PPC for Consultants: 7 Tips for Exceptional Campaign Management

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is one of the best strategies for consultants and professional services. It allows you to target people who are searching for your consultancy business in your locations.

 

Whether you’re an IT consultant, financial advisor, marketing consultant or other, with PPC marketing you will get to see a good return on your ad spend.

 

If you’re running campaigns at the moment and promoting your business on a PPC platform like Google Ads, then this list of seven tips will help you to manage them for the best results.

 

1. Setup conversion tracking

 

PPC advertising for consultants and professional services should include setting up conversion tracking to track all call and email enquiries. This should happen in your Google Ads or Google Analytics accounts. If you decide to use Analytics, you should make sure this is linked to your Google Ads so you can import the goals for conversion tracking.

 

 

You can set up call tracking by adding your phone number in call extensions and using a Google forwarding number. So, every call that comes from your ads is tracked and you can see which ads and keywords are driving these call conversions.

 

And you can track all form submissions on your website by adding the conversion tracking code on the confirmation page. Visit the Conversions page in your Google Ads account and follow the instructions there to set up the tracking.

 

2. Add new negative keywords

 

To run effective PPC campaigns for consultants it’s important to continue adding negative keywords to block searches that are irrelevant. In your search terms report you can see which searches people use to find your business, and then select any that are not relevant and add them as negative keywords.

 

 

The search terms report is one of the most important reports for your Search campaigns. So, you will spend a lot of time in there analysing the searches and trying to understand the search intent.

 

Also, some searches may look relevant but because they have zero or low conversions, you could add them as negative keywords too.

 

3. Check Recommendations

 

Spend time reviewing the opportunities in your Recommendations page to see how you can improve your campaigns. These recommendations are calculated to improve the performance of your campaigns and increase your Optimisation score.

 

 

There are about 50 recommendation types covering areas like dynamic search ads, keywords, bid strategies and many more. However, you will not see all of them and the ones you see will be those that the machine learning system has deemed to be important for your account.

 

However, you should review them individually and not just apply all of them. Some won’t be relevant for you and could in fact affect the performance of your ads. So you should dismiss any that are irrelevant.

 

4. Find new keywords

 

Look for new keyword opportunities to add to your campaign and drive more searches and conversions. Using the tools available in your Google Ads account, you can carry out some keyword research and add keywords that you haven’t added that will improve your campaign.

 

The Keyword Planner tool will help you to carry out the research. And it has a forecasting section to help you forecast your monthly spend and set a budget.

 

 

Also, check the Recommendations page that I’ve mentioned above. If you’ve been running your campaign for some weeks or months you’re likely to see some keyword recommendations to add to your campaign. But check each keyword carefully because not all will be relevant.

 

5. Update bid strategy

 

Another recommendation you are likely to see in your PPC account is to change your bid strategy. For consultants running campaigns in Google Ads, that could help improve targeting especially if the recommendation is to switch to a Smart bidding strategy like Maximise Conversions with a target cost per acquisition.

 

However, like other recommendations that you find in there, it’s important that you review it first. Check what the potential result is and then apply it if you are happy to go ahead and test it.

 

Also, take time to familiarise yourself with the other automated and manual bidding strategies. When you first setup your campaign it’s usually best to start with an automated bid strategy like Maximise Clicks. This one works to get you as many clicks as possible for your budget.

 

 

6. Consider broad match type keywords

 

You should consider adding broad match keywords to increase your clicks and leads. This will also help you target some searches that you’re not getting with phrase and exact match keywords.

 

Adding keywords in this match type should begin with a few of your existing keywords, and not all of them initially. You’ll do this gradually and as traffic increases and as you add negative keywords, you’ll be able to block searches that aren’t relevant for you.

 

7. Check Quality Scores

 

Quality Score is a keyword metric that ranges between 1 to 10. It shows how your keywords are performing on the three factors, expected click through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. Quality Score is like the dashboard in your car, which shows if there is any problem with the engine that needs fixing.

 

 

However, not all keywords will have a quality score. If a keyword doesn’t have one it means there aren’t sufficient searches of the exact match keyword for it to be calculated and so you will see a ‘-‘ under that column.

 

Case Study

 

CNS IT is an IT support company that provides outsourced IT solutions. They operate in a competitive sector with high average cost per clicks for their keywords. With my help we were able to set up a new Search campaign for them that achieved a 9% conversion rate. Read the full case study

 

Get in Touch

 

I set up and manage PPC campaigns for consultants and professional services that want to promote their businesses on Google and its partner websites. Get in touch with me below to discuss your requirements today.