Pay Per Click marketing is the most cost-efficient way to lure customers from popular search engines and social media platforms. This way, you get to reach out to your target audience, and you only pay when a customer actually visits your site.
PPC marketing needs a lot of research and ongoing tracking, and if it’s not done properly, you won’t see any benefits. Many businesses lack the right team to manage PPC ads on their own, so every brand should use an effective PPC tool to maximize this marketing strategy.
Want to know the best campaign creation and brand monitoring PPC tools for your business? We have enlisted the top 10 great PPC tools in the market right now based on usability, efficiency, and features. Take a look!
Our Pick for the Best PPC Tools: Semrush
In our opinion, Semrush is one of the finest PPC keyword research tools and overall the best PPC tool. Being a comprehensive SEO and PPC management tool, you get access to a ton of features that allow you to take care of all your major business needs without switching applications.
Here is what we love about Semrush’s tool:
Ad ToolKit
Semrush offers a comprehensive ad toolkit that contains everything you will ever need in the entire process beginning from creating a PPC ad to the last step of tracking its performance.
Ad Tracking
Track your ad position and performance and get automated analytical reports for every campaign in a click with Semrush.
Social Media Ads
Semrush does not limit its PPC management features to search engines alone. You get all the benefits like keyword management, optimization, and ad tracking even for your social media ads.
Best PPC Tools: Top 10 to Increase Your Ad Presence
Here are the top 10 PPC tools that will change your pay-per-click marketing game forever:
- Semrush: Best Overall PPC Research Tool
- Google Ads: Best Free PPC Reporting Tool
- AdEspresso: Best PPC Reporting Tool
- Tenscores: Best Brand Monitoring and Evaluation PPC Tool
- SpyFu: Best PPC Analysis Tool for Beginners
- iSpionage: Best PPC Keyword Tool for Competitor Research
- Adplorer: Best for Local Marketing Automation Campaigns
- Optimizely: Best PPC Tool for Experimentation
- Opteo: Best Google Ads Management Tool
- Adalysis: Best PPC Automation Tool
Best PPC Tools – Compared
Here is an in-depth analysis of our top 10 PPC tools:
1. Semrush: Best Overall PPC Research Tool
Semrush is one of the most popular all-in-one SEO and PPC tools for digital marketing agencies specializing in PPC marketing. The biggest challenge of running a successful PPC campaign is finding the right keywords to rank on. Being the keyword specialist it is, creating and optimizing a list of keywords for your campaign is extremely easy with Semrush.
One of the best features of Semrush is its comprehensive PPC advertising toolkit which consists of robust competitive research, excellent keyword optimization, ad tracking, and exclusive advertisements for social media.
Identify who your biggest competitors in paid marketing are and peek into the keyword lists and pricing strategy to outperform them in every campaign.
Best Features
Here is what we love about Semrush:
- Clean Keywords: Don’t let unnecessary prepositions and articles bring down the efficiency of your keywords. Get clean and to-the-point keywords that match your user’s search tags.
- Competitor Research: See what your competitors are doing and quickly get a glance into their PPC campaigns, spending, and returns.
- Ad Tracking: Track your position for all paid campaigns and keep a tab on new competitors to always be at the top of the game.
- Keyword Optimization: Semrush automatically removes negative and conflicting keywords to optimize your campaigns and reduce unnecessary expenses.
Pricing
Apart from their free trial, Semrush offers three paid plans:
- Pro: $119.95/month; Best for startups and in-house marketing team
- Guru: $229.95/month; Best for growing agencies and companies
- Business: $449.95/month; Best for large organizations and marketing agencies
Pros
Cons
2. Google Ads: Best Free PPC Tool
Google AdWords is the best place to begin for businesses looking for a free tool to get started with PPC marketing. With the trust and reliability of Google, you get access to multiple marketing features and the flexibility to integrate it with the Google Ads editor for easier ad creation at absolutely no additional cost.
Getting started is simple too. All that you have to do is create your ad, choose your target audience, set a budget, and let Google do the rest. Its informative dash will keep you updated on your campaign progress and share tips to make it more successful.
