Pay Per Click Management Strategies

Category: PPC Management

It’s true: Put your ad in the Yellow Pages and you won’t have to think about it for a whole year! Doesn’t that sound great. “Set it and forget it.” But of course, that’s now how you grow a business.

Getting Started with Pay Per Click Advertising Management

So you’ve set up your advertising accounts and have some ads running. Now is when you find success or failure. Many marketers or small business owners set up one ad, one campaign, buy “broad match” keywords like “hotel new jersey” and mark a date on their calendar to check back in a month. This is not for you.

Managing Campaigns, Ads and Keywords is an Ongoing Process

You will have an immediate advantage, save money, and drive more leads, if you simply commit to spending a half hour or so a day to optimize your ad campaigns. One of the great benefits of paying only for each click is that you can see what gets attention, what doesn’t, then change and test in near real-time. By managing your campaigns, you will reap greater rewards, but it takes patience that others won’t have.

Look for Keywords That are Doing Well and Doing Poorly

Prior to this phase, you need to have set up analytics with reporting on goals/conversions. In short, you need to know which ads and keywords end up making you money–and which do not. But don’t throw away keywords that don’t immediately result in sales. You’ll test them later. There may be opportunities to advertise on a variation of the keyword that your competitors are not taking advantage of. Now give special attention to the keywords that are doing well. They are your money-generators and deserve the majority of your attention. Baby them. Tweak the ad copy. Customize more finely to appeal to your prospects.

Separate Good From Bad. Create Targeted Ads and Landing Pages.

Find the keywords that are doing better than the rest. Now make a separate campaign and set of ads that are more targeted to lure in that specific person searching for that solution. And don’t neglect the landing page: The trick is to have the landing page be in harmony with the other steps in the process. Use the same messaging, specific keywords, and offer, on that landing page. Make a more detailed campaign of keywords with variations. Next, leverage your matching options.

Compare Phrase and Exact Match Cost and Results to Broad Match.

  • Broad match: Anything containing those words plus any other words will call up your ad.
  • Phrase match: When the keywords are in that order, your ad will show, as well as when terms are before or after that phrase.
  • Exact match: Your ad will only display when the keyword you choose exactly matches what the prospect typed in.

You can place ads in any of these methods. Why bother with the difference? Because the more specific you get, the less you’ll spend, and you may have better results. When you choose for your keywords to match exactly, you have to do a little more work, and have a more extensive exact list of keywords to manage. Here is where many don’t bother. But if you bid on specific terms, you can often get a click for less money. And that means a greater ROI.

Hire an Agency or Use Software Tools as the Scope Grows

As you refine your ads and ad campaigns, you will naturally see your list of keywords and ads to manage grow. Consider using PPC management software, websites, or an agency to manage the details.

A pay per click management agency will handle the tedious work of optimizing keyword-by-keyword, and may have more sophisticated reporting tools. If you are required to show results to the rest of the company, it’s especially helpful and time-saving to have reports ready when you need them.

Trust But Verify

But stay involved. Monitor your chosen agency’s results. Actively give guidance and pose questions to make sure your budget is being spent effectively. Generally agencies are not out to just take your money, but they have many clients to juggle. You need to be in constant contact with your representatives, their managers, and the technical people, to maximize ROI. If they aren’t paying enough attention, shop around and move on.