Why PPC Management Is Important

Many advertisers, especially those new to Google Ads, spend very little time managing their campaigns. And this is the number one reason why campaigns fail and are not able to achieve their objectives.

After setting up your Search campaign you’ll need to manage it to make sure it brings the required return. But first, you’ll need to run it for a period of time and test the ads and keywords to see how they perform. This is the first part of your campaign management and will go a long way to achieving success in Google Ads.

How long you run and test them will depend on several factors of course. Generally, for many new campaigns this requires at least two weeks of running the ads to assess performance. But more importantly, the amount of traffic is what should determine how long the testing period should be.

This depends on the type of industry you’re in. For many service businesses, getting at least 200 clicks will help you to assess the traffic and see how it is working. And for ecommerce businesses at least 500 clicks will usually be sufficient to assess performance.

And this will help you to see the type of searches you’re getting and then you can block searches that are not relevant and add them as negative keywords.

This will help you to improve the targeting of your ads as you continue to manage your PPC campaign.

 

Here is why PPC management is important:

 

1. It improves return on ad spend

When you first launch your PPC campaign, you’re likely to have a low return on ad spend for some time – maybe a week or two. So, just setting up your PPC campaign and not managing it is not an option.

Managing your campaigns will help you to focus on a return on ad spend that will be easier to achieve as time goes. You’ll focus on features that help to optimise your campaign effectively.

Unfortunately many advertisers don’t do this and even some who manage their ads don’t spend enough time doing so or don’t do it the correct way.

 

2. Helps you to control costs

Spending more time in your campaign helps you to see where you’re wasting budget and spending on traffic that is not converting. So you’re able to reduce spend on searches and ads that are not performing for you.

And it also helps you to see where you should focus your budget to get the best return on your ad spend.

 

3. Measure your success

Managing your campaigns also helps you to measure and keep track of your success. So, you can assess how you’re performing from week to week and month to month.

And you can track how the changes you’re making are having an impact on your campaigns.

This is important because it helps you to achieve your goals. Without tracking and measuring you’ll run your ads for a long time and waste budget and like many, you may frustratingly give up and think Google Ads does not work.

 

4. Improves the competitiveness of your ads

Each year, PPC advertising gets more and more competitive because many advertisers are now moving online to promote their products and services. And this has been especially true since the COVID pandemic.

A report like the Auction insights report helps you to see who you’re competing against in the ad results. You’ll be able to see how often you appear in the top and absolute top positions relative to competitors.

You can access the report in your campaign in the Ad groups or Keywords tabs. And if appearing at the top is important for your business or industry, you can work on your bid strategy to bid higher and gain better positions.

 

Here are some tips to help you with your PPC management:

 

1. Setup conversion tracking

 

To see where your leads and enquiries are coming from, you’ll need to setup conversion tracking. This will help you see which of your keywords, text ads, campaigns etc are driving conversions for your business.

In your Google Ads account you can setup conversion tracking in the Conversions page under Tools & Settings. There are a number of options you can choose from including tracking website conversions from contact forms and also call conversions.

And you can also import goals from your Google Analytics account when people fill out a form. This is usually a better tracking option because you can see how your PPC traffic is performing with other traffic sources like Organic, Referrals and Direct and get detailed information.

 

2. Add negative keywords

Regularly add negative keywords to block searches that are not relevant for you. If you check your search terms report you will see the actual searches that you are getting and this will often be different from your keywords, especially if you’re using phrase and broad match type keywords.

 

Select any that are not relevant as the image above shows, and then click the ‘Add as negative keyword’ button. This will prevent your ads appearing when people use these searches. Doing so regularly will improve the targeting of your ads and you’ll notice an improvement in conversion rates.

3. Find new keywords

 

PPC campaigns should be updated regularly to make sure they are targeting the right people and businesses. So, that means checking for new keyword opportunities to add to your campaign and ensure that it is targeting all the right searches.

There are many ways to find new keywords. These include checking the Google search results pages for related keywords that you are not bidding on and checking competitor sites.

However, a primary method is through keyword research using the Keyword Planner tool in your account. This free tool is packed with features. And besides finding you new keywords, you can also check what the average cost per click (CPC) is and do forecasting to see what you’re likely to spend and what budgets to set.

4. Update bid strategy

 

When you first get started with a PPC campaign, you should use an automated bid strategy. This helps to set bids automatically at auction time and saves you a lot of time. The machine learning system looks for opportunities to increase clicks and conversions with each click and sets the bid to help you get the best position.

 

And Maximise Clicks is the best bid strategy to start with because it works to get as much traffic as possible for your budget spend.

Later you can test other bid strategies. For example, if you get at least 15 conversions per month you can switch to a Smart bidding strategy like Maximise Conversions with a target cost per acquisition (tCPA).

 

5. Check Recommendations

 

The Recommendations page shows many opportunities to improve the performance of your campaigns. These are created automatically by the machine learning algorithm when it finds opportunities to improve your campaigns.

There are many types of recommendations you will see here. This includes keywords & targeting, dynamic search ads, responsive search ads and many other recommendations to help improve your campaign.

You will also see an Optimisation score in there too. This is an estimate from Google of how well your account is set to perform. Applying the recommendations will help your campaign perform better and raise your score.

 

6. Do competitor analysis

 

Spend some time checking what PPC strategies other businesses are using. There are tools and reports that can help you with this and and some are free and found within your Google Ads account and some are paid third-party tools.

A common tool used by many PPC advertisers is Spyfu. It shows what keywords competitors are bidding on. Another tool is SERanking and they both give you a good indication of what other advertisers are paying per month on average.

With SERanking you can use the Competitor research tool that shows what Organic and PPC searches other businesses are appearing for.

 

7. Consider broad match type keywords

 

Unlike PPC advertising for other industries, for some the range of keywords tends to be lower, like professional services. So, there are not as many different variations of searches even when targeting multiple locations.

However, there is still the possibility to find some long tail keywords that are more targeted but get less monthly searches.

So, it may be worth adding broad match keyword versions of your other match types. It’s usually best to start with phrase and exact match keywords and then add broad match keywords later when you want to increase click volumes. But make sure you have a good negative keyword list to block searches that are not relevant.

 

Conclusion

Carrying out regular management of your PPC campaign will have a major impact on its performance. This will help to improve the return on your ad spend, reduce your costs, boost the performance of your ads and much more. So, after creating your campaign, make sure you spend time managing it for a few hours each week, which is sufficient for most campaigns.

Get in Touch

Need help with the management of your PPC campaigns in Google Ads. As a Google Ads expert and freelance PPC consultant I’m able to help and I’m happy to discuss the way forward. Use the form below to contact me to discuss.