A low-performing pay-per-click (PPC) campaign may fade out all your advertising budget. The conversion rate of ‘visitors’ into ‘sales’ determines the efficacy of an advertising (ad) campaign. Conversion determines if you’re gaining or draining money out of ad campaigns.
Let’s take this hypothetical example to understand the concept. A company is hiring and it human resource (HR) manager decided to shortlist ten people for the interview and will rank as per merit. Let’s assume you have also applied for this position but attains a lower than the first ten ranks. Here is an interesting proposition by the company, this company plans to accept money to top-up the deserving candidate’s list with three additional paid candidates. The higher a candidate offers for an interview, the higher the chance to get the first spot for the interview. The final selection list will explicitly label the ‘paid candidates’ and ‘deserving candidates’ separately. Remember, there is no guarantee of a job (conversion), it’s just a call for an interview (managed opportunity) to show up for an interview. Everyone would know that you paid for this opportunity. The selection depends on your caliber and how well the interview goes. Interesting, eh!!
Let’s revisit the above example in the context of search engine advertising. Let’s say Google is like that HR in the above example. You pay Google search engine as PPC advertising to bring your listing higher than the organic listings. The organic rank of website listings is like those deserving candidates shortlisted for the interview. The interviewer in this example is just like a customer who is visiting the website.
This post focuses on PPC, SEM and some prechecks to ensure the efficacy of an Ad Campaign. Read further to –
- Understand the concept of Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
- Reasons for an effete PPC Campaign
- PreChecks for an Effective PPC Ad Campaign
- Best Practices to Managing PPC Campaigns
Search engine advertising and other internet display advertising use pay-per-click. For simplicity let’s refer to search engine (mainly Google) advertising in this post.
Understanding Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
Pay per click (PPC) model is the most popular model in digital advertising. PPC is a technique used by advertising networks like GoogleAds for charging advertising campaigns. It makes advertising approachable to everyone. You can set up an ad campaign based on your objectives and budget.
PPC boosts exposure and ultimately conversion. For a new business sometimes, it becomes the only possible option to gain a spike in traffic. PPC is a technique used by companies to attain the first position on the search result page (SERP). The higher the upper limit of the bidding, the better is the chance to show up on top of SERP. As an advertiser one enjoys full control on a budget, biddings depending on how much it returns. This is a win-win situation for everyone and only quality floats on top.
Caution, Google won’t blindly throw your listing on the top of SERP based solely on your bid. Google determines the ‘Ad Rank’ to determine your ad position rank. It means if you have the highest bid there is no guarantee that your ad would show up. You will compete in an ad spot auction for Google to determine your ad rank or eligibility. Your advertising campaign bid amount, your auction-time and the quality of your ad along with some other factors determine the Ad Rank. Google keeps updating the Ad Rank parameters. You can find more on this Google Support page.
It’s interesting how the cost per click works on Google. The actual cost per click that you will pay to the Google may be below the maximum cost-per-click. Google charges you only what is minimum required to clear the Ad Rank thresholds. The bid-offer of the immediately below competitor plus some score based on the quality of your advertisement expected rank, etc., determines how much you pay. In rare conditions of no ad competition, Google charges based on the minimum threshold determined by Google. You can read more detail about how it works from this Google Support page.
Importance of PPC for Businesses
Search engines are the goldmine of traffic because there is heavy search traffic on Google. People keep searching for answers to their problems. Check your browser search history and see how many searches you have done on Google in a day. Google dominates the search engine market with approximately 92.18% market share. Google processes over 3.5 billion searches per day. Such a high volume of search makes sense why every business wants to ace the first position on the Google search result page. Every marketer practises various search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine management (SEM) techniques.
Huge Competition in SERP
Consumers search the internet to buy things using very competitive commercial keywords. Internet search starts with a single ‘keyword’ and sometimes a set of words known as ‘keyphrase’. This results in a huge list of websites that search engine pulls as a possible answer to a keyword. There is a huge competition amongst all the websites on a search engine to show up on the top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). This gives birth to crack the search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. SEO is a long-term and continuous process. It takes a strategic approach to fine-tune various aspects.
You might have heard about Black Hat SEO and White Hat SEO. In simple words, White hat SEO refers to the practices approved by major search engines and black hat SEO goes against the norms. With machine learning, Google has become intelligent to find and penalize such Black Hat SEO practices. You might have heard Google penalizes heavily by dropping the rank. With machine learning, Google always keeps the interest of surfers on the top and has made the job of black hat SEO tough.
