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7+ PPC Strategies Your Business Needs to Try in 2019
Apr
Here’s a great article from WebFX Blog
Companies investing in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising earn an average return on investment (ROI) of $2 for every $1 spent. Average isn’t what you’re looking for, though. You want your business to earn the best possible ROI, which is why improving your PPC strategy is one of your top priorities.
Learn how to maximize your PPC ROI with these nine innovative PPC strategies!
1. Advertise on multiple platforms
Most businesses focus their online advertising on Google Ads, which is smart. With Google Ads, your company can reach a massive audience that encompasses millions of people, including those in your target market.
That doesn’t mean your business should limit yourself to Google Ads, however.
You can reach people in your target market on other platforms too, like social media networks. Facebook, for example, is a go-to social media site for companies looking to build brand awareness, improve customer loyalty, or even generate sales.
Research the ad networks available and see if any align with your PPC strategy and goals.
2. Launch a remarketing campaign
A remarketing campaign is your business’s best friend.
When you use remarketing to retarget a website visitor, like someone who browsed a product page, they’re 70 percent more likely to purchase your product instead of a competitor’s. Remarketing needs to earn a spot in your PPC strategy with those kinds of odds.
“Wait, back up a second, what is remarketing?”
Remarketing is an advertising tactic where you remarket your business to people that interacted with your website. In Google Analytics, you can create audiences for remarketing campaigns, narrowing your audience by page, device, time on page, and more.
Once you build your audience, you can make a remarketing campaign in Google Ads.
If you’ve linked your Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts, you can import and access this audience with ease. For your remarketing campaign to launch, however, you will need a specific number of users in your audience. Overall, however, it’s a seamless process to build and launch your campaign.
While you can create remarketing campaigns on other ad networks, like Bing Ads, Google Ads is usually the more common choice for businesses. Companies prefer Google Ads for remarketing for a few reasons, like the network’s massive reach, but both platforms are viable options for remarketing.
If you’re new to remarketing, though, remarketing services can help you get started.
3. Include ad extensions
For companies with a history of online advertising, ad extensions aren’t a new addition to your PPC strategy. Ad networks like Google Ads, however, continue to expand their list of ad extensions, which means you may have missed a new, valuable extension to upgrade your ads.
A few examples of some useful ad extensions in Google Ads include:
Message extensions
Add a message extension to allow mobile users to text your team. You can receive and reply to messages from a designated phone number or email address, as well as setup automated responses. This extension works well for companies in hospitality and travel.
Call extensions
Include your phone number with a call extension to make it easy for users to call your business. On mobile devices, people can click and call your team in an instant. Call extensions are excellent for companies that provide emergency services, like heating and cooling repairs.
Price extensions
Use a price extension to provide users with additional information about your products, prices, and product options. You can update your price extensions with zero hassle, as well as make it convenient for users to shop with your business. Price extensions are a must-use extension for ecommerce stores.
If you want to provide your target market with value, plus stand apart from your competitors, you need to use extensions. No matter your industry, ad networks like Google Ads feature extensions that offer something for every business.
Explore the ad extensions offered by Google Ads and experiment with them in your PPC strategy.
4. Design mobile-first landing pages
Today, companies aim to please mobile users, and for three good reasons:
- More than half of the world’s Internet traffic comes from mobile devices
- More than 40 percent of online transactions occur on mobile devices
- More than 50 percent of ad clicks happen on mobile devices
A lot of businesses, however, forget about mobile-friendliness when it comes to their PPC strategy. While your ads may display on smartphones and tablets with zero issue, your landing page (or where you send users that click on your ad) may deliver a less-than-stellar experience.
For reference, a top-notch landing page is:
- Fast
- Functional
- Intuitive
- Relevant
If you want to maximize your ROI from PPC, then you need to design a mobile-friendly landing page. You can create your landing pages in-house or use landing page design services to ensure your ads provide the best user experience possible.
5. Try lookalike and similar audiences
If you’re looking for innovative PPC strategies, try lookalike audiences on Facebook and similar audiences on Google Ads. While available on different platforms, both audience types help your business reach users similar to your existing followers, customers, or website visitors.
A lookalike or similar audience allows your business to take your audience targeting to an unmatched depth and accuracy. Plus, Facebook and Google Ads automate most of the audience creation process, only requiring your team to provide the initial data, which doesn’t take long.
