How to Save Money On Your Pay Per Click Campaign

Are you spending too much money on your pay per click campaign? Is the money you’ve allocated for other internet marketing strategies going all into your pay per click management? Unfortunately, this is what can happen when you don’t find ways to fit your campaign squarely into delivering the best ROI. But if you really want to start saving for other internet strategies, you’ll have to start cutting back on your PPC management.

In order to do this, you might want to consider doing one or all of these below:

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Hire an expert

You see experimenting with your own pay per click account cannot be good for your budget, especially if you’re not the exact expert on pay per click. In order to avoid all the costs of trial and error, you might want to hire an expert instead. At least, an expert would know how to stretch the budget you have. They’d give you pointers on saving and they’ll help you choose which keywords would most likely help your site. Having an expert manage your account will keep you from spending too much whenever you make mistakes in managing your pay per click account.

Structure your keywords well

If your keywords are all put together in one ad group, you can end up creating competition for your own keywords. Instead, keep only the most relevant keywords in one group and limit the amount of keywords. If you put more than 10, this may be too risky, already. Create different keyword groups so you can allocate your budget per keyword according to importance.

Also remember to use specific keywords. If your keywords are far too generic, your website may receive traffic from the wrong market. As a result, you’d be spending your budget on these keywords unwisely. If you have just the right keywords to target your business, use this so only targeted customers will get to see the ads in Google search. The more specific the keyword you have, the better chance you have at targeting the specific market.

Allocate your budget for Search and Display networks differently

There’s a difference between the search and display networks. If you choose to include both in one campaign, the traffic in the Display network might eventually rule over the Search network. This means that all of your budget will go into the Display network, while your Search network will be more limited. While you’ll also want to tap into the Display network, having your keywords in the Search network is pretty essential too. Instead of putting one campaign in both networks, create two campaigns for each network so that they won’t have to keep fighting for traffic and budget.

Use negative keywords

Sometimes, even if you have a good set of keywords already, you may notice that you’re still receiving a lot of traffic from the wrong market. You need to use negative keywords to keep your pay per click campaign on track. Regularly analyze the search reports and see if the keywords that trigger your ads. If there’s one keyword there that isn’t relevant to your products, include it in the list of negative keywords. This way, if someone searches using those keywords, they won’t trigger your ad and you won’t have to pay for unwanted traffic.

Have you used any of these money-saving tips before? How much were you able to save?

How to Know When to Restructure Your Pay Per Click Campaign

Strategizing a pay per click campaign can be very taxing, especially if you need to take note of all the details. While you can hope to use the same plan you created on the day you made the PPC strategy, it may be a far cry, since there are times when you’ll have to restructure and redirect your pay per click account.

Figure 1Restructuring is part of the PPC management process

Restructuring a pay per click campaign isn’t easy, because you will have to go through the basics again. However, if there have been changes in the details and requirements specified by some important factors, a change in your pay per click management is inevitable. Sometimes, even successful pay per click campaigns requires change too.

You see, good PPC management takes a lot of resource, research, strategizing and marketing skills. When you use the right amount of each, you’ll know why change is important to your pay per click campaign. But if you’ve already settled on a good plan for your pay per click, how do you know when to actually restructure your plans for your campaign?

Changing and redirecting your pay per click account is necessary when your website and business goes through these situations:

Site makeover

Undergoing regular site makeovers is important, especially for those that haven’t made any changes since the old Google algorithms. Now, in order to keep up with the fast-paced requirements of the target market, businesses have to redesign their website. Their site’s makeover has to meetthe expectations of their clients and potential customers. When this happens, the pay per click account may also be affected.

Since a site makeover will include a lot of changes in the landing pages and arrangement of products, the entire purpose of the pay per click campaign may require a new direction.  Sometimes, if the new design of the site is far from the original look, it may be best to start a new account altogether.

The changes required by the business

The purpose of the business is also an important factor to know when to restructure a pay per click account.  If you’ve already created a pay per click strategy that you’ve used for some time, this may not be the best strategy to use today. Since time has passed, there’s a possibility that your business and goals have also evolved with the changes in technology and the developments of the target market. By this time, you need to reevaluate your business’ purposes and cater it to your pay per click account.

Change of direction

Taking a new direction is common for pay per click accounts, especially for those that have reached its maximum potential. Once a keyword has reached its target goals and your content marketing efforts have been successful enough to create organic rankings, then it may be time to focus on a new keyword. Businesses like to be at the top of the ranks at different keywords. If one keyword has already made it, redirecting to focus on another should be the pay per click account’s next move. 