Acing the SERP is a herculean task. As per SEO, rank the website on Google is the result of more than two hundred factors and the domain authority. It’s possible to achieve the desired rank using SEO strategies but it needs time and patience. The problem is usually businesses don’t have time to wait. It’s a very stressful time for the digital marketing team with so much pressure from those entrepreneurial mindsets who don’t have time and patience. Such managers quickly jump on the Search Engine Management (SEM) strategy. Metaphorically speaking SEM means paying someone to bring it on the top, which isn’t bad.
Kick-start with Search Engine Management (SEM)
Search Engine Management is a technique to manage the search result. PPC is one of the tools to execute SEM. Companies bid for the keywords to stay on the top in the search engine. As already explained Google Ad Rank determines your eligibility and position on SERP under sponsored listings. There are misconceptions about PPC to keep raising the bid higher than the Google suggested bid or keep it on auto-adjust to ensure that top position. But the fact is Google considers some other factors along with your bid offer to determine your Ad Rank. Aggressive marketers sometimes keep adding more and more keywords in the PPC campaign. It’s important to keep an eye on conversion in such a case. One may easily drain a lot of money if the PPC isn’t effectively working.
Reasons for an Non-Productive PPC Campaign
Ineffective PPC doesn’t mean it isn’t bringing traffic or it isn’t showing any ad. In case your ad is not showing in SERP, you might have some other issues as mentioned above that restricts you to attain a competitive Ad Rank. An ineffective PPC campaign could be one with a low conversion for a continuous period. It’s a tough situation for any marketer and it happens.
Sometimes marketers keep running negatively generating PPC campaigns with the hope that it will catch up. If you don’t know exactly how profitable the products are you should keep an eye on the conversion rate of your campaign. Conversion in simple words is the conversion of a visit to your website into sales or whatever objective your campaign might have.
Conversion is just like blood pressure, it should be within range. If the conversion is very high it isn’t good, in simple words, you should add more keywords in your PPC or you need to have more exposure. Higher conversion signals you to expand your exposure. Contrary to this, if the conversion rate is too low you must refine your keyword. If you properly analyze the reports from your ads, you will find higher bounce rates. Focus on quality traffic by filtering all such low-performing keywords.
Conversion is just a parameter to check the health of a PPC campaign. Low conversion might be the result of some other issues as well. Let’s see the possible reasons for low conversion or higher bounce rate.
- PPC ad not targeted to a landing page;
- Poorly designed landing page;
- Our website isn’t relevant to the traffic detoured from Google (wrong choice of keywords);
- Call-to-action (CTA) on the landing page is missing; or
- More than one ‘Call-to-action’ on the landing page. A landing page with ‘Subscribe Now’ and ‘Add to Cart’ buttons.
Business is paying a premium price for each visitor coming through PPC campaign. These premium visitors need a red carpet welcome. That red carpet welcome is simply a metaphor for the landing page. Don’t leave the PPC-triggered visitors wandering around in the reception (homepage) area of your website, land them directly on the page where they should be. Every business must create a list of pre-advertising checklists to ensure that the optimum level of conversion rate happens. You can modify this checklist with your experience or find below some things that I consider could be important.
PreChecks for an Effective PPC Ad Campaign
Every pilot runs a complete checklist before takeoff because it’s important for a safe flight. Similarly, every PPC campaign must also undergo a complete checklist before starting a PPC campaign launch. Conversion is important for the success of a campaign and businesses need preparations for conversion to happen. It’s important to leave a wonderful first impression on the landing page followed by a gentle marketing-nudge to engage and facilitate the conversion. Launching an advertising campaign should involve deep planning and various checks to ensure conversion.
Before launching an ad campaign consider running through the following PreChecks-
S.M.A.R.T. Advertising Campaign Goals
Make sure you follow the S.M.A.R.T. objective approach in digital advertising. It’s important to determine your clear expectations from an ad campaign, this is important so that you can create the right strategic approach and measure your progress. Be clear about what you’re aiming to achieve through this ad campaign. It can be sales, subscription, download an app, etc. Remember traffic is coming to your page and it’s not going to stay forever. Be smart to divert it to the next stage in your purchase funnel or whatever your objective is.
Create an Appropriate Landing Page
Develop a landing page with a call-to-action should be the starting point. Develop a standalone landing page for each advertising campaign. An advertisement with a landing page is merely a wastage of your advertising dollars. Your landing page must have a clear call-to-action (CTA). CTA is telling the user exactly what actions to take and how to take these actions. It’s a guide to the roadmap. Google will charge you for the click regardless of the conversion.
Build a well-planned separate landing page for each campaign. Yes, you got it right, a new landing page for a new ad campaign. Metaphorically, should you apply for ten jobs with a single resume and expect a call to interview? Let’s say, a hardware store giving an ad for a drilling machine set should bring the traffic right on the page where this listing is. No one will dig this drill from thousands of products if this advertisement lands the visitor on the homepage.