Best Features
Here is what we love about Google Ads, the best free PPC reporting tool:
- Google Ads Editor: Integrating with Google ads editor allows you to access multiple Google ads accounts from a single dashboard. Create and edit ads offline, share data with your team, and use bulk editing tools to make large changes in a few seconds with Google ads editor.
- Performance Tracker: Google will not only help you track your campaign progress but will also provide tips to improve your results. After all, who can give you better PPC tips than the search engine itself, right?
- Select Goals: Direct your audience as per your goals. You can direct them to your website or a landing page or run call-only campaigns for maximum conversion.
- 100% Free: Unlike other tools where you have to pay for the service as well, with Google ads, you only pay for the advertisement.
Pricing
Just like all other tools offered by Google, Google AdWords is completely free to use for businesses of any size. And as for the campaign, you can choose a flexible budget that works best for your capacity and resources.
Pros
Cons
3. AdEspresso: Best PPC Reporting Tool
If you are looking for a tool that allows you to manage advertisements for Facebook, Instagram, and Google all from one platform, then AdEspresso is what you must be looking at. This software can be integrated with the design tool Canva so that even beginners can seamlessly create impressive advertisements in just a few minutes.
Having served renowned brands like Hubspot and Microsoft, one of the most lucrative features of AdEspresso is its multi-channel dashboard that saves you the effort of shuffling between multiple ad managers.
Also, this top PPC management tool offers excellent actionable insights in the form of PDF, web, email, or excel with real-time information on your campaign progress. What’s more, getting campaign approval with AdEspresso is also a breeze, thanks to the easy access to client accounts that it provides.
Best Features
Here is what we love about AdEspresso:
- Multi-format Insights: Whether you want to take a quick look at your performance or create a detailed report for your next meeting, AdEspresso offers multiple formats of campaign analytics for every need.
- Single Ad Manager: Don’t waste your time shuffling between multiple accounts; manage your ads for social media and Google from one dashboard.
- Team Collaboration: Working with clients and other team members is a breeze with AdEspresso’s easy account access and shareable account assets.
- Simple Ad Creation: Integration with Canva makes ad creation a cakewalk even for beginners with no experience
Pricing
After the free trial ends, choose any of these paid plans:
- Starter: $49/month with ad spend limited to $1500
- Plus: $99/month with unlimited ad spend
- Enterprise: $249/month with unlimited ad spend
Pros
Cons
4. Tenscores: Best Brand Monitoring and Evaluation PPC Tool
Tenscores is slightly different from the other tools on the list. While the other softwares are focused on creating and monitoring PPC campaigns, Tenscores’s inclination is towards evaluating and optimizing copies and campaigns before you run them.
Check where your campaigns are falling short and get the necessary recommendations on improving and optimizing them for better results. Also, Tenscores create a simple to-do list with all the errors so that you can quickly skim through them, simplifying error and optimization issues.
You can also keep track of your previous ads to see how the quality scores affect the final return on your investment for each campaign. The tool also shows optimization errors and campaigns that are wasting your ad budget without giving any viable return so that you can redistribute your funds better.
Best Features
Here is what we love about Tenscores, one of the best PPC audit tools:
- Quality Score: See where your ads are lacking in one quick glance and optimize them for the best results.
- Ad History: Check your previous ads to see how quality score affects final ad returns
- To-do List: Fix your issues quickly with the help of a simple to-do list of all your ad quality issues
- Budget Savings: Don’t waste your money on poor ads. Identify low-performing ads immediately to make the most of your budget.
Pricing
Here are the three paid plans by Tenscores
- Small Business: $25/month
- Agency: $165/month
- Unlimited: $1000/month
Pros
Cons
5. SpyFu: Best PPC Analysis Tool for Beginners
SpyFu is another popular PPC marketing management tool trusted by global leaders like Microsoft, Adobe, Salesforce, Amazon, etc.
Its comprehensive PPC suite comes with impressive features like negative keyword matching and removal, competitor analysis, ad history, and seamless integration with Google ad advisor and Google templates.
To better optimize your PPC campaigns, SpyFu gives you a detailed insight into your competitor’s campaigns, including the keyword they have chosen and the test ads they have run; you can check everything and learn from the mistakes to polish your campaigns.
