your ad receives so it influences whether you are maximizing your profits or losing money. When you observe a strong keyword in a low position it is wise to increase your bid. Look at it this way: If you are getting a good number of sales from a keyword in such a low position, just imagine the sales that could be generated from a position closer to the top. You may also consider adding similar keywords to your repertoire to maximize your efficiency.
Adversely a low performing keyword in a high position can be adjusted, so that you are paying less for it and it will be in a lower position. This will save you money, which can be spent improving better performing keywords, sometimes if the keyword is really performing badly you can just put it on pause and replace it.
Your ads in your PPC advertising campaign are also important. Many people set up the ads and leave them, not realizing they are giving up profits by doing this. They concentrate on keywords and bids without paying attention to the ad. A simple way to adjust an ad to make it produce optimum profits is to split test it. You can then use the best performing ad and make more sales. Split testing can be done over and over again until you get an ad that is giving you the best profits.
Similarly, landing pages and sales pages can also be split tested to optimize your sales. Once a person is drawn to your site you don’t want them to be turned away by a poor sales page. By split testing your pages you will find what works best and what needs changed. This will lead to more sales and therefore more profit.
Now that you know how to make the most of your PPC advertising campaign, there is just one more thing to keep in mind. When making all of these changes, it is a good idea to keep a log of each and every adjustment which you make. By doing so you will be able quickly see which changes are positively affecting your campaign.
Assessing Keyword Bids in an Ad Campaign
Posted by: | CommentsAlthough there are many aspects of a PPC advertising campaign which need to be maintained, bidding can be one of the most crucial to your profits. Without proper bidding, your campaign can fall out of your hands in the blink of an eye.
Bidding determines the positioning of your ad. The higher your bid the better your ad position will be. It is important to be among the first 3 pages of the search results. This is because searchers rarely go beyond the first 5 pages of search results. However you do not always have to be first place as there are usually around 6 to 10 ads on the first search page. The difference in cost between the first and third place can be quite a lot. You will save money and not really lose much exposure by opting for third place instead of first with your ad.
Bidding must be carefully monitored or you will lose a ton of money. Be sure that you do not get into bidding wars with your competitors. Popular keywords can be quite expensive to get into a good position. Only get involved with these if they are really bringing a good number of sales and are profitable. It is no good spending a lot of money per click for just a few sales unless you are selling a high profit margin product or service.
Another factor you need to consider when bidding is profit point. If you are paying more for clicks than you receive for the sales generated by those clicks, you are losing money. By analyzing you sales conversions and your profit per sale, you will be able to come to an appropriate bid which will maximize your profits.
Bids and positions are vital to the success of your campaign. If a keyword in a good position is not performing too well, lower your bid or even put the keyword on pause. However if a keyword in a lower position is pulling good sales you can make the bid higher and improve the position. In this way you will increase your sales and make more profit. By these types of adjustments you can improve your ROI, return on investment.
When you are beginning PPC advertising campaign management, things can get out of control very quickly. For this reason, PPC engines such as Google Adwords offer daily budget options. These budgets will make sure you don’t spend too much money before you have a chance to analyze and tweak your campaign. This option can save you a great deal of money and can be removed once you have things under control.
Should You Hire a Team for PPC Management?
Posted by: | CommentsManaging PPC advertising campaigns can be hard to handle, even more so if you are in charge of multiple campaigns. If it gets to be too much to handle there are services which will help you manage your campaigns. By simply Googling “PPC advertising campaign management” you can find countless such services.
When considering hiring a PPC advertising campaign management team there are some points you should bear in mind. Time, expertise and budget are the three main ones.
The time factor is important. Management of PPC advertising campaigns takes time, especially when you have multiple campaigns. Because of this factor you may want to think about hiring a PPC management team to help you. The money you spend will be offset by the time you will save. You can use this time to concentrate on new products and services and most importantly marketing your business.