While conducting prechecks, put yourself in the shoes of a visitor and think if you had taken the desired action on the landing page. If the answer is ‘no’ perhaps you need to explore further, it could be a design issue.
UX Design and Website Stickiness
UX stands for ‘user experience’ visiting your website. In the digital world, the esthetics and speed of loading a website are extremely important. Most of the purchase decisions depend on this first impression. The design theme of your website should suit your brand positioning. Where design is important for conversion, the speed of the page load is an important factor for SEO ranking. Be cognizant of keeping a balance between the page load time and aesthetics.
It’s important to ensure that website is mobile-friendly with a dynamic design that auto-adjust contents based on the screen size. Visit websites like http://ami.responsivedesign.is/ to check if your website is dynamic or not. You must make sure that your website is an awesome experience for visitors. User experience is the outcome of a professional UX Design. UX Design improves the page stickiness and helps conversion. Market research, product development and other consumer behaviour strategies should guide your UX design needs to create a seamless user experience for products, services that you’re offering. Do some research and create a solid UX Design strategy to ensure an engaging user experience. The job of a UX designer is creative and gives attention to details to bring a wonderful user experience.
Effective UX Design should result in a low bounce rate and higher stickiness rate. Stickiness rate is a measure of how much time an average user spends on a website. Thus, the higher the stickiness rate better the chance of conversions because visitors might be liking your page and it might be better connected to the user’s interest. The visitor likes your page and thus is sticking to your website for longer; it also indicates that you’re approaching the right traffic and keywords. Both UX Design and relevant targeting of traffic are important to ensure higher website stickiness. Therefore, as a marketer, you must focus on the quality rather than the quantity of the traffic.
Don’t stress to achieve higher traffic, rather you should consider focusing on the conversion. You will automatically focus on the right keywords and the right traffic. This is where an effective keyword list is important.
Best Practices to Managing PPC Campaigns
As an advertiser, you will pay for each click on your ad copy. Ad Network facilitates buying ad spots for your display advertising based on your preferences and they report you back. Google Ad dashboard provides detailed data for every click in an ad campaign. You should know how to use this data in your favour to analyze and improve your ad campaigns. Do A/B testing, see what works for you and what doesn’t work to make necessary modifications.
Analysis of PPC Report
Proper daily analysis of the PPC report is the key to managing the PPC campaign. There are various parameters or variables available for you to generate a PPC report, choose the right set of variables based on your objectives. Ideally, this should be the first thing to import PPC report in excel for analysis and plan further improvements. Even with basic skills, one can easily use filters, graphs and trends to analyze the data.
Adjust the PPC Bidding
PPC won’t work if the biddings are too low. Make sure you analyze the PPC report and readjust the keyword list and bidding daily. Google Ads provides you with an option to select auto-adjust biddings as an option; it readjusts the biddings of your ad campaign to keep it eligible for consideration in AD Rank. Sometimes the keywords become very competitive and this is good to keep an eye on what is trending.
Budget Adjustments
Sometimes the PPC campaigns go out of the budget and it stops advertising. Most marketers quickly increase the budget for the rest of the day, that’s not bad, but make sure to analyze it. If you diagnose it from conversion lenses, you should be able to decide if you should raise the budget limit or fix some creeks from where the advertising money is draining. Most of the time you may even decide to stop advertising for the day when the traffic isn’t converting. I have seen some marketers stopping the PPC for a part of the day when the conversion is low. This is their strategy to save ad dollars for peak hours. The Peak hours depend on your product, industry and geographic region. With analysis, one can find the part of the day where a conversion is better.
Analysis of your report is the key to continuously improving your ad campaign. If you set an ad campaign on GoogleAd and leave it on autopilot, it might not be the best approach. You can set up different campaigns, try autopilot it will allow you to analyze the keywords. Use them with your improved keyword list, try this for next week and analyze. See what is working and what isn’t. Refine your GoogleAd, each week with your daily analysis.
Takeaways
PPC Campaign can be a gold mine for a business that knows how to properly mine it. Make sure you perform a pre-campaign checklist to ensure optimum conversion rate. It’s a tool to achieve your sales and rank objectives. Once you have achieved your desired page rank, look for an optimum point to stop or minimize your spending on PPC. One uses SEM as support pillars for the initial stage only. We should throw away the scaffolds once our final product is ready. Use SEM as a walker for a baby not as a walker for a senior citizen. I mean your aim should ultimately leave this support and run of your own. Kick-start with SEM and follow SEO guidelines to attain and retain your desired organic position in SERP.