How To Manage Pay Per Click PPC Campaigns
When you consider management of your PPC campaign in the context of reducing the budget, there’s a lot
you can do to reduce your costs without decreasing the effectiveness of your campaign. Your first step should be to replace any poorly performing ads. Monitoring your ads should already be a key part of your PPC campaign, so determining those that aren’t performing well should be easy.
Another way to reduce your
PPC costs is to reduce the amount of your bid per keyword. As noted earlier, it’s not necessary to strive for the top advertising slot. And reducing your keyword bid by a few cents per click can make a huge difference in the cost of the campaign.
Just remember that reducing your bid shouldn’t necessarily mean reducing your budget. Instead, use your existing budget more effectively. If you cut your budget too much, you’ll lower the num- ber of times that your keyword ad is shown each day, which in turn lowers your conversion rate.
In addition to reducing the amount you’re bidding on keywords, you should also examine the keywords you’ve selected to see if you can remove any that are general in nature or high demand. “General” and “high demand” can be the same, but there can be a subtle difference. General key- words are good for branding purposes (and branding purposes only), so they are automatically high demand and high cost. Competition for them is keen. But less general keywords can also be high demand. As an example, if you’re in the tissue business, “tissue” is a coveted branding keyword and will cost you a lot. “Facial tissue” is less general, but it’s still going to be in high demand. and thus expensive. Unless it’s essential that your brand be associated with one of these high-demand. keywords, it’s better to avoid them and not pay a lot for keywords that won’t increase your number of qualified clicks all that much.
High-demand keywords are also very expensive. The more popular a keyword is, the more you’ll pay for it. And with many high-demand keywords, the resulting traffic may not be as well targeted as it could be. This means a reduced number of conversions, resulting in a lower ROI. It’s far better to choose keywords and phrases that are not in as much demand but are more targeted. You’ll pay less for these keywords and will likely end up with much more qualified traffic from them, which will translate into more conversions and a better ROI.
Match types can also help you control your PPC budget. A match type is the condition under which you prefer that your PPC ad is shown. So, if you’ve selected a keyword or phrase – let’s say “SEO consultant” for your PPC advertisement, you can specify if you would like to have that ad shown only under certain condition.
When you set up your PPC campaign, most PPC providers offer the option to choose a match type, though it might not be immediately obvious. By default, your match type will be the broadest match possible (because that means more money for the search engine). But there are several general match types that you could use:
■Broad Match: A broad match occurs when your ad is shown to the broadest possible seg- ment of searchers. What that means is that anytime someone searches for “SEO consultant” your ad will be shown, no matter whether those two words appear together or if there are other words included with the term.
■ Phrase Match: A phrase match occurs when your ad is shown for searches that contain the key phrase you’ve selected, in the correct word order, but also including other words. So instead of showing your ad only for searches containing “SEO consultant,” your ad might also be shown for searches like “free SEO consultant,” or “SEO web-design consultant.”
■ Exact Match: An exact match takes place when your PPC ad is shown only for searches that contain the exact words that you’ve selected, in the exact order in which you’ve selected them, with no other words included in the phrase. In other words, if you choose an exact match for “SEO consultant,” the only time the ad will be shown is when a user searches for “SEO consultant.”
Match types offer an excellent method for reducing the cost of your ads while increasing the effec- tiveness of the ads. You should use caution when narrowing your match types too much, however, because you could miss possible clicks from people who aren’t exactly sure what they’re looking for.
One more method for decreasing your PPC budget is to modify your PPC strategy. This, actually, should be an ongoing strategy for any PPC campaign, even if you’re not trying to reduce your budget. Monitor and review the amount of PPC spending versus the number of conversions you achieve. Then use this information to make changes to your keywords and ad copy to increase the effectiveness of your PPC campaigns.
