PPC for IoT Companies: 7 Tips for Exceptional Campaign Management

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising for IoT companies is growing and many start-ups and established companies in the IoT sector are seeing its benefits.

Whether you’re a start-up, are growing or an established IoT company, PPC advertising can help your business reach the right audience. And that’s possible with any industries you want to reach including agriculture, automotive, energy, education, real estate and others.

An effective strategy that IoT companies and solutions are using is providing free white paper downloads to reach their target audiences whether it’s engineers, entrepreneurs, businesses and so on.

And these cover areas like 5G modules, GNSS modules, LTE Cat 1, Automotive modules and so on.

So, in this article I list seven PPC campaign management tips for IoT companies to manage their ads effectively and target the right audiences.

 

1. Setup conversion tracking

Setting up conversion tracking is one of the first things to do as part of your campaign management. This tracking helps you to see where your leads and enquiries are coming from and that will help you to allocate your budgets effectively.

You can set up conversion tracking in your Google Ads account or Google Analytics account. In Analytics you setup goals and can import these into your Google Ads account for conversion tracking. There are templates in the Admin section in your Analytics account and you can select the most relevant for your business.

As an IoT business, if you’re giving away white papers through a download, you can track this with one of the goal templates.

2. Add new negative keywords

PPC advertising for IoT companies is effective when search queries are highly targeted. This requires checking the reports for any searches that are not relevant and adding them as negative keywords.

A report that will help you with this is the search terms report and it sits under the Keywords tab in your campaign.

The search terms report is the most important report for your Search campaigns, so you should spend time in there each week checking the searches you’re getting and check which are converting and which are not.

 

3. Find new IoT keywords

There are a number of ways to find more keywords to add to your existing campaigns. One way is from competitor websites. And you can do that by putting competitor sites in the keyword research tool in Google Ads and scanning the sites for keyword opportunities.

And you can use the same Keyword Planner tool to do some research based on keyword ideas you have to find more to add to your campaigns.

Another place to find new keywords is in your Search terms report. This report reveals the actual searches you’re getting and some of these will not be keywords but are triggered by the match types you are using.

Selecting and adding them gives you greater control over them as you can set bids accordingly and also include them in the ads, which improves the click through rate (CTR) and Quality Scores.

 

4. Update bid strategy

Choosing a bid strategy is one of the big challenges many advertisers face. Usually that choice is between an automated or a manual bid strategy.

When you first launch your campaign it’s best to start with an automated bid strategy like Maximise Clicks. This strategy tries to get you as many clicks as possible for your spend.

Later you can use a manual bidding strategy to have greater control over your bids and where your ads appear.

 

5. Check Recommendations

PPC campaigns for IoT companies work when all areas are optimised and up to date. The Recommendations page shows you how optimised it is through the Optimisation score. Achieving a 100% score should be a key part of your campaign management work.

So you should apply the recommendations that are relevant for your campaign and dismiss the ones that are not. It’s important that you analyse them individually and see what the potential uplift will be for you.

The most important recommendations are at the top and they will make the most impact, and the least important with the least impact are at the bottom.

 

6. Do competitor analysis

Carrying out competitor analysis into other IoT providers should be a regular part of your PPC advertising. And with the tools available online you can do it easily and help improve your campaigns by implementing some good insights that you find.

A good tool to help you with this is Competitor research, which is in SERanking. With this tool, you’re able to see the PPC campaigns of other IoT companies and what keywords they are bidding on, how much they are spending and the ads they are running.

 

7. Check Quality Scores

Quality Score is a keyword metric. The score ranges from 1 to 10 and a higher score is better, but some keywords will not have a score if there are few exact searches for your keywords.

It shows you how your keywords are performing for expected click through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. So, to improve your scores you’ll need to improve these factors.

This includes working on your landing pages and ensuring that visitors are engaged and that the bounce rate drops. It also includes updating your ads to improve the click through rates and ad relevance by including keywords in the ads and having strong benefits and a good call to action.

 

Case Study

Soracom is a provider of global IoT network cellular connectivity with a network of over 15,000 customers worldwide. They were running some Search and Display campaigns when they approached me because these were not performing as expected. I set up new campaigns and this led to a 200% increase in conversions. Read the full case study.

 

Get in Touch

I offer PPC services for IoT companies and providers and I have many years experience setting up and managing campaigns. Contact me below to discuss how I can help your IoT business drive quality leads.