SpuFu serves more than 200k users, so rest assured that it will help you reach a wider audience, make new connections, and, more importantly, improve your website traffic.
Best Features
Here is what we love about Spyfu, one of the best PPC analysis tools:
- Negative Matching: Find keywords that are limiting your reach and filter them out with SpyFu’s negative match recommendations
- Discover New Competitor Keywords: Find relevant competitors and the keywords they are using that you are not currently cashing upon to broaden your reach.
- Monitor the Market: Help to keep track of all emerging PPC trends, changes in your ad budgets, the emergence of new competitors, and the overall bidding process.
- Competitor Analysis: Get detailed ad history of your competitors, see what they are doing and learn from their mistakes to refine your campaigns
Pricing
Here are the paid plans offered by Spyfu:
- Basic: $33/month billed annually
- Professional: $58/month billed annually
Unfortunately, Spyfu neither has a free trial nor a free plan. So, you will have to rely on its demo to make a choice.
Pros
Cons
6. iSpionage: Best PPC Keyword Tool for Competitor Research
iSpionage has been consistently helping brands drive traffic, improve conversion rate and get new leads for the business since 2008.
Designed for both marketing agencies and in-house marketing teams, the best feature of iSpionage is its free account that allows users to get a glimpse into its internal workings before making a choice.
Its AdWords competitor tool gives you a peek into your competitor’s advertisements. With features like ad design and profitable keywords, iSpionage’s competitive analysis will always keep you ahead of the competition.
Discover new and profitable PPC keywords for your next campaign and evaluate the effectiveness of your ad copy with iSpionage’s ad effectiveness index score.
Another unique benefit of iSpionage is its competitor user journey report which gives you a glimpse into the experience and journey of a user on your competitor’s page so that you understand what your target audience likes and dislikes before you invest in a campaign.
Best Features
Here is what we love about iSpionage
- Ad Copy Effectiveness Index: Check how efficient your ad copy is with iSpionage’s ad copy effectiveness index before investing
- Competitor User Journey: Save money on customer research by peeking into the user journey of your competitor’s ads
- Competitor Analysis: Keep track of everything your competitors do online so that you can outperform them in every campaign.
- Monitoring: Monitor keyword search rankings, content gap, and your customer’s journey in a few clicks
Pricing
The iSpionage free account is just for exploring. If you actually want access to all the features, here are the paid plans to choose from:
- Starter: $50/month
- Professional: $84/month
- Advanced: $254/month
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
Pros
Cons
7. Adplorer: Best for Local Marketing Automation Campaigns
Founded in 2009, Adplorer is the first-ever all-inclusive automated digital marketing platform built to manage your local marketing campaigns with ease. Its next-gen technology helps you scale marketing campaigns across franchise locations, SMBs, and enterprises on a global level.
Small to medium-sized businesses use Adplorer to automate the creation and campaign management on Google and Facebook. Moreover, it’s one of the top PPC reporting tools and also aids in effective social media management and reporting.
Adplorer allows you to seamlessly integrate with Google Analytics 360, Xero, Google Ads, Odoo, Call Rail, Salesforce, and Matelso — everything you would need to run your marketing campaigns.
Lastly, Adplorer is best for multi-location businesses, agencies, publishers, co-ops, banks, and enterprises.
Best Features
Here is what we love about Adplorer, one of the best PPC automation tools:
- Seamless API integration: Direct API connections to Google and Facebook Ad channels.
- Error prevention: Common human errors like tracking unspent budgets, missed campaign dates, and other tracking errors are effectively removed by Adplorer.
- Cost-effective automated marketing campaigns: Its automated campaign creation and management ability can save you up to 70% on marketing budgets.
- Saves Time: As the campaigns get automated, it saves you a ton of time which you can then use to focus on other aspects of your business.
Pricing
Adplorer offers a free demo to its first-time user. As of now, there’s no pricing mentioned on their official website. However, you can request their sales team for either a per campaign quote or a monthly package.
Pros
Cons
8. Optimizely: Best PPC Tool for Experimentation
Optimizely currently serves over 6,000 organizations and offers an online platform to tailor business websites in a way that betters the customer experience they provide to their target audience.
