Paid ad campaigns have been a must in all good marketing strategies for several years; with both Google and Facebook offering access to hundreds of millions of people, paid ads complement organic advertising well. But how do you run an effective PPC campaign? Here are some easy-to-follow steps!
1. Understand the Audience
We’re going to assume you understand the benefits of PPC campaigns in that you pay for every click; organic growth is better for long-term success. Yet, PPC campaigns are still great for quick exposure, product launches, and other events.
Before anything else, you need to understand the audience. Who are you targeting with your ads? How will you implement creatives and a message that resonates with this audience? What is the main pain point of your audience? If you can reach out with an ad that resonates, this increases the likelihood of receiving a click in return.
To understand your audience, use your buyer persona and look at the data of people who buy your products. The more experience you have, the more data you can draw upon.
2. Target a Single Goal
At this stage, businesses commonly try to hit every target with a single campaign. Nowadays, the targeting and segmentation settings on Google Ads are good enough that you don’t need to reach everybody with one campaign. Instead, we recommend just focusing on one goal per campaign.
3. Create Different Versions of the Ad
Just because you publish an ad, this doesn’t mean that your work is done. Instead, you’ll need to complete A/B testing and continually explore the best creatives, targeting, bidding, etc. If you don’t have the resources to analyze the data and continually improve, outsource to a company like Trigger Media Digital because they will do it on your behalf.
Create different versions of the ad copy, the creative, and other aspects of the ad. Over time, you’ll keep and drop versions as they prove to be successful or unsuccessful.
4. Create the Landing Page
You could have the best ad in the world, but this counts for nothing if the clicks are going through to a poor landing page. For an ad to generate sales (or sign-ups, or whatever your goal may be), the landing page needs to continue the experience from the ad and deliver on promises.
One common mistake we see from businesses is sending people to a homepage, but this will just encourage visitors to click away. Your audience has clicked through for a specific purpose, so continue to guide them with a tailored landing page. Address the query that got them on the page and offer a clear path to follow.
5. Assess and Test
With the campaign now live, it’s time to keep an eye on the analysis; thankfully, there’s lots of data available with Google PPC campaigns. Are you generating a positive return on investment (ROI) with the ad? If not, why not? Continually test the different creatives and ad copy to learn the variations that bring the best results. Drop the copy and creatives that perform poorly and keep those that perform well. You can also optimize targeting and bidding with advanced AI solutions.
These days, there are many tools and solutions to help with Google PPC campaigns. This is a great way to go if you don’t have experience or lack the confidence needed in this area. Working in real-time, you get insights into how to make a campaign more effective. As long as you take a proactive approach, rather than setting and forgetting, this is half the battle!