For example, with Google Ads, you can reference a remarketing audience (which must contain at least 100 users) to build a similar audience. The best part is that combining similar audiences with a display remarketing campaign can increase your conversion rate by more than 40 percent.
On Facebook, you can upload a customer file, refer to site traffic, app activity, and more to build a lookalike audience. Facebook recommends a source audience of at least 1000 people. Companies that use lookalike audiences have seen massive success. In some cases, they’ve quadrupled their PPC ROI.
Rethink your user targeting and experiment with lookalike and similar audiences in your PPC strategy.
6. Set a realistic advertising budget
A lot of businesses approach online advertising with an unrealistic budget. While you can set any budget you like with most ad platforms, your company won’t get the results you want with a barely-there ad spend.
That doesn’t mean you need an expensive, over-the-top budget to succeed at PPC. What you need is a realistic one, though, which involves researching the averages in your industry, like the average cost-per-click (CPC) for ads.
When you research what other companies in your sector spend on PPC advertising, you can build an accurate budget for your business. You can use your findings to support your budget request or recommendation to company decision-makers too.
If you’re looking for a quick reference on how much you should spend on your PPC strategy, look at the average for small-to-midsized businesses (SMBs). On average, these companies invest $9000 to $10,000 per month on PPC. Your business may spend more or less, depending on your PPC campaign.
Get the most from your PPC strategy by evaluating your budget and its worth in your industry.
7. Write compelling, benefit-rich ad copy
No matter the market, all PPC strategies need to focus on top-notch ad copy.
If your ad copy, from your headline to your description to your multimedia, doesn’t hook users, your entire ad campaign suffers. People won’t click on your ad, which stops your campaign from ever starting when it comes to conversions.
You can create copy that clicks with users by following these best practices:
- Share what makes your business unique, like free shipping or price matching
- Highlight relevant prices, promotions, or exclusives
- Include powerful calls-to-action (CTAs), like “Buy now,” “Sign up,” or “Apply now”
- Ensure landing pages deliver on what the ad copy says
- Focus on the benefits, rather than the features, of a product or service
Developing your ad copy may take time, but it can have a tremendous impact on your campaign’s performance. Make it a priority for your team. You can even collaborate with an ad copywriter to create your ad copy.
Start now by reading through your current ad copy and creating a list of ones that need improving.
8. Use responsive search and display ads
With Google Ads, your business can take advantage of not only responsive display ads but also responsive search ads. A responsive ad, whether for the Display or Search Network, helps your company automate parts of your PPC strategy.
You also get to leverage the machine learning power of Google Ads.
The platform will create dozens of ad combinations and gather critical data about their performance as Google Ads delivers them to users. That data helps Google Ads discover which ad combinations perform the best.
For your business, the assistance of Google Ads means smarter and stronger ads. You also have greater flexibility when it comes to experimenting with ad copy and images, as you can submit multiple headlines and descriptions for Google to test.
Take a look at responsive ads and discover how they could improve your PPC strategies.
9. Embrace A/B testing
While you can launch and leave your ads, nobody recommends this PPC strategy. Most PPC experts recommend monitoring your ad performance every week. They also emphasize the necessity of A/B testing your ads.
Google Ads also supports experimenting with your ads. That’s why the platform allows your business to create experiments. It also recommends (for text ads) to make three to four ads with different messaging for testing.
With experiments, your business can test a variety of factors, including:
- Bids
- Audience targeting
- Location targeting
- And more
You can then compare your experiment’s performance with your control group. This data allows your business to make a data-backed decision when it comes to optimizing and improving your PPC strategy. You aren’t guessing, but instead pulling actual data from your audience to guide your choice.
Make a move and start compiling a list of experiments for your ad campaigns.
Looking for a custom PPC strategy?
With these nine PPC strategies, your business can start to revolutionize your advertising campaigns. From launching ads on different platforms to designing mobile-friendly landing pages, you can take a variety of approaches to enhance your PPC strategy — including partnering with a PPC agency.
If you’re searching for performance-driven search, display, and social ad campaigns, WebFX can help. With our award-winning PPC services, plus social media advertising services, we can provide your business with a PPC strategy that drives results.
Browse one of our PPC case studies to see what we can do or contact us online to learn more!
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