Optimizely detects the nuances of your customer behavior and provides insights that help you build a better interface, boosting site efficiency and customer interactivity.
Voted #4 globally in the softwares for increasing conversion rate category, Optimizely allows its users to continuously experiment and A/B test on web pages. Its A/B testing tools allow you to compare two versions of the same web page for tracking performance and initiate multivariate testing.
Use Optimizely and leverage its ability to assess the latest marketing trends, scour for insightful data on your customer behavior, and then use that data for a thorough, in-depth analysis. All this will help you increase traffic to your website and boost onsite views.
Best Features
Here is what we love about Optimizely:
- A/B Testing: Thorough A/B testing for all parts of your website.
- Funnels: Easy multivariate testing
- Integrations: Optimizely offers a ton of integrations, including Google Analytics, Adwords, Demandbase, Clicktle, etc.
- Testing Kit: A free testing kit to ascertain its suitability for your business.
Pricing
Optimizely has one plan of about $50,000 per year. That said, there are other options available, too; you need to visit their website and request the entire pricing catalog for more flexible and affordable options.
Pros
Cons
9. Opteo: Best Google Ads Management Tool
Opteo is a cloud-based Google Adwords monitoring platform bent on providing the goodness of account monitoring, email alert notifications, reporting, and diagnosis capabilities, all under one umbrella.
Opteo will plug into your Adword account with ease and aid you with functionalities such as budget tracking, performance tracking, receiving alerts, and many more. Ideal for startups and mid-sized businesses, Opteo will also provide several optimization suggestions for your Adword account.
With more than 20 different optimization suggestions, it tells you when to pause underperforming bids and fix broken links. The best part of Opteo is its “Test Ad creatives” feature that gives you a thorough insight into your best-performing ad campaigns based on click-through rate analysis and rate of conversion.
What’s more, Opteo’s search-query analytics will help you identify the negatives and feed you with a ton of keyword-expansion ideas. This will also allow you to keep a close eye on performance tracking, conversion and click-through rates, AdRank, and quality scores.
Best Features
Here is what we love about Opteo, one of the most impressive PPC reporting tools:
- Neatly Curated Performance Reports: Opteo provides performance reports that are easier to understand and analyze.
- Search-query Analytics: Opteo provides the most meaningful keyword expansion ideas that are easy to implement.
- Running/Tracking Multi-campaigns: Running a bunch of campaigns and getting all their insights in a single place is less cumbersome.
- Test Ad Creatives: One of the many USPs of Opteo is that it provides 99% accurate click-through and conversion rates, not to mention the AdRank scores are also on-point.
Pricing
Opteo pricing features a $99 basic plan, followed by the professional $199 plan, and then agency and enterprise plans of $399 and $799, respectively.
Pros
Cons
10. Adalysis: Best PPC Automation Tool
Managing your PPC campaigns even with the help of a tool can sometimes get a tad challenging. That’s where tools like Adalysis step in to make your life easier with PPC automation. Its automation services cover every step of launching a new PPC campaign for both Google and Microsoft Ads.
Some of its best automation features include automated bidding to help you get the best ad spot at an affordable budget and win every bidding war even when you are not around.
You will also benefit from its fully automated PPC testing feature that automatically tests all your ads without you having to run a manual setup.
Best Features
Here is what we love about Adalysis:
- Automated to-do List: Get a glimpse into all significant campaign errors daily with one-click solutions by Adalysis’s automatically created to-do lists.
- Powerful Insights: Find major discrepancies with your campaigns and identify underlying trends with fresh and real-time updates with Adalysis’ insights.
- Ad Testing: Get automated ad testing for each of your campaigns without any manual setup to only put the best copies forward.
- Quality Score: Understand the factors affecting your quality score, check quality score history, and get a priority list of errors to improve the quality of your ads.
Pricing
Adalysis offers a free 14-day trial. After that, its cost to you will depend on your ad budget:
- Up to $50k: $84 annually
- Up to $150k: $169 annually
- Up to $250k: $210 annually
- Up to $350k: $295 annually
- Up to $500k: $424 annually
- $500k+: Custom pricing
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What is a PPC Tool & How Can it Help in Your Marketing?
