11 golden rules for PPC optimisation

Need a bit of insight into how best to optimise your PPC campaigns? You’re in the right place! Let the PPC experts give you generous 11 golden rules for perfect pay-per-click optimisation.

1. Always refer back to the goals

Never let the goals slip away from every decision and action in your PPC management. If you don’t continually refer back to the client’s or your own business’s goals, your PPC efforts are on the road to suffering. This means getting it meticulous from the start. Know your product, its target audience, the budget and keywords to bid for – take a peek at our guide on how to set up an awesome PPC strategy! 

2. Set Max CPA targets

You need to make sure you’re setting up a max CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) for each conversion to avoid a loss. This is just down to simple profit margins, so obviously you need to make the CPA lower than the product price. And it may sound simple, but you’d be surprised how many marketers harm profit margins by setting CPAs too high, where a £50 product that sells may have had £300 in marketing spend. 

3. Avoid duplicate keywords

Without a well-structured and planned PPC campaign and goal, you run the risk of duplicate keywords across ad groups and campaigns. Google uses one ad per advertiser for a specific keyword, so you shouldn’t be using duplicate keywords for your different ad campaigns and groups.

4. Make sure one campaign targets one product category

It’s important to target your campaign to a specific product category with a good, descriptive name for the campaign. Along with this, the campaign or ad group should also target only one service or product or keyword. In a running ad group, there shouldn’t be more than four ads. Google continually assesses which ads are performing better with CTRs and displays those more often than the lower-performing ones.

5. Run PPC campaigns with conversion tracking

PPC is the short-term answer for digital marketing sales, whereas SEO is the long game. By bidding for keywords and paying for clicks, your brand and products gets in front of the right audiences quicker with aims to get quicker conversions. Along with Google Analytics and close communication with your clients, conversion tracking will give you deeper insight into the behaviours of users and triggers for conversions. This will all help with your optimisation and bidding plans.

6. React and adapt

A true PPC expert knows how to work around the climate and adapts campaigns in real time. They are dedicated to monitoring users’ behaviour, trends and the popularity of products. So, if a certain product is flying off the digital shelves, a PPC manager can tweak budgets and reinvest in campaigns that are getting a lot of conversions. For campaigns that aren’t doing as well, it may need a refocus and new keyword research or some more testing.

7. Optimise campaign settings

Always optimise in line with your campaign goals and budgeting. Make sure locations and target audiences are set up correctly and understand how compatible your site is for mobile, because if your site isn’t designed for mobile devices, then it’s best not to run any ads for mobile. Think about the languages, devices and networks that relate to your target market when optimising in settings. Use the ad extension feature to improve CTRs and always monitor your budget and ad scheduling.

8. Run remarketing campaigns

When you know what works well, you can remarket certain campaigns to get the most profitable results. Using data, insight and reporting, you can recapture lost leads and conversions effectively with remarketing. 

9. Keep tabs on negative keywords

The last thing you want is to learn that your ads are appearing for totally irrelevant keywords. It’s why you need to pay just as much attention to the keywords you don’t want your ads popping up for. When you identify the negative keywords, you can do something about them. For instance, you can use Adwords to control them and to keep them away. By always monitoring and adding negative keywords, you can better manage your ad spend and make PPC campaigns more cost-effective and efficient. 

10. Tweak and optimise ad copy

As well as testing, you should be tweaking your ad copy and landing pages where appropriate. For example, have you got a good CTA (call to action) on there and where does it appear? Could it be better placed? Is the copy clear and does it get to the point? Is it relevant and suited to your audience? What’s your USP and is it conveyed in your ads? It’s not all about the content either, make sure the tech side is up to scratch, too. You don’t want to increase bounce rates and eye rolls with slow-loading landing pages. 

11. Be in the know of Google trends

Keep up to date with keywords and search trends to spot any gaps or opportunities that your brand could jump on. This takes a combination of intuition, data-led strategising and having the capability to use the right tools. If a certain term, especially a unique one, is gaining heat and traction, and it fits directly into your service or offering, a PPC campaign could just be the marketing aid you need to up those conversion rates.

Are you suffering from a bit of PPC FOMO from reading this? Let’s have a chat! Our PPC marketing team is an experienced and highly-driven bunch with plenty of pleased clients under their belt! 

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