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7 ways to get the most out of your money when it comes to PPC campaigns



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7 ways to get the most out of your money when it comes to PPC campaigns

When it comes to being competitive on Adwords or other CPC platforms, you need to know what you're doing and when to do it.  You'll need to know what to promote, what industry you're in and what locations to target in order to increase your conversions.

Some niches are much more difficult to crack in to if you don't have a huge budget.  A good example of this is when Injury Lawyers are trying to pull in leads through PPC campaigns.  I did a quick search and found some long tailed keywords that were geo targeted from $20 all the way up to $250 per click!   If you were to get just 10 clicks and pay $250 a click, you're spending $912,500 per year for just 3,650 clicks each year lol.  You'd better hope that you're getting some million dollar cases coming in just to break even.

Now that's an extreme example of how much you could be spending when it comes to a single click, and hopefully you're not in that niche. 

If you are in a competitive niche and don't want to spend a ton of money on a few clicks, here are a few ways you can help reduce your CPC and increase your conversions at the same time.  Basically you'll spend less and get more 7 ways to get the most out of your money when it comes to PPC campaigns


1. Adding negative keywords into your campaign
There are a massive amount of business owners who do not use negative keywords within their campaigns, and they should be.  This is basically a blacklist of keywords you don't want your ad showing for.  I used the law niche as an example in the beginning, so I'll stick with it lol.

If you're a lawyer who only does injury law, you won't want people coming to your website if they just got a felony for burglary and need a lawyer.  You wouldn't be able to help them with their case since you're an injury lawyer, not a criminal lawyer.  If you're not adding negative keywords to your campaigns, you will likely get people to your website who won't need to spend money on your website. 

Adding negative keywords will keep people off of your website who weren't looking for exactly what you are offering or selling, which saves you a lot of money from clicks that will never benefit you.  Well that is if they guy or girl who did the burglary didn't steal a car and crash into a tree, hurting themselves in the process lol.  Even then they probably would still need a criminal lawyer to keep them out of prison 7 ways to get the most out of your money when it comes to PPC campaigns


2. Always be creating new ads for testing purposes
You will never truly know what your best ad is if you're not trying to split test.  Whenever I run an ad campaign I will start with a minimum of 10 different ads per campaign.  I will monitor them while they're running and see which ones are performing the best.  The losers will be removed and the winners will keep winning. 

I don't stop there though, I will also add in a couple new ads each weeks and let them run with the winners.  I will then filter out the losers and keep the winners, and sometimes the previous winners become the losers because I used a similar ad model from that first ad in the new ads.  Basically I'm perfecting my ads by filtering out the losers and duplicating the winners but making them even better than the original 7 ways to get the most out of your money when it comes to PPC campaigns  Over time you will have the best ads for your campaign and you won't have to add many more.  It's still a good idea to add a new one every week or two to see if trends are changing.


3. Make your ads extremely relevant to what you're offering
When your ad is pretty blanketed for your entire niche, you won't see as much success as you should be.  This is due to people just clicking through your ad because it has a possibility of being the thing they're looking for.  When I was running an SEO services campaign, I had a bad ad up that said something within it along the lines of "We can help optimize your design" and I learned really quick not to do that.  This is because people were contacting me for web design off of my SEO services ad.  Now if I didn't have a web design service, I would have been sh*t out of luck because I was wasting money on clicks by people who weren't interested in what I was offering, but I did have a design service and I was able to still convert a lot of them lol. 

My case isn't the same for a lot of people though.  If you're not getting extremely relevant with your ads, you won't get the clicks you need and you'll just be wasting money.


4. Tweak your landing pages
Your landing page design and content has a big role in your PPC campaign.  Sure you can send traffic right to your homepage and hope to get a sale, but it doesn't always happen.  You will need to take you time and set up some landing pages for specific services and run ads just for them.

On these landing pages you will be able to target specific keywords, not your entire list, and this will increase your relevancy score while simultaneously decreasing your CPC because your website is extremely related to the keywords you're targeting.


5. Target every match type and filter
A lot of people are just targeting the broad match keywords because that's the default setting, usually.  You will need to target exact match and partial match as well in order to figure out what works best for your campaign.  A broad match campaign will show your ad for any keyword related to your list of keywords, so you could be showing up on pages that you shouldn't and then getting clicks that will never convert.