Expertise is an aspect of PPC advertising campaign management that you should think about. Not everyone is an expert in PPC management and if you are not sure what you are doing you will definitely make mistakes that will cost you money. Also it is very time consuming when you are not sure what you are doing. Under these circumstances it will be better to hire a professional management company.
On this same note, time is immensely important. Managing a PPC advertising campaign can take a tremendous amount of time no matter your level of expertise. When you begin managing multiple campaigns, that time obviously is multiplied. By hiring a team to help handle the tedious aspects of campaign management, you will be able to devote more time to marketing and researching new campaign potentials.
Another aspect to consider when deciding whether you need a PPC advertising campaign management service is your budget. Hiring a service can cost a lot of money depending on what services they are providing for you and how many campaigns those services apply to. You may want to consider setting up a monthly payment plan instead of paying up front. This way you will be able to evaluate the quality of work month by month instead of paying for a whole job and ending up disappointed in the end.
When you have decided to hire a PPC advertising management team, you will want to look for a company that is reliable. To look into a company’s reliability, you can check their website. Most companies offer an “About Us” page where you can learn a brief history of the company. Also look for a mission statement which will state the company’s goals.
Testimonials are good for cross referencing. You can check the testimonials on the website and cross reference the companies. You can even contact them and ask about the PPC advertising campaign management company.
Always read the fine print of the contract. Do not enter into a verbal agreement; everything should be in writing with a formal contract. This means that the company will be more likely to do what they have promised and there will be no disagreements.
When you take these points into consideration you will be able to run successful PPC advertising campaigns and make the maximum profits from your PPC campaigns.
How to Track a PPC Ad Campaign
Posted by: | CommentsThe tracking of various aspects of your PPC advertising campaign is a crucial part of your campaign management. It will help you assess the strengths of your campaign including which keywords are guiding people to your site and which draw the most sales. Here we will discuss some ways of tracking your PPC campaign statistics.
The first and most obvious method of tracking your PPC advertising campaign is tracking the keywords. The PPC engine offers a tracking system which will show you the amount of traffic brought in by each keyword.
Another tool provided by the PPC engine will calculate your sales conversions, or the total number of clicks you receive per sale. This figure is a key to your success because it will give you a reference point for bidding and keyword adjustment.
Another method for evaluating your traffic is your website statistics. These stats will allow you to see the frequency of each page being viewed as well of the length of time of the visitors. This information can be useful in gauging the effectiveness of your PPC advertising campaign.
Your campaign’s landing pages are a perfect example of a page of which you would want to track the stats. From these statistics you will get an indication of traffic coming in and the amount of sales. If you have a separate landing page for each campaign, you will have a clear idea of which campaigns are more effective.
In order to effectively track your PPC campaigns, you should be recording all of your results. The easiest way to do so would be in a spreadsheet. By keeping track of all your past results you will be able to judge the successfulness of any adjustments you make.
Keeping track of your campaign is crucial to maintaining a successful advertising campaign. Google Adwords, as well as other PPC engines, offer a variety of useful tools and tutorials to help you with various aspects of PPC advertising campaigns. When you start out in PPC it is recommended that you read this information carefully so that you will have a better knowledge of how the business works and how to make a successful campaign. The engines also offer a knowledgeable staff there to assist you should the need arise.
You may eventually come to realize that you have time to invest in tracking the results of your PPC advertising campaign. Or perhaps you are still lost as to what to do. In this case, you may want to look into a PPC management service. These professionals will help you manage and optimize your campaign, for a price of course. Before signing up with a service make sure to research them extensively and compare to other companies. A quality company can help take your profits to a new level.
Using Split Testing to Check the Usefulness of Your Ads
Posted by: | CommentsSplit testing is a useful technique for checking the performance of your ads and campaigns. You can use this technique for testing ads and different sets of keywords. You can also use it for testing sales pages and landing pages.
To test different sets of keywords, you can create two PPC advertising campaigns in which the only difference is the keywords used. By monitoring the performance of each campaign you will be able to judge which keywords are more effective.
