You’ve just launched your PPC campaign and are beginning to reap the benefits!
You’ve done your Google AdWords content optimization and impressions, clicks and conversions are all up and trending higher and now you’re not sure what to do next. If you’ve been checking your analytics reports you probably have a good idea of what’s working and the next step is to take what is producing and make it work even better.
What follows are six concrete steps to take immediately to fine tune your PPC efforts and increase your campaign’s effectiveness.
Breakdown and analyze your campaign’s effectiveness by running a placement performance report.
A placement performance report will give you insight into which sites are performing best within your account, and which ones are lacking. Rank the sites based upon their return on investment. Highest ROI to lowest and then determine a performance median point.
Eliminate or exclude poorly performing sites.
Your placement performance report should include analytics for both click thru and conversions. Sites that are providing traffic but little to no conversions are costing you money and not offering you any benefits. Build a list of these poorly performing sites and either block them with Google’s site exclusion tool, or eliminate them from your campaign entirely in step 3.
Create a new “placement targeted campaign.”
Once you’ve narrowed your site list to the sites that are producing traffic and conversions by using your placement performance report, create a new campaign. This is your placement-targeted campaign, or site targeted campaign. Load these productive sites into your new campaign.
Add additional relevant sites to your new campaign from Google’s inventory.
You’ve built your new campaign from your proven winners, now it’s time to test market another batch of sites. Your ppc campaign should be fluid and by knowing which types of sites are working for you, you can then scan and add additional, similar sites to the mix. Search by category and topic to find sites closely resembling your winners. Make sure to continue to monitor and refine your campaign by repeating steps 1 and 2.
Continue to tweak your campaign by experimenting and inserting new ads.
With your new campaign, begin to experiment with A/B testing. Try inserting some new text ads onto your proven sites to see how it affects click thru and conversion rates. If you were running only text ads previously, experiment with images. Your PPC campaign is a process requiring experimentation and refinement. Try different sizes, and formats, to refine and improve your results.
Check your bidding method and bids.
There are two methods of PPC, Cost-per-impression (CPM) and Cost-per-click (CPC) If you are trying to develop your brand, CPM can be effective. If your goal is conversions and sales, Google recently announced that targeted campaigns can run on a CPC basis.
Pay per click advertising is an effective method on it’s own for driving traffic and increasing conversions. Following these six steps can work to refine your campaign and increase it’s effectiveness almost exponentially. Remember, an effective PPC campaign should be fluid. Experiment! Tweak your efforts over time and refine your approach to achieve the best results!
