10 Best PPC Planning & Paid Search Practices: –
It is important to periodically review the paid search strategy to improve the campaign performance.
Consider these 10 best practices.
Reviewing best practices for pay per click is a great way to keep up with trends and improve performance. Especially now, as the advertising world faces more changes than ever.
As business objectives and strategies have evolved over the past 18 months, reviewing the payment media plan is an opportunity to ensure that the strategy aligns with PPC best practices.
As for the review, someone will also find new strategies and features to incorporate into the paid search program.
Here are 10 PPC best practices to help to adjust and plan for the months to come.
1. Budget review and optimization:
Some advertisers get stuck in a rut and forget to review and re-evaluate the allocation of their paid media budgets.
To better utilize budgets, consider the following:
- Reconcile planning with spending for each account or campaign, on a regular basis.
- Depending on the size of the budget, monthly, quarterly, or semi-annual values will work as long as the budget numbers can be met.
- Should low-performing campaigns, which have been optimized throughout the year, be eliminated at this time to free up the budget for other campaigns?
- Is there additional traffic available to capture to increase the results of the winning campaigns? Competitive metric data can help and includes search impression share and click-through rate.
- If other payment channels are performing poorly, does it make sense to switch those budgets to another?
- For general paid search and paid social budget, can the company invest more in the positive results of the campaign?
2. Check out the new Google Ads and Microsoft Ads features:
It brings great new features to search ad platforms, so focus on more important things like optimizing audiences and adding new ad extensions.
Don’t overlook these new features; some are in beta but will be available soon:
- Video extensions: Microsoft Ads released video extensions, which appear next to an ad as a thumbnail and expand into a full video when clicked.
- Media Ads – A new responsive Microsoft Ads ad format that combines advertisers’ creative advertising elements, such as images, headlines, and descriptions, using machine learning to create attractive and eye-catching ads.
As to explore new features, check out some hidden PPC features that probably don’t know about.
3. Try new platforms:
Trying out new payment channels is one of the most important best practices should know about.
Go beyond the comfort zones at Google, Microsoft, and Facebook.
Here are some other ad platforms that should consider trying:
- LinkedIn: best suited for professional and business segmentation.
LinkedIn audiences can also be reached through Microsoft Ads.
- Pinterest: Products, services, consumer goods with a focus on women.
- Snapchat: Younger demographic (13-35), video ads, app installs, filters, lenses.
4. Review the keyword match types:
Recently, Google made changes to keyword match types, including dropping the broad match modifier (BMM) and expanding the scope of phrase match.
These changes can lead to a reduction in traffic to current BMM keywords and an increase in current phrase match keywords.
No new BMM keywords can be added to the account. While it is not necessary to convert BMM to phrase match, now is the perfect time to revisit campaign match types considering past performance and changes.
Critical to the strategy:
- Review the technical changes to the keywords and determine if this may affect the account in terms of close variations or changes in traffic volume.
- Go over everything need to know about Google Phrase Match as it has evolved and changed over the years.
- Check the search term reports more frequently for irrelevant keywords that may arise due to changes in the match type.
- Incorporate them into match type changes or negative keyword lists, as appropriate.
5. Try additional features:
Another feature to consider with great impact is the Audience Network in Microsoft Ads.
It has artificial intelligence technology and can add a boost to current search campaigns.
The secret is his analysis of billions of audience intent signals from Microsoft properties (including billions of searches from Bing, MSN, Outlook, Skype, and LinkedIn).
This results in highly relevant market listings that can reach search engines just as they are looking to make a purchase.
When browsing over 200 categories on the market, also get a list size of the users, which is extremely helpful for planning.
6. Audiences integrated with the search:
Be sure to review the audiences to be selected, especially if someone has been testing the audiences.
Both Google and Microsoft have added many more audiences.
Google: optimized segmentation.
Microsoft: audience network.
Remember, an audience is simply a list of users who are grouped by online behaviour or interests.
So there are limitless ways to mix and match those audiences and targets based on the sales funnel.
Here are some opportunities to explore and test:
LinkedIn targeting: exclusively in Microsoft Ads.
Detailed demographics: marital status, parental status, homeownership, education, household income.
In-Market and Personalized Intent – Online searches and behaviour that indicate buying signals.
Remarketing – Advertisers website visitors and video / YouTube.
This varies by campaign type and seems to update frequently, so make it a regular checkpoint in campaign management for all platforms.
7. Learn to use scripts:
PPC admins can learn to automate repetitive tasks in their Google Ads accounts using scripts added to the account.
Navigating the world of scripting can seem overwhelming, but a good place to start is a post here on Search Engine Journal that provides use cases and resources for getting started with scripting.
Google also conducts training workshops across the country.
8. Preparing for voice search:
There may not be a large number of voice searches yet.
Most advertisers are not.
It seems like the popularity of voice search hasn’t moved fast and furious, but it’s still important to stay on top of trends.
Be prepared to respond to the information that voice search engines are looking for or negatively eliminate irrelevant searches.
Read the 4-step basics to prepare the PPC campaigns for voice search, including how to identify voice search queries.
Please review this activity regularly to determine if there are valuable keywords to add to the account or as a new campaign.
One could test ads and landing pages with easy access to reservations, directions, hours, and parking, for example.
9. Reassess how to report:
Have been using the same performance report for years?
It’s time to reevaluate the key essential PPC metrics and replace or add that data in the reports.
There are two excellent resources to start this exercise:
- Top 6 PPC KPIs Should Follow
- How to measure success in PPC campaigns with and without conversion data.
Both Microsoft Ads and Google Ads have “Overview” pages that provide some useful graphics if need them in a pinch.
The objectives of re-evaluating the report are:
- Are we still using this data?
- Is the information we are using actionable?
- What new metrics should we consider adding that we haven’t thought of?
- How often do we need to see this data?
Adding new data is pointless unless it is actionable and will be used to make account decisions.
Don’t waste time adding more data just for the sake of it.
10. Seek collaboration:
If the wheels of PPC keep turning but going nowhere, it’s time to step back to seek friendly resources and second opinions.
Much of the skill and science of PPC management is unique to the individual or agency, so there is no shortage of ideas to share.
Visit the Paid Search Association, a resource for paid ad managers around the world, to make new connections and find industry events.
Also, check out ebooks, Twitter experts, and industry publications for resources and tips for motivation.