Top 7 PPC Advertising Best Practices Guide

PPC advertising can be an extremely effective way to drive leads to your website, generating enquiries and conversions. Nowadays, while it’s relatively easy to get started with PPC ads, a few best practices will help you ensure your campaign is reaching its full potential. In this post, we’ll look at seven ways you can improve the PPC campaigns’ performance.

1-Set a budget review periodically

PPC specialists may distribute the budget among campaigns without reevaluating them. This leads to wasted ad spend, so review your PPC budgets periodically using keyword and performance planners. You can also pause poor-performing campaigns that no longer meet your goals, so they do not waste important advertising funds.

2-Review the KPIs that influence campaign performance

The following KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) can influence your PPC campaign performance:

• Cost per conversion – The cost of each conversion as you have defined on your goals
• Cost per action – how much you are paying for each action that is completed in your campaign.
• Conversion rate – the number of conversions divided by the total clicks on a keyword, ad group or campaign.
• Click-through rate (CTR) – the % of impressions which resulted in a click on an ad or keyword.
• Cost per click (CPC) – The amount you pay for each click (a person could click on your ad multiple times). The difference between CPC and CPM is that CPC charges advertisers based on actual user activity, while CPM charges advertisers based on impressions, even if no one clicks their ads at all.

3-Utilise segmentation

Segmentation, in a nutshell, is the process of dividing a group of people into subgroups based on shared characteristics, such as age, gender or interests. You can then use this information in your targeting.

Sajad from Republic Marketing explains:

“You can use segmentation to target a specific portion of the users. For example, those who are in-market for CRM software. You could adjust your bid and or narrow down your targeting to a selection of pre-defined audiences.”

Google Ads offers various targeting criteria based on user search history, demographic and preferences.

4-Widen your horizon; try LinkedIn, Quora or even Pinterest

If you’re looking to expand your PPC advertising strategy beyond Google ads, then LinkedIn, Quora and Pinterest can be great places to find new leads or customers.

LinkedIn is a great place to generate B2B leads. LinkedIn has been widely accepted as the best social network dedicated to working professionals. The platform has seen tremendous growth since 2019. It provides plenty of options for companies seeking new customers through their ads or social media pages.

Quora is another great option for advertising; it’s one of the largest Q&A communities where people ask questions about everything from relationships to work productivity — making it an ideal place for marketers interested in reaching out to potential buyers who are researching how they can improve their own businesses or careers without spending too much money on paid campaigns like Facebook ads/Instagram marketing campaigns etc. This is where you could sponsor your answer and make it more visible than others.

Pinterest has huge potential for companies that offer lifestyle products or anything that has a strong visual element to it. You could influence users during the research phase.

5-Constantly A/B test your ads

A/B testing is important because it helps you to learn what works and what doesn’t. You can test various elements of your ads, including text, images and landing pages. By running tests on a small portion of traffic for a certain period of time, you will get valuable information about which combinations perform best.

For example: If you have an ad that features a call-to-action button at the bottom of the page (e.g., “Get Started Now”) but it isn’t bringing in any conversions or clicks, then perhaps changing this button to read “Get a Free Audit” would be more effective since it implies immediate action on behalf of your visitors/customers. Or maybe adding an image next to that button could help increase click-through rates. The point is to test both versions against one another and see which one works the best for you.

6-Optimize your landing pages

Your ad landing page is best to be different from your regular service or home page. This is where you can make an excellent first impression. The order of information, design elements and speed all play a huge factor in whether a click will result in a conversion or not.

They should also match the messaging of your PPC ad in order to avoid any confusion or friction between what people see on the search results page and what they find when they land on your target URL.

• Make sure you have a single call-to-action that drives people towards either completing an action, such as downloading an ebook, signing up for an email list or placing an order.
• Keep navigation simple – don’t distract from this goal with links that provide information about other products or services which may not be relevant at this stage (or even if they are, it’s best to keep users on the landing page).

7-Create a buyer’s journey based on audience behaviour

The buyer’s journey is a customer-centric analysis of the steps taken to purchase a product or service that can be used to improve customer experience and increase conversions. It typically includes various steps, but it might also be defined by emotions.

For example, if your goal is to improve ROI on PPC advertising spend, you’d want to make sure you include all relevant keywords in ad copy so that your ads appear when users are searching for the types of products/services you offer. Here we mention two important stages of a buyer’s journey.

• Awareness – The buyer has just heard about your company and is starting their research into what your company does. This stage lasts for about one to two months on average for B2B companies; during this time they’ll look at reviews and search for information about companies similar to yours (this is known as ‘competitive intelligence) as well as read articles on related topics.
• Evaluation – Once they’ve decided which company offers them what they’re looking for, then they go through an evaluation process where they’ll compare those options side-by-side before making their final decision based on price/performance value propositions (PV). This stage lasts between one to two weeks for B2B companies depending on how heavily weighted each factor is considered.

Conclusion

Running PPC Ads is a cost-effective way (especially for startups) to drive traffic to their website. By implementing the above 7 points, you could increase your chances of getting conversions as opposed to bounces.

1-Set a budget review periodically and pause the campaigns that aren’t profitable

2-Review the KPIs on a weekly basis to decide which campaigns have poor performance

3-Utilise segmentation through adience settings on Google or Facebook ads manager

4-Experiment with LinkedIn, Quora or even Pinterest, depending on your industry

5-Constantly A/B test your ads

6-Optimize your landing pages

7-Create a buyer’s journey based on audience behaviour

Also Read: SEO vs PPC: The Sustainability Differences Explained