Pay-per-click (PPC) is currently one of the most popular models for online marketing adopted by businesses. This is particularly prevalent in the case of hosting advertisements on a third-party website or search engine like Google.
Paying the advertising platform based on the number of clicks is a result-driven method, which explains its popularity. However, managing a PPC campaign is a complex task, and you might want to use a PPC tool for it.
A PPC tool is a software that enables you to analyze and manage your advertising campaign more efficiently. It can help you in marketing in several ways, including:
1. Competitor Research
A PPC tool will help you keep track of your rivals’ marketing efforts and stay ahead of them. You will also be able to learn from their strategies and shape yours.
For instance, you don’t have to start experimenting with every technique from scratch. Using a PPC tool, you can check out the paid marketing strategies employed by a competitor and see which ones worked and which didn’t.
2. Managing Your Campaign And Bids
Managing your advertising and campaign bids can be a tedious and time-consuming task. You have to pay attention to a large number of factors and keep track of whether a certain bid is worth the money. However, you can automate the whole process using a PPC tool and focus on enhancing other aspects of the campaign instead.
3. Performance Analytics
When running an ad campaign, it’s crucial to keep an eye on its performance and make adjustments as needed. This is one of the primary functions of a PPC tool – to provide you with detailed reports on the performance of your campaigns. The best PPC tools carry out various analytics to come up with insights that will help you allocate the budget more efficiently.
4. Keyword Tracking
Keyword research is one of the most important elements of a successful digital marketing strategy. However, trending keywords keep changing with time, making it important to keep track of them and create content accordingly. This is precisely what PPC tools do – help with keyword tracking so that you can utilize new keyword opportunities.
5. PPC Optimization
Did you know there are several PPC optimization tools that can improve your PPC campaign’s results? These tools give various insights into a PPC campaign and help formulate improvements, making your PPC campaign more fruitful.
How Does a PPC Tool Work?
Before we talk about how PPC tools work, it’s important we clarify certain things about the PPC model.
Simply put, it’s a digital marketing technique where you buy page visits rather than driving organic traffic to your website. You may publish ads on a third-party platform frequented by your target audience.
Search engines like Google are the most popular places for PPC campaigns, as they help reach a wide audience.
So, how do you purchase the spots for your ads? Well, there is a bidding system known as “Ad auction,” wherein you may bid on keywords of your choice.
When users search for a query on Google with a certain keyword, it pulls up the ads from the highest bidders for that specific keyword.
However, besides the bidding amount, other factors like the quality of the ad and extensions included in it play a pivotal role in determining its place on the page too.
Now, running a PPC campaign can be extremely tedious and requires paying attention to numerous things simultaneously. This is where an automated PPC tool comes into play.
Here’s how a PPC tool works:
- The tool will constantly monitor your ongoing PPC campaigns and keep track of their performances. The data gathered by the tool can then be used for detailed analysis to come up with necessary optimizations.
- You can direct your PPC tool to handle the bidding automatically. This way, you will not miss out on the most valuable keywords since the tool will step in for you and bid for the keyword at the right time.
- A PPC tool calculates an ad’s cost per click value to determine if it’s worth running. If a PPC ad isn’t cost-effective, the tool would recommend you stop running it or make changes.
- A PPC tool will automate a significant part of your marketing campaign, negating the need to manually and constantly pay attention to your PPC campaigns.
- A PPC tool will provide you with helpful information on current PPC trends and other related topics. For instance, you’d get to learn about the PPC strategies of your rivals and receive updated lists of trending keywords.
- Based on the features included in a PPC tool, it will carry out data analytics too. So, instead of providing you with loads of raw data, it will process it all into information bits which you can then use in your PPC campaign.
How to Use a PPC Tool: Tutorial
Every PPC tool has a different interface and features, but the core functions are more or less the same for all.
Here’s a tutorial on how to use a PPC tool or, as in this example, Semrush.
1. Competitor Keyword Research
To find the keywords used by your top competitors:
- Click on Advertising Research under Advertising Dashboard in the left-hand side menu
- Enter your competitor’s domain, and you will see a list of all their campaign keywords
To compare the keywords with your own:
- Select the Keyword gap tool
- Set the keyword type to “paid”
- Enter your competitor’s domain
It will show all your competitor keywords that you are missing out on.