What is split testing? This is when you use 2 ads which are each trying to sell the same product. You can use each ad for separate PPC ad campaigns. With the second ad you keep adjusting it until you can get it to outperform the first ad. You can repeat the process using different ads and discarding the lower performing ads, until you can get an ad that has optimum performance. This is the ad you will keep for your campaign. You can link your campaign to a landing page for easy tracking of traffic and sales conversions.
By examining not only your ads and keywords, but also your landing and sales pages, split testing can help you make your PPC campaigns much more successful.
Using similar methods as with testing ads, you can also test your landing pages and sales pages. You will create two pages linked to the same PPC advertising campaign and have half of your traffic go to each page. Then by analyzing your sales conversions you will have an idea of which page is more effective. As you tweak the weaker page you will be able to create a page which outperforms the formerly stronger page. You will then be able use the strongest page for your advertising campaign.
Why should it be part of your PPC campaign management? Split testing allows you to perfect your campaign ad so that you can get the most profits from your PPC ad campaign. A landing page or sales page should also have optimum performance or your PPC advertising campaign will be wasted.
Ads should be well constructed to do this. Usually the PPC ads will be designed like classified ads. There will be an eye catching headline, a body made up of two benefits and a strong call for action with a link to your sales page.
If you really want to make your PPC management easy you can use software to split test your ads, landing pages and sales pages. This might be viable if you have a number of PPC advertising campaigns that you need to do split testing on, otherwise you can do it manually as explained above.
Split testing is a time consuming part of PPC advertising campaign management but will pay off handsomely in the end. Sometimes just a few words will make the difference. You can experiment with different trigger words to make your ads and sales copy more effective. The most common tests in split testing are done with the headlines. This can make a considerable difference in drawing potential buyers to your website. if it is a landing page you can also experiment with the presentation of the page.
Bad PPC Campaigns and How To Fix Them
Posted by: | CommentsSometimes a campaign is not performing as well as it should. When this happens you will need to examine each area of your campaign and adjust as soon as possible to prevent heavy losses.
The 3 most likely problem areas are: keywords, bidding, and ads.
Keywords should be your first area to examine. Key words and phrases can be tracked with tracking systems from the PPC engine. You can tell which keywords are drawing traffic and which ones are not. This will let you weed out the ones that are not performing well.
A keyword may not perform well for two reasons. First, it may be too broad. A broad keyword may be great at drawing traffic to the site, but will usually fail to produce many leads or sales. If the people coming to your site are not interested in your product you may want to consider using a more specific keyword.
Also, searchers tend to follow trends. If a trend has changed, your once hot keyword may not be performing as well now. When this happens you should try replacing the poor performer with a new word which is more popular in the current trend.
Next we will look at bidding. Bidding is important as it will determine both the position and cost of your ad. You won’t want to waste money by bidding too highly on a poor performer. At the same time you want good positioning on stronger keywords. By increasing a bid on a strong performer in a lower position, you can improve your sales conversion performances.
Sales conversions will determine how effective a keyword is and how much your maximum bid should be. The sales conversions are based on the amount of clicks it takes to make a sale. It will also depend on how much those clicks are costing. You will need to subtract the cost of the clicks from the value of the sale. This will determine your profit. It is very important to evaluate this properly or you will end up with a campaign that is costing you money.
Ads for your campaigns need to be examined. It is no good having great keywords if your ad is not drawing people to your site. Be sure to split test your ads to get optimum performance from them.
It is completely possible to save a failing PPC campaign, but in order to do so you should examine each of the issues presented above. It will take time to analyze your campaign effectively, but it will be worth it in the end. You will need to examine the campaign with a fine-tooth comb and make notes of any and all changes which you make.
If you are not sure what to do you can hire a PPC advertising campaign management service. They will work on your campaign and fix it for you and they will maintain your campaign at optimum performance levels. This will save you a lot of time and money. Your increased profits will offset the cost of the service.
