Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is an effective and inexpensive marketing tool – when it’s used properly. Unfortunately, it can also be very expensive if you’re unfamiliar with this digital marketing strategy.
Even if you approach an advertising agency to manage your PPC campaigns, it may wind up being even more costly (and frustrating). Why? Some agencies are not transparent when it comes to their level of service. They may have a great deal of experience in digital marketing (such as organic social media marketing), but they are lacking in PPC expertise. Other times, they have excellent PPC knowledge and skills – but they do not have the bandwidth to give your account the attention it needs to succeed.
We know this because organizations have told us these stories during consultations. Too many of them have experienced ineffective PPC campaigns that result in little or no conversions.
That doesn’t mean your small business cannot enjoy the benefits of PPC advertising.
There are many effective ways to reduce your risk of wasting money on underperforming PPC campaigns.
Here are some tips you can use to better manage your PPC campaigns.
Key takeaways to successfully manage your PPC campaigns:
- Understand that PPC campaigns can benefit small to midsize businesses
- Learn how to better manage your campaigns by lowering bids, scheduling campaigns, adjust your campaigns to reach audiences on their preferred device and in your targeted locations, and use negative keywords to prevent your ads from appearing in unrelated queries.
- Contact an expert PPC team to receive a free digital marketing evaluation
How To Save Money When Managing Your PPC Campaigns
PPC advertising is an effective and inexpensive way for you to reach the right audiences in your location. Even if you have a limited marketing budget, platforms such Google Ads can produce great results when managed wisely and effectively.
Unfortunately, PPC best practices and strategies can be confusing. Poor strategies or campaign management can quickly deplete your budget. This is especially true if you’re not familiar with such things as proper keyword planning and bidding, scheduling and other helpful tools.
Fortunately, you can easily overcome these deficiencies with the following strategies.
Limited Budget? Lower Your Bids
When businesses bid on keywords, they often employ an auction-style strategy where the highest bidder wins. This is not an effective strategy for small businesses as it will deplete their ad spend quickly. Instead of implementing this losing strategy, your business should go in the opposite direction and lower your bids.
Lowering your bids allows you to stretch your campaign budget further. For example, if you are bidding $3 per click and have a limited budget, you should reduce your bids by 10-15% each week to see if you can stretch your budget further. Be mindful that you will eventually start missing out to ranking factors if you lower your keyword bids too much.
Run Your PPC Ads At The Right Time
Any way many small businesses easily exhaust their PPC budget is by bidding on clicks at the wrong time. If your audience isn’t active at 3:00 AM, then you should not be spending money during that time period. To stretch that budget further and achieve more positive results, you should use a custom schedule. If you know that the majority of your leads occur between the hours of 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM, then that’s when your ads should run.
When you implement a schedule, you ensure that your PPC ads run only on specific days and/or at the most ideal hours of the day. These simple schedule adjustments allow you to better manage your PPC ad spend budget.
Determine Which Devices Perform Better
Does your website convert better through desktop searches than mobile searches? If so, money spent on mobile can be allocated to reach your audience’s preferred device.
To find out if your ad is performing better on a particular device, you should review your website traffic. If that data reveals that your site is experiencing significantly more traffic from desktops, you can make a bid adjustment to focus on that device.
Adjust Your Location For Local PPC
If you’re trying to connect with audiences in a certain area, you want your PPC ads to appear to searchers who live in that location. For example, if your local business is in the Chicago suburbs, you do not want your ads to reach audiences in Michigan.
After you determine the areas your business serves, you can add those locations to your PPC campaign by including specific geographic information (state, city, zip code). Adjusting your campaigns to include this information allows your ad to reach the right audience and maximize your PPC ad budget.
Turn A Negative Into A Positive
If your ad for your local service is appearing in search results for audiences looking for fine dining, your ad needs an adjustment. To ensure that your ad doesn’t not appear in irrelevant queries, you’ll need to add negative keywords.
Adding these keywords stops your ad from appearing in search engine queries that are irrelevant to your business – and the searchers’ intent. By implementing these keywords into your strategy, you ensure that your ad reaches the right audience and you reduce the risk of depleting your budget on inappropriate search results.
Conclusion
While you can use these strategies and tips for your future PPC campaigns, you can enjoy even better results when you partner with a quality pay-per-click advertising agency!
If you prefer to let an expert team of PPC specialists manage your future campaign, let us know! We would be happy to discuss the many ways we can help your business enjoy the many benefits of PPC advertising
