PPC for Architects: 8 Tips for Exceptional Campaign Management

PPC Ads help architects to drive leads and enquiries for their businesses through one of the most effective digital marketing channels. Using search advertising tools, they can use keywords and ads to target people that are actively searching for architectural services in their locations.

And you can do the same for your business through the most powerful PPC channel, Google Ads. You will be able to setup campaigns and manage them yourself or hire a Google Ads specialist to help you set them up and manage them for your business.

These 8 PPC tips for architects will help you to manage your campaigns effectively. If you haven’t setup a Google account yet, head over to www.ads.google.com to get started and you can see the article setup Google Ads for architects if you need help setting up a campaign.

 

1. Setup conversion tracking

A PPC campaign management strategy for architects should include a plan on how leads and enquiries are tracked. This will help you to see which ads, keywords and campaigns are performing and which aren’t and you can optimise them for better performance.

So, you should setup conversion tracking in your Google Ads account or goals in Google Analytics.

Setting up goals in Analytics has many benefits like helping you to track all your traffic sources and not just PPC traffic. And you can see in the reports how these traffic sources all contribute to your conversions. Some people will first see a social media ad and click, and then visit days later through a PPC Ad and finally click an Organic link a few days later, and then convert, for example.

To get started with goal tracking, go to Admin and then to Goals and then use one of the templates to start your tracking.

 

2. Add new negative keywords

As part of your campaign management, make it a point to regularly look for negative keywords to add, to block irrelevant searches. The best place to check this is in the Search terms report.

This is one of the most important reports in your Google Ads account because it shows the actual searches your ads are appearing for. And some of these will not be relevant and you should add as negative keywords.

 

3. Find new keywords

As an architectural company, it’s important to regularly check your keywords to see which searches your ads are appearing for on Google. And if you find any in your Search terms report that you haven’t added as keywords, you should add them and start bidding on them.

Also, continue using the Keyword Planner tool to find new keyword opportunities. This tool will help you with research and forecasting so you can get an idea of how much you’ll spend per month on average.

 

4. Update bid strategy

There are at least five bid strategies in your Search campaigns and these fall under the two bid strategy types, automated and manual bidding. When you launch your PPC campaign, it’s best to start with an automated bid strategy like Maximise Clicks to get as many clicks as possible for your budget.

After a while you can assess your performance reports and then decide if it is time to change to another bid strategy.

If, for example, you find that you now want more control over your bids and to set them manually, then you should change to the Manual CPC bid strategy.

Or if you know what your cost per acquisition is on average, you can change to Maximise Conversions and set a target cost per acquisition, to state how much you want to pay for each conversion – and the machine learning system will bid accordingly.

 

5. Check Recommendations

Part of your campaign management should include checking your Recommendations page to check for new opportunities. This makes managing your campaign easier because you get tailored recommendations that you can choose to apply or dismiss.

 

6. Do competitor analysis

It’s important to check what other architects are doing with their PPC marketing. This will help you to formulate a great PPC strategy for your architectural business and target people who are searching for your services.

In your Google Ads account you can analyse your PPC Auction Insights report to see how other architects are ranking. You will see how often they rank in the top and absolute top positions relative to you.

You should also use a competitor analysis tool to see what keywords they are bidding on and how much they pay for each click. And you will be able to see how much they spend on their ads on average each month. A good platform that will help you with this is SERanking, which has its own Competitor research tool.

 

7. Consider broad match type keywords

As an architectural firm, phrase and exact match type are two match types you should use when you first launch your Search campaign. These two match types determine the searches you get and they give you greater control than broad match.

A phrase match keyword like “architect london” will drive these type of searches for example:

architects london – plural
architect in london – close variant
london architect – close variant
achitect london – misspelling

However, if you add a broad match keyword of the above keyword you will get the same searches as phrase match and many searches that may not be relevant too.

Some searches you could get include:

Architect
Architectural body
Architectural photos

And many others, so you will need to add some negative keywords. However, you will also get some long tail keywords that are highly targeted and could help improve your campaigns.

 

8. Check Quality Scores

Quality Score is a metric that tracks the performance of your ads and keywords. It’s a score from 1 to 10 and the higher the score the better. You can find this metric on the Keywords page in your campaign, but you may have to add it to the columns first if you can’t see it.

There are three main factors to your quality scores: ad relevance, expected click through rate and landing page experience. And they each get a rating of Below Average, Average or Above Average.

For example, an Above Average rating for all three quality score factors leads to a 10 score. And a Below Average rating for all three factors leads to a 1 score. So you should work on all these factors to improve your scores.

 

Case Study

A9 Architecture have over 1200 projects completed across Essex with a good track record of getting approval for these projects. They had worked with many PPC experts over the years but the campaigns that were setup were not performing. I did some research and discovered that the campaigns were not being managed properly. I then setup new campaigns and managed them and we achieved a conversion rate above 10%. Read the full case study.

 

Get in Touch

I’m a PPC specialist for architects and having worked with many over years, I’m confident I can help you setup and manage an effective campaign for your architectural services. Use the form below to contact me to discuss.