Imagine if those law firms spending $200+ per click didn't have good targeting and were just wasting money?  They would have to fire a lot of people to make up for thier losses.  Instead they usually hire someone like myself to come in and manage everything in order to reduce the spending and increase the conversions.  Sometimes they get mad because after I start, they aren't getting the same amount of clicks as before, but after about a month they realize that they are spending much less and making a lot more with their campaigns because of what I did lol 7 ways to get the most out of your money when it comes to PPC campaigns


6. Increase your quality score
Your quality score is like an average of everything above.  If you can increase it, you're ads will show up more often for your targeted keywords and you will pay less per click when someone does click the winning ad 7 ways to get the most out of your money when it comes to PPC campaigns  Your ad will be scored between 1 and 10.  I like to tell clients that I target a 6 or higher in the beginning and then we work on everything to increase the score as close to 10 as possible.  Now getting to a 10 isn't impossible, but it's not the easiest thing if you're targeting a lot of keywords. 

Increasing your quality score simply means your ad is working really well and is extremely relevant to what you're showing up for and what you're targeting.  Getting that 10 is what your main goal is, but don't get discouraged if you start off lower than that.  I've had campaigns start at 1 and 2 but got up to a 10 with a day of work.  Yes, it can take some time to tweak everything and get the 10, but would you rather be spending 3x the amount per click or use up 1 day to edit everything for the better?  


7. Lowering your bids manually
When you have everything working well, you will need to start manually lowering your bids so that you're not spending too much.  Sure you might lose some traffic, but you'll save a ton of money.  There's no guarantee that Google or other platforms will lower your CPC after you improve your quality score, have the best ad for your website, have the best targeting, etc.  So play it safe and lower your bids manually so that you don't spend more money than you have to.

Normally you can keep your traffic at the same levels after you lower your CPC and having everything setting up perfect.  I normally recommend lowering your bids by just 10% and letting it sit for a few days.  If your traffic doesn't drop and you're still getting the same amount of clicks, lower it 10% more and watch it again for a few days.  Do this until you see your traffic drop slightly and then increase it 10% just to be safe 7 ways to get the most out of your money when it comes to PPC campaigns



In Conclusion:
The above is a pretty good list of what you need to do when it comes to running a PPC campaign and getting the lowest CPC possible while keeping your traffic high.  You will mess some things up in the beginning, but you will learn over time.  Stick with it, put the work in and you will start to see the light at the end of the tunnel soon enough 7 ways to get the most out of your money when it comes to PPC campaigns  Hopefully that light has a bunch of money waiting for you because you're now spending the same amount but converting a lot more of you clicks 7 ways to get the most out of your money when it comes to PPC campaigns


Remember to follow me!
https://www.seoclerks.com/user/Razzy


Thanks!

Razzy

Comments

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TimothyAlex
I would add to those, align your ads with search user's intent. Blindly going after keywords means your ad may have little t nothing to do with the context of the search.



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Barida
You're right on this. Ensuring that as an ad maker, we consider what the search box is telling us can help to make it easier as well. I have not done ads, but this is a great advice on how to go about it.



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DarthHazard
Of course. You need to make sure that you do some research before you setup up your advertisements because like you said, if you just go after keywords blindly then you may end up targetting topics that have nothing to do with what your brand/business is about.



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DarthHazard
Like you said, landing pages are extremely important. It is the first thing that visitors that have clicked on your advertisement will see and because of that, you need to ensure that they have a good impression of your brand/business. You need to make sure that your landing page looks good in terms of appearance and the content is good as well. If you have a poorly designed landing page then chances are they will just leave straight away.



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Everett
You have a really good point! I have clicked on some advertisements, and the landing pages were done so in a way that it looked like design back in the early 2000s. Whomever allowed for the landing pages to look that old probably should not be on the design team. If it was the person that created the advertising campaign then they need to take a deep breath and not rush into things. It is ALL about the landing page. The page needs to be designed in our today's standards of web design. I believe all landing pages should at least use some sort of CSS framework such as Bootstrap or Foundation to lay out the core css then build upon that structure to make a beautiful elegant design.



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Barida
I've come to realize that running ads on a product doesn't guarantee the success of those products. Successful ads can help to boost sales when some businesses are involved while some can't. I'm glad to have learnt more how to make ads work on a particular product /market.



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Everett
Definitely! If you ever start ppc marketing campaigns under the impression that you are going to make big money from the sales of the products that you are promoting, you may want to think again. In rare occurrences, some people may get lucky. If the product is an everyday product that you can pickup just about in any store, why create campaigns?

