If you have been managing a Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising campaign, you probably understand the frustration that you feel when suddenly all of your keywords are becoming more and more expensive. As more companies begin to take advantage of PPC advertising, it is especially important to find new ways to bring in more customers while keeping an eye on your advertising spending (also known as ad spend). Follow these suggestions when looking for new ways to cut the costs of your PPC ad spend!
Take a look at the following tips!
Use your website’s analytic data to help discover and develop new keywords to use in your campaign.
• Analyzing your website’s analytical data will allow you to find keywords, terms and phrases that people are already searching for when they come to your website.
• You can discover which keywords and/or phrases are yielding you the most return on your investment. While a keyword research tool can be helpful; it is important to learn what keywords and/or phrases are actually becoming conversions. Conversions can be anything from one of your website visitors purchasing a product directly online, filling out a submission form, or possibly even just viewing a key page on your website. Knowing what each conversion is worth to your business is important to understanding how your PPC campaign is affecting your businesses bottom line.
• You can find out what keywords and/or phrases are the most popular terms people are searching to find your website.
Many people choose to ignore their website analytics. Your online marketing efforts through PPC advertising can see great improvements by optimizing your campaign from insight that can be unrevealed from your site’s analytical data.
Utilize different match type options within your PPC campaign.
Often times if you are just beginning to learn the ropes or setting up your first PPC campaign often times you may only use the broad match type for all of your keyword match types. This can result in untargeted ad generation and a costly waste of marketing dollars. There are four main keyword matching options used with Google AdWords including:
1. Broad match keyword: This allows your ad to show is a variation or similar keyword, phrase or term is used to perform a search.
a. Example keyword: dog collar
i. If someone performs a search for dog collar your ad could be shown. If someone performs a search for golden retriever collar your ad could be shown. If some performs a search for dog neckband your ad could be shown.
2. Phrase match keyword: This will allow you to specify your ad to be shown only if a specific phrase is search for.
a. Example keyword phrase: “dog collar”
i. In order for your ad to be shown the phrase “dog collar” must be searched. For instance if someone searches for german shepherd dog collar your ad could be shown, but if someone searches for german shepherd collar dog your ad would not be shown because your specified phrase isn’t within the search they performed.
b. Phrase match type is specified by putting “parenthesis” around your “keyword phrase”.
3. Exact match keyword: Your ads will be shown only if exactly what you have specified is searched.
a. Example: [puppy dog food]
i. Your ad will only be shown when someone search the exact phrase puppy dog food. Your ad would not be shown if someone searches for new puppy dog food.
b. Exact match type is specified with [brackets] around your [keyword phrase].
4. Negative match keyword: You can specify which keyword, terms and phrase when searched that you do not want your ads to be shown for.
a. Example: -rawhide
i. Your ad would never be shown if the word rawhide is within the search performed.
b. Negative match type is specified by putting a minus – sign in front of your –keyword.
Let’s suppose that you sell dog collars online, so your target market would be someone who is searching to purchase a dog collar, right? An obvious keyword that you would want to have in your campaign would be dog collar, but many also may assume that word dog alone may also be another good keyword to use because most likely the person searching for this term either owns a dog or is looking at information to possibly buy a dog in the future. If someone uses the keyword dog as a broad match type when bidding in their PPC campaign this would result that anyone searching for a term or phrase that has the keyword dog or relating keyword within the search could result in triggered your ad to be shown to your prospective online customer performing the search. While going this route is going to initially help your ad be seen by the most visitors it likely isn’t going to be the most effective way to target your customers. A more effective approach may be to specify many different phrase match keyword terms surrounding dog collar such as “border collie dog colar”, “german shepherd dog collar”, “pug dog collar”, etc. Also you may want to include many negative keyword terms in your campaign such as –leather if you do not sell any leather dog collars this will help you weed out those performing on online search that you will not be able to serve and in turn save you marketing dollars. Specifying different match types is also a way to help you bid lower dollar amounts to get your ad shown to a very specific targeted audience because many of your competitors may not be bidding on the same keywords that you are.
Some other words of wisdom to help your PPC campaign perform better include:
1. Bid higher on keywords that you know produce high conversion rates.
2. Do not bid high on new keywords. You will want to see how these keywords perform before you can justify spending limits.
3. As you learn how new keywords perform, you will be able to analyze if it is worth it to spend more for these keywords
If you are looking for a better way to plan your PPC campaign, I recommend you take a closer look at the keywords which you are bidding on. By doing research, testing, and finding new keywords and phrases, you can lower your overall ad spend and improve your conversion rate. Combine some of the above suggestions when looking to improve your current PPC pricing strategy.