How to Choose your Pay Per Click Manager

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Have you given up on managing your pay per click account? Well, you’re probably not the only one. Now that you’ve decided that you need to hire a pay per click manager, you need to know how to choose one. Yes, this is still essential because you need to know how to differentiate those that are really knowledgeable in what they’re doing or those that may be putting your account in danger.

Here are some characteristics you should be aware of when hiring someone for PPC management:

They should be transparent in everything they do.

After all, it is your pay per click account that they will be managing, right? You have the right to know what’s going on. The person you choose to manage your account must be able to explain what they are doing with your campaign and why it’s important that they do it. Although some may simply tell you to trust them with their decisions, it may be wiser to ask for direct access to your account so you can see your campaigns and ask about things you don’t understand.

Remember, you will be spending money on this so you have to know if you’re making the right decisions.

They should be open to educating you.

Unfortunately, because some PPC experts are so scared to be run out of their jobs, they keep all of their knowledge to themselves. A good PPC manager should be willing to educate you on your campaign, teach you the basics and let you know how your campaign should be structured and why.

Pay per click managers has their own way of managing accounts. While some will do everything for you, they’ll end up keeping you out of the most important decisions. Others, on the other hand, may tell you what you should do, but they won’t give you enough reason to support the move. A good pay per click manager will help you create ideas and implement them, allowing you to take part in strategizing your own pay per click account.

They should know not to ignore the settings of your campaign.

If your pay per click manager has found themselves in the settings tab, then they’re pretty good at what they do. Unfortunately, many ignore the settings tab of pay per click, despite the fact that this is where you can target your audience. By using the settings tab, your manager can set your ads to appear in specific places, time to display and what devices they should be displayed. Your manager can also choose to include your ads in either Search or Display network. Changing the settings to fit your campaign perfectly can help you save a lot of money and even direct you straight to the target market you want.

Your PPC manager should know how to structure your campaign.

Structuring keywords is one of the best ways to get better ROI on your pay per click account. A good manager will help you to devise a strategy on which keywords should be put together in one group. Keywords in one group should be used within the ad text so your overall relevancy rate can be improved per ad group. Not only that, you should also specify your landing page to the ad group being targeted.

Have you found the perfect pay per click manager yet? 

Top Mistakes to Avoid in PPC Management

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Although one of the top internet marketing strategies to promote products and business websites, pay per click management remains to be one of the most complicated forms of advertising. Even if search engines are now providing tools and features to help you manage your PPC campaigns, it is still up to the best strategies to ensure the delivery of good ROI.

This is why even new companies with little to no experience still find themselves stumbling through their pay per click account – it could be a good investment, if only they were experts in PPC management.

If you’re new to managing your pay per click account, then you need to take note of these mistakes in order to prevent your campaign from failing miserably.

First of all, one of the biggest mistakes that can be made in managing PPC is putting all of the keywords together in one group or campaign. The problem with this is that if you add too many keywords in one group or campaign, you’ll end up with many unrelated phrases.

In order to avoid this, structure your keywords into smaller groups, where similar phrases are put into one group. This way, you can easily create an ad with text and landing page that matches your keywords closely. Not only will you be rewarded with a high quality score, you’ll also attain a higher CTR. As a result, you can get good positions for a lower cost per click.

Second, it is also common to use much too generic keywords. The problem with this is that if you use generic keywords for your campaigns, you’ll end up generating traffic from the wrong market. For example, if your business is selling books in Alabama and your keyword is Alabama, you’ll end up getting traffic from those who are simply searching for other things in Alabama – not necessarily for books.

Before you strategize your campaign, you should set out your keywords first, by using a keyword suggestion tool. Make sure that you only use EXACT phrases to avoid unwanted traffic. Sometimes, having generic keywords will also result in you spending more, without the desired ROI, of course.

Third, setting the campaign to the wrong website landing page can cause potential customers to turn away as easily as a drop of a hat.

Instead of leading your ad to the homepage of your business, it might be wiser for you to lead them straight into the actual page related to your keyword. This way, they can easily find what they’re looking for. Also make sure that your landing page is already furnished straight to every detail. If your website is still being constructed, it might be better to turn off your campaign first and start when you have a good landing page to direct potential customers.

Fourth, not tracking the development of your campaign is as like leaving your pay per click campaign to chance. Although reports can be quite an aneurysm to look at, it’s always good to track your campaign’s development at least once a week.

If you continuously track your campaign, you’ll know what works and what doesn’t work. You can get a hang of what your target market may want and you might be able to devise better plans. If you track your campaign, you can also devise negative keywords that may help to negate unwanted traffic from wrong keywords.

Have you figured out other mistakes you’ve made since starting your PPC campaign?