You should create small ppc campaigns on interesting products that are innovative and new or perhaps a new web service that is trending. The problem that I have is that it is hard to find a market for my products. The market is really small, and sometimes I do not believe it is worth it but it is my goal, and a little dream of mine to run my own successful small business. Hoping to at least drive some traffic via ppc campaigns that will definitely pay off in the future.



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Corzhens
It’s not only ads but anything that you can do for a product couldn’t give it a guarantee for a sale. But the PPC is kind of different because it is a “pay-per-click advertising” scheme which means you only pay when the reader clicks on your ads. What’s good in this is that a reader that clicks on the ads has the tendency to buy which means it is already a prospect when he clicks.



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vinaya
I will have to look into #1. "Adding negative keywords" is something I did not know. Creating new ads for testing purpose is also a good idea. Thanks for these useful and informative tips.
I have been writing online since 7 years and I have been building websites for myself since two years, however, when it comes to internet marketing, I am a novice. I am yet to start my first PPC campaign. I have marketed on facebook, however, I have never used Adwords. I might soon market my websites using PPC campaign on Adwords.



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Everett
I have used facebook ads in the past, and was not really pleased with the results. Now, I do admit that I am a novice in online marketing as well as I never really had the funds to create great ppc campaigns. However, due to my experience marketing via facebook i have noticed that you pay really high for clicks and a lot of the time, in my case, the person who clicked your link was not too interested. Most of the time the user would take on the website, or page for about 10 seconds then leave. That is not that great. Usually you would hope that they would at least stick around to click different links, and such but in my experience nope.

However, the only good success i have had is cpalead ppc advertising, which is REALLY odd considering they are a cost-per-action network, that is famous for their content locking. I have have like 500 signups or more from 1 ppc campaign on their advertising platform with really low click minimums. Now, whatever facebook is doing, i have no clue. I target the exact audience i want, the interest the user should have, if they have a paypal account, if they want to own an online business, if they like webmaster or website admining, etc.. and still my facebook campaigns always result in a huge loss. So i rather do cpalead campaigns because they actually result in signups more so than facebook. I've yet to try twitter, i think it will be expensive to advertise on there but in the future i will try it out.



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vinaya
I have also used facebook advertising. I boosted my facebook page for website clicks as well as boosted my post for better engagement. I was unable to generate leads and sales. I did not spend a lot of advertising, however, what ever I lost was a total loss. I did get high website clicks, however, if there is no sale, the clicks do not mean anything.



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potentialwriter
You can make the most out of your money when it comes to PPC campaigns by making use of the keyword tools online. These tools will let you know the right keywords to use for creating your niche website. This is very crucial while performing SEO tasks on your website. Using the keyword tool is the only way to get parameters like the overall monthly traffic, the Quoted Search Results (QSR) and the Keyword Quality Indicator(KQI).



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overcast
I am not sure about the negative campaigns. But based on what I have seen it seems like the affiliate marketers can;t use the negative keywords about the product they are promoting. And that seems to be taken by the company itself. So this type of the stuff can backfire I am guessing. But some people can do the PPC very efficiently. And it is going to be helpful for many who are trying to setup the PPC in a way that can make them some good amount of money. Another thing is that PPC requires a lot of AB testing.



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ameliadavies
Thanks for sharing this. And I totally agree with this. In my perspective, content is the most important thing for SEM and for PPC campaigns.



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Everett
Yeah, you really do need to have content to run basically any advertising campaign. Without content you are basically just wasting your money.



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kgord
I must admit, I never heard the term negative keywords before, but it sounds like something that I should be aware of. Thanks for bringing it to all of our attention in this post. It is important to know all of these things when we are working on a blog or website. It seems like an interesting idea to contemplate.



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Baburra
Thanks for this. I am planning on using a PPC campaign for a project I will be starting soon and I learned a lot from this and I think I would gain most use out of the tip of including negative keywords which I never would have thought of on my own. I think it would be very helpful because it would save me a bit on my budget since it wouldn't pop up unnecessarily where it shouldn't. I hope to utilize these tips soon and maybe I can come back here with a report on how well I did and how the tips have helped me out.



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Corzhens
I fully agree that your ads should always be relevant to your niche but it should be direct to the point of what you are currently offering in that particular ad. Let’s say you have a line of kitchen products and you have a promo on dishwashing soap Don’t’ stray to your other products and focus your spiel on the discounted price of dishwashing soap that you are currently offering. Sometimes the ads is full of words that the reader is turned off because it is hard to understand.



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