For a lot of marketers, Pay-Per-Click campaigns are the preferred strategy to generate conversions on a new product or offering from a brand still requires a competitive edge. Ultimately, even for newcomers to the marketing world, the concept of AdWords, the Google dashboard solution for PPC and other paid-for advertising campaigns, seems appealing. AdWords promises that you’re in charge of your budget at all times. While this is true and you’re never going to spend one cent more than you’ve agreed to, it doesn’t mean that you’ll get the best performance from your campaign. There is indeed a big difference between using AdWords for budget management and using it for PPC optimization. Here are tips to improve your campaigns outside of the AdWords interface.
Why improving your PPC campaigns within AdWords is risky
If you’re not an AdWords expert, it’s best to leave the tool to professionals. Indeed, despite its easy-to-learn certification, AdWords remains a tool dedicated to experienced marketers. A wrong setup can cost you a lot of money and conversions. Most common errors from newcomers related to keyword segmentation – should you group by theme? By targeting? Both? – the wrong use of extensions, the absence of negative keywords, wrong conversion tracking setup, and the lack of multiple ads testing.
The secrets of user experience
Before you consider improving your campaigns in AdWords, you might want to focus your attention on developing all other factors external to the dashboard tool first. First of all, the creation of the right landing page can increase conversion rate dramatically. A user-friendly landing page that is designed to take the visitor through the discovery of your offer to the conversion step is key to maximize each visit. Most marketers consider the presence or relevant keywords and a definite offer, but they forget indispensable convincing elements, namely a location map, social proof, team presentation, product features, CTA and an engaging headline.
Improve your brand awareness
Users are more likely to click on ads they recognize, aka from a brand they are familiar with. Consequently, you can’t create a compelling campaign if you haven’t established a promotional strategy to increase brand awareness first. That’s where agencies such as HelloWorld can help you to become more visible to your potential clients. From social media engagement to exciting emailing campaigns, becoming a known name can increase your CTR significantly.
Maximize your SEO performance
For a lot of marketers, PPC strategies appear as a replacement for SEO where organic results were not enough to gain a competitive edge. However, Google AdWords consider the SEO quality and relevance of your website in order to rank your ads in each bid auction. Your SEO performance will also impact on how much you need to spend for a click. In other words, SEO and PPC need to work hand in hand and not as a replacement for each other. Search Engine Land provides a clear guideline to detail the positive outcomes of a good SEO performance on your PPC, from lower CPC to improved CTR.
Consequently, if you’re looking to improve your PPC performance, you don’t need to become an AdWords expert who actively thinks like a programmer. You can make the most of your marketing skills to improve the impact of UX, SEO and brand on your campaigns, before hiring the services of a PPC expert.
