Are you as smart as possible with your pay-per-click (PPC) internet advertising campaigns? Most marketers aren’t. Although more than $10 billion is spent on PPC ads each year[1], small business owners waste at least 25% of their online ad budgets[2].
This happens because they begin with big dreams of attracting qualified prospects to their landing pages for pennies but end up with ads that are expensive and unfocused.
Here at MAXBURST, a New York Digital Agency, we don’t let our clients make these kinds of mistakes, and we don’t want you to make them either. That’s why we are going to give you four proven and efficient strategies you can use to manage your PPC efforts.
Before we jump into them, however, it’s essential to be clear about what we think is “smart.” Our definition includes tactics that help you to save money on PPC ads while boosting returns. So, these tips might not necessarily follow the latest tricks and fads, but they do work extraordinarily well month after month.
With that little caveat out of the way, let’s look at four ways you can make your pay-per-click efforts less costly and more effective…
#1 Tweak Your Account Setting Immediately
It’s incredibly easy to set up a PPC account on your favorite search engine or social media site. That’s great in the sense that it gives you access to new customers quickly. However, it’s terrible in the way that it can cause many marketers to overlook the importance of more in-depth account settings.
For example, lots of marketers never get around to configuring their ads for language, time zone, and device type. These settings can also be changed at the campaign level, of course, but it’s better to make adjustments directly at the account settings if they’ll be carrying over to every ad you run. That way you won’t accidentally throw big chunks of your budget towards parts of the market that isn’t a good match for your products or services.
PPC platforms let you customize dozens of features to zero in on your perfect customers. If you ignore them, you’ll earn fewer clicks and see your costs go way up.
#2 Build Tightly Focused Campaigns
The most prominent mistake marketers make when setting up a PPC campaign that’s targeting their ads based on visibility and traffic rather than evaluating buyer quality or considering searcher intent. In other words,
they try to have their ads be seen as often as possible without paying attention to the fact that some viewers are much more likely to convert into buyers or leads than others.
To give you a simple real-world example, suppose our firm ran search ads built around the phrase “web design.” That would be expensive, would put us into direct competition with dozens or hundreds of competitors, and would also draw in lots of searchers who likely wouldn’t have any buying intent. Some of them might be looking for web design classes, for instance, or a basic template suitable for personal blogs.
If we got more specific and ran ads for “Long Island small business web design” we would lower our costs, get around most of our competitors, and find clients that might perfectly match our capabilities. We could spend less and get more.
You should always be striving for the same kind of focus in your pay-per-click campaigns. It’s a key to enduring efficiency and return on investment.
#3 Construct Separate Local PPC Campaigns
We have already alluded to this, but let’s spell out an important point of focus. Just as you want to direct your PPC ad campaigns towards certain types of products, services, or buyers, you should also narrow them in geographically.
Not only is it expensive to run ads over a large number of cities and neighborhoods, but doing so makes it harder to highlight offers that are particularly relevant for customers in one area or another. Even using geographic keywords in your ads, or location-specific images can boost response rates in a big way.
You can undoubtedly restrict your ads and campaigns to certain areas by changing accountant campaign settings. Still, we would advise you to go farther and break your geographic targets into separate ad groups. That will make them easier to manage and help you to earn a higher return from each new effort.
#4 Target Social Media Users Based on Demographics
With social advertising on Facebook and LinkedIn growing dramatically as a share of PPC expenditures, we couldn’t finish this post without highlighting the value of their demographic targeting features. When using these services, you don’t zero in on buyers based on search terms, but rather what you know about them as individuals.
This is especially useful if you have the kind of product or service that people don’t know how to search for. Or, even if you’ve had luck with traditional search advertising, you can use demographic targeting to find prospects who look like your best existing customers.
Social advertising can be highly targeted, very effective, and surprisingly inexpensive. If you haven’t yet given it a shot, you might consider experimenting with some new campaigns today.
When it Comes to PPC Advertising, Focused Means Profitable
An astute marketer will notice that each of these four tips come down to being more focused and specific on what type of buyer you want to attract and how you want to present your ads to them. In our many years of helping companies with online marketing, we’ve found that zeroing in on specific markets and customer types have been the key to sustainable success.
The more focused you are with your PPC campaigns, the more profitable you are bound to be. When you know precisely who your ads are for and what you’re spending your money on, it’s easy to cut the waste from your PPC ads and make them more useful. More significant results with lower budgets is a winning tactic with any internet marketing channel, and especially PPC advertising.
Laila Azzahra is a professional writer and blogger that loves to write about technology, business, entertainment, science, and health.