In recent years, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has become one of the most effective tools available for businesses of all types. This type of advertising has a significant impact on the success of online businesses in this digital era.

PPC is crucial for your business because it can boost your brand awareness, ultimately boosting sales. According to Google, search ads can raise brand awareness by 80%. However, if you aren’t getting enough out of your advertising efforts, this post is for you. Here are 6 fantastic tips that can help you supercharge the performance of your PPC campaign.

1.   Define Your Goals

If you don’t have clear and measurable goals, you can’t optimize your PPC campaign appropriately. Having well-defined goals should be the baseline of your optimization process. Because if you don’t a clear roadmap to follow, you’ll achieve nothing.

Start by determining what you want to achieve from your paid search ads. And depending on your business’s needs, your goal could be:

• Building brand awareness
• Driving traffic to your website
• Boosting sales
• Getting downloads or subscribers

Setting realistic goals is crucial because it inspires you and your team to work towards the accomplishment of your business’s goals.

2.   Focus on High-Performance PPC Keywords

Identifying high-performing keywords depends on your goals and which KPI’s or key performance indicators are important to your business. Choosing keywords with a high Click-Through rate is crucial for the success of your PPC campaign.

Always check the performance of keywords before using them in your ad copy. Choose those with stellar performance.

If, for instance, your audience is from a different geographical location, use a VPN service to determine the keywords ranking on their territory. A VPN helps you adopt an IP address of a specific location and browse the internet like a local. However, it’s crucial to choose a VPN service wisely because all VPN services aren’t the same in terms of quality.

After identifying high-performing keywords, use tiered bidding strategy on those words.  Tiered bidding strategy entails bidding on the same keyword with all four match types. Being more restrictive with the match type is essential because it guarantees high-quality traffic.

For instance, I may bid on “winter clothes rental” this way:

• Exact match: $7 CPC
• Phrase match: $6.50 CPC
• Modified Broad match: $6.30 CPC
• Broad match: $6 CPC

Why bid the highest on the exact match? The ROI is much higher because you know exactly what the searcher is looking for, as compared to broad match, which is open to interpretation. After all, it includes close variants. However, a broad match generates a much higher volume.

3.   Build a List of Negative Keywords 

Monitoring and building out a list of negative keywords continuously helps to reduce costs significantly and improve results, especially when using broader match types. It’s easy to waste tons of money on searches that aren’t related to your business if you don’t set up the negatives properly.

One of the most effective ways to identify negative keywords is to analyze what people are typing into Google to make your ads appear. You can use QueryStream to do that. This tool serves up actual search query data, which you can use to identify and build out a single word or multiple words negatives. Also, you can use it to add the keywords you want to bid on, and even create new ad groups from the searches you see in there.

However, it’s essential to make sure that negatives don’t block search terms that could be beneficial to your business, so always review negative lists that are currently set up.

4.   Leverage Demographic Targeting to Reach the Right Audience

What makes PPC successful is the ability to decide exactly who should see your ads, based on demographics. Today, Google Ads are more granular and there are more targeting options available more than ever before.

Here are a few ways you can target your most qualified audience:

• Age: You can target your audience based on their age, especially if you sell products that serve a specific age group.

• Gender: This targeting option is perfect for businesses that sell gender-specific products.

• Income level: If, for instance, your company focuses on low-cost products, you can target lower-income earners for better results. Whilst, if you sell expensive products, you can also target top income earners to optimize your PPC campaign performance.

• Geographical location: Targeting by geographical location is one of the most effective ways to target your audience. You can deliver them ads based on their city, state, country, or specific boundaries that you create.

• Relationship Status:  Google gives you the option to target married couples, singles, and people in relationships.

• Education level: Google Ads also gives you the option to target customers with a high school diploma, those in college, or those with a master’s degree.

Deciding whom you want to target with your PPC campaigns is a crucial decision, which can significantly affect the success of your campaign.  So, it’s essential to review your audience targeting as a part of your PPC campaign optimization.

5.   Test Your Ad Copy

Your ad copy can make or break your campaign, so it’s essential to test and analyze your copy.

Set up an A/B test, to test your ad copy. A/B testing also known as split testing allows you to assess two ads with varying copy to determine which one generates more clicks.

However, ad copy isn’t the only thing you can test, you can test ad colors, the landing pages, and the calls-to-action.

After setting up an A/B test for your PPC ads, Google will serve the two sets of ads randomly to different groups of users. At the end of the testing period, you’ll know what ad got more clicks, and thus, you should use that ad moving forward.

6.   Create A Landing Page That Matches the Intent of each Keyword

Having your website’s homepage as the destination of your PPC ads isn’t a wonderful idea. Because it confuses your visitors, ultimately driving them away.

Thus, sending your visitors to a destination that helps them find what they’re looking for is crucial in PPC campaign optimization. This is called ‘intent match’ and search engines, such as Google, take it seriously.

For instance, if someone searching for ice skates clicks on your PPC ad, and they land on a page offering ice skating lessons, you haven’t matched the intent of the searcher—even you set up the page to convert visitors using a sign-up form for paid skating lessons. Because the searcher is looking to purchase ice skates, not ice-skating lessons.

Thus, a better destination page for this ad would be a product browsing page with all the ice skates you offer listed and optimized for purchasing. This improves your chances of converting that visitor into a buyer.

Final Thoughts

PPC advertising is a powerful tool to build brand awareness and boost sales. However, you have to run PPC campaigns appropriately, to reap the maximum benefits of PPC advertising. The 6 tips I have mentioned in this post can help you take your PPC marketing to the next level by maximizing your ROI.