The 3 Golden Rules of PPC

Create Effective Ads

Did you know you’re competing with 26 different retailers for every search term? With 8-11 Google ads, 4-5 Google Shopping ads, and 10 organic results – every consumer has several options to choose from. A great PPC ad requires creativity, while still using the target keyword in the ad to keep a good quality score. Let’s say you’re creating an ad for “bird cages”, before you create any copy, conduct a Google search for that keyword and see what PPC ads come up. See what you’re competitors are doing and use that as a reference point for differentiating your own ad. Don’t settle for hunches or your best guess, conduct split testing to see what ads perform better. To learn more, here’s another Business2Community article that really nails split testing.

To recap, focus on these 3 techniques:

1. Use Your target keyword (or a close variation) in the ad
2. Differentiate Yourself from your competitors
3. Split test your ads

Build Your Quality Score

Getting prime ad positioning doesn’t only rely on how much you bid, because Google wants to reward advertisers that provide a quality user experience. If an ad gets more clicks than others, Google concludes that this ad is is providing a better user experience. If you have a better quality score than your competitors (graded on a scale of 1-10), then you can out-position them even if they’re spending more. Google also puts much emphasis on relevance, so (as mentioned before) make sure you have the keyword in the ad copy. So the technique here is to bid high in the beginning – to get more clicks, and then once you establish a good quality score, then you can scale back some of the spending and let the quality score keep your ad in optimal position. Google explains more about the importance of a good quality score here.

Focus On Revenue

Most advertisers focus on CPC (Cost Per Click) and CPC (Cost Per Conversion), but did you know that Google has a CPV (Cost Per Value) metric? You can actually track the amount of revenue that every keyword generates. Revenue is the bottom line, so clicks and conversions are incomplete in tracking the true ROI of your campaign. To learn more about CPV, you can visit the Finch blog to better understand this concept, especially if you’re an online retailer.

With paid search being one of the most popular online marketing channels, eliminate the waste and make sure you’re doing it right with the 3 Golden Rules of PPC.

Read more:

• A Different PPC Marketing Concept