PPC is an abbreviation for pay-per-click, an internet marketing model in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. It’s essentially a method of purchasing visits to your website rather than attempting to “earn” those visits organically.
One of the most common types of PPC is search engine advertising. It enables advertisers to bid on ad placement in a search engine’s sponsored links when a customer searches for a keyword related to their business offering.
Best Practices for Paid Search and PPC Planning
To improve campaign performance, it’s critical to revisit your paid search strategy on a regular basis. Consider the following ten best practises.
Reviewing pay-per-click best practices is a great way to stay up to date on trends and improve performance. Especially now, when the advertising industry is changing faster than ever. As you review, you’ll discover new strategies and features to incorporate into your paid search program.
Here are the top ten PPC best practices to help you adjust and plan for the coming months.
- Budget Analysis and Optimization
Some advertisers get stuck in a rut and forget to review and reevaluate how their paid media budgets are distributed.
Consider the following when allocating budgets:
Reconcile your planned vs. actual spend for each account or campaign regularly. Monthly, quarterly, or semiannually will suffice depending on the size of the budget as long as the numbers are met.
Should low-performing campaigns that have been optimized all year be phased out now to make way for new campaigns?
Is there more traffic available to capture to improve the results of successful campaigns? Data on competitive metrics, such as search impression share and click share, can be beneficial. Does it make sense to shift budgets from one paid media channel to another if other paid media channels are performing poorly?
Can your company use its overall paid search and paid social budget to invest more in positive campaign results?
- Examine New Google Ads and Microsoft Ads Features
This year brings exciting new features to search advertising platforms, allowing us to focus on more important tasks such as audience optimization and the addition of new ad extensions.
Don’t miss out on these new features, some of which are currently in beta but will be available soon:
Video Extensions: Microsoft Ads introduced video extensions, which appear as a thumbnail next to an ad and expand into a full video when clicked.
Multimedia Ads: A new responsive ad format in Microsoft Ads that uses machine learning to create engaging, attention-grabbing ads by combining advertisers’ creative ad assets such as images, headlines, and descriptions.
- New Platforms Must Be Tried
One of the most important best practices to be aware of is the testing of new paid channels. Experiment with Google, Microsoft, and Facebook outside of your comfort zone.
Here are a few more advertising platforms to look into:
- LinkedIn is the best platform for professional and business targeting. Microsoft Ads can also be used to reach LinkedIn audiences.
- Pinterest: Products, services, and consumer goods aimed at women.
- Snapchat has a younger demographic (13 to 35 years old), video ads, app installs, filters, and lenses.
- Return to Keyword Match Types
Google recently changed keyword match types, including the removal of the broad match modifier (BMM) and the extension of the phrase match’s reach. These changes may result in less traffic for current BMM keywords and more traffic for current phrase match keywords.
At this time, new BMM keywords cannot be added to your account. While it is not necessary to convert BMM to phrase match, now is an excellent time to review your campaign match types in light of the changes and past performance.
- Seek Collaboration
If the PPC wheels continue to spin but do not move, it is time to take a step back and seek out helpful resources and second opinions. Much of the skill and science of PPC management is unique to the individual or agency, so you’ll have plenty of ideas to share.