PPC for Training Providers: 7 Tips for Exceptional Campaign Management

PPC advertising for training providers helps businesses in these sectors to target their audiences on search engines like Google and its partner websites. And that means targeting people as they search, which helps to achieve a good return on ad spend.

 

If you’ve been running your campaigns for weeks, months or years, it’s important that you manage them to ensure you get the best results. This requires regular updates whether weekly or monthly to ensure you’re reaching your goals.

 

I’ve listed here some tips to help you manage your campaigns and improve your performance. As a training provider with a small or large budget you can ensure that you are not wasting any of your spend to ensure you achieve exceptional performance.

 

1. Setup conversion tracking

 

Conversion tracking is what you need to be able to track enquiries or leads for your business. So you’ll need to setup conversion tracking in your Google Ads account and add the necessary code to your website. If you go to Tools & Settings and click the Conversions link you’ll see an option there to setup conversion tracking.

 

 

An even better way to setup tracking without adding additional code is through Google Analytics. You will setup a goal in the Admin section of your account and this will track all of your traffic and not just PPC traffic.

 

 

And you can import this goal into your Google Ads account for conversion tracking.

 

2. Add new negative keywords

 

As part of PPC management for training providers it’s important to continue adding negative keywords to block searches that are not relevant. You will find some searches you’ll need to block in your search terms report, under the Keywords tab. And you can add them at the campaign, ad group or account level in a negative keyword list.

 

 

Doing this regularly helps to improve your search targeting accuracy and brings it closer to 100%.

 

3. Check Recommendations

 

Effective PPC marketing for training providers should include improving the account’s Optimisation score, to improve the overall performance of the campaigns. You can see this score on your Recommendations page and updating the recommendations in there helps to improve the Optimisation score.

 

 

Check each recommendation to see if it is relevant for your business. If you find it is relevant, then click the Apply link and it will be immediately applied to your campaign. And if you find any that are not relevant, click the Dismiss link and then give a reason why. This helps the machine learning system to send better recommendations in the future.

 

4. Find new keywords

 

There are many recommendation types you’ll see on the Recommendations page, and one of them includes adding new keywords to drive more clicks and conversions. As a training provider that has been running a campaign for a while, you’re likely to see some keyword suggestions that are relevant to add.

 

However, not all will be relevant and you should be careful with these because they could drive searches that are not relevant and waste your budget.

 

Another way to find keywords is with the Keyword Planner tool. It’s a free tool in your Google Ads account that is available in Tools & Settings and you can use its features to search for new keywords and carry out forecasting to see how much you’ll spend per month.

 

 

Another place to find keywords is by checking competitor websites. Using the same tool above you’ll be able to scan competitor websites and this will bring up a list of keywords based on the text on the pages.

 

5. Update bid strategy

 

PPC advertising for training providers should include checking the best bid strategy to use at different times of the campaign. For example, when the campaign is new, it’s often best to use an automated bid strategy like Maximise Clicks to drive as many clicks as possible.

 

 

And later you can change to one of the other automated bid strategies when you have a lot more data. So, if you are now achieving at least 15 conversions per month in your Search campaign, you can switch to a Smart bidding strategy like Maximise Conversions with a target cost per acquisition.

 

6. Do competitor analysis

 

As a training provider it’s a good idea to check what PPC strategy other training providers are following. This will help you to setup your campaign effectively and bring in great results as you manage them.

 

There are platforms and tools that will help you to carry out the Competitor research into other training providers. And an effective one to start with is from SERanking which provides a research tool.

 

 

With this tool you’re able to see which keywords and search terms they are appearing for and how much they pay for each on average. And you can see whether they rank at the top or bottom of the search results for each keyword and how much they spend in Google Ads on average per month.

 

7. Consider broad match type keywords

 

Adding broad match type keywords will help you target a wider range of searches. This is usually much more than the searches you’re getting from your phrase and exact match keywords.

 

So, you can add broad match versions of your phrase and exact match keywords. And also do some keyword research to find other keywords to add in broad match format.

 

Case Study

 

Baby Academy delivers online classes to soon-to-be parents. They offer their training to people in the US, UK, Ireland, South Africa and Canada. They contacted me to setup campaigns to target each of these countries because what they had before was not performing. The campaigns I created saw an increase in conversions by 200%. Read the full case study.

 

Get in Touch

 

A PPC campaign for training providers is an effective way to advertise online as demonstrated above. And when you manage your campaigns regularly you’re able to achieve a high ROI. Contact me below to discuss your requirements.