What is one best practice when it comes to PPC (pay-per-click) advertising?
To help your marketing team better optimize its advertising campaigns, we asked marketing managers and business leaders this question for their best insights. From focusing on timing to using a bidding strategy, there are several PPC landing page best practices to help you generate more leads.
Here are 12 PPC landing page best practices:
- Focus on Timing
- Audience Segmentation
- Optimize for CPA, Not CPC
- Expand Beyond Google Ads
- Programmatic Advertising Tools Make PPC Painless
- Diversify Your PPC Portfolio
- Use Automated Bidding the Right Way
- Regularly Update Negative Keywords
- Personalize Landing Pages
- Consider the Right Target Audience
- Optimize for Mobile
- Use a Bidding Strategy
Focus on timing
Do you keep your PPC advertising running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Hopefully not, but if you do, be aware that you’re likely flushing a significant amount of money down the drain. When it comes to PPC campaigns, it’s always a good idea to figure out when the optimal time is to show your advertisements and then either lower your bids or turn them off entirely during those hours.
For a portion of the day, your research-based keywords or lower-cost search phrases may be engaged. After all, many people conduct research during their working hours. However, identifying the most probable time that your ad will be viewed will be more beneficial for those proven high volume and pricey keywords. In this case, it’s likely to be a Saturday morning or a workday evening.
Axel Hernborg, Tripplo.com
Audience Segmentation
One best practice of PPC is to redefine your target audience. Providing a more personalized experience tailoring your advertising campaign will undoubtedly reach greater results. So, you should avoid using the same PPC campaign for your whole audience but split it considering factors such as demographics, locations, and behaviors. Gaining a better understanding of your customers allows you to deliver a more customized massage, leading to successful outcomes.
Natalia Brzezinska, PhotoAiD
Optimize for CPA, Not CPC
When it comes to PPC, it’s important to optimize for cost per acquisition (CPA) instead of cost per click (CPC). This means focusing on getting as many leads or customers as possible at the lowest cost rather than trying to get as many clicks as possible.
Claire Westbrook, LSAT Prep