2. Create an Ad
To create an Ad on Semrush
- Use the Semrush Ad Builder
- Select an existing template to edit
- Check what your competitor’s ad looks like
- Ad elements like links, callouts, snippets, etc
- Upload your keywords and set your CPC bids
3. Optimizing Campaigns
To optimize your campaigns:
- Use the PPC explorer tool
- Import your existing campaign from Google Ads.
- Add all your keywords, location, keyword groups, etc
- Select these quick actions: Clean keywords, remove duplicates, cross-group negatives from the Action Menu
4. Ad Position Tracking
To check your ad position on Semrush:
- Select position tracking from the left-hand side menu
- Get a glimpse of average traffic, position, and visibility
- Get ranking distribution and best performing keywords in the same dashboard
- Choose from multiple options like overview, location-based data, device-based data, etc.
How to Choose a PPC Tool?
Your choice of a PPC tool will directly impact the performance and efficiency of your marketing campaign. With that said, it’s clear that you need to weigh your options carefully before you subscribe to a particular PPC tool.
Here are a few factors you should take into consideration while you’re at it:
1. Available Features
This is, quite evidently, the most important thing to consider while choosing a PPC tool. Skim through the features offered by different PPC tools and shortlist the ones that align with your goals the best.
While the ideal PPC tool shouldn’t be lacking any features that you need in particular, you shouldn’t have to pay for unnecessary features either. Sure, it isn’t always possible to exclude all the features you don’t need, but try to keep it as cost-efficient as possible.
2. Scalability
A good PPC tool will be highly scalable, which means you can adjust the payment plans and available features based on your requirements.
For instance, you might need only a handful of services and features at the moment, but your requirements might grow with your business.
The PPC tool you pick should be flexible in the sense that it should allow you to add more features to your account and eliminate them as and when called for. This ensures that you can continue using the same tool even when your business grows bigger.
3. Support
Any good PPC tool would offer adequate support to help its users with the learning curve or any problems that they might face. Also, pay attention to the type of support that comes with a certain tool and see if you are comfortable with it.
For instance, while some tools offer 24×7 on-call support, others provide it via chat. We suggest you pick a PPC tool that has a decent library of online resources for self-learning.
4. Cost
The whole point of opting for the PPC advertising model is to not have to pay for stuff that doesn’t convert, and your approach should more or less be the same when it comes to scouring for a PPC tool.
Compare the costs of different PPC tools and the pricing plans they offer. Some tools offer a variety of plans, ensuring greater flexibility, making them a better choice for your growing business.
That said, there are several free tools as well that could do the job for you, especially if you’re only starting out, for example, Google Ads.
5. Free Trial
Say you’re not comfortable putting the foot down on a PPC tool without knowing how well it’d actually work for you. A free trial will allow you to use the tool before you subscribe to a paid plan, so you wouldn’t have to rely solely on the tool’s description and online reviews.
Some PPC tools offer a longer trial period than the rest, making them a better pick in this aspect. Also, free plans will allow you to try out multiple tools.
6. Ease of Use
In case you don’t have a lot of experience using PPC tools, you might need some time to improve your ability to do so. Go for a PPC tool that’s easy to use, especially if you aren’t too tech-savvy.
A shorter learning curve means you can start benefiting from the tool faster. In case you hire new recruits along the way, it will also be easier to train them in using the tool. However, a PPC tool shouldn’t be overly simple that it lacks necessary features.
7. Reviews
Online reviews are a great way to find out the standing of a tool with respect to its competition. Reading through the reviews will give you an insight into the experience of individuals who have already tried out that particular PPC tool. You will learn about issues that may potentially arise, which will help you make an informed decision.
Conclusion: What is the Best PPC Tool For 2022?
Having discussed ten equally adept PPC advertising tools in detail, we would pick Semrush if we had to put our finger on only one of the above.
Unlike most of its peers, it proves clean keywords with no prepositions or articles. Its market research is comprehensive, with detailed insight into the competitors’ PPC campaigns and spending.
What’s more, it also has an ad tracking feature that keeps you updated and, therefore, ahead of new trends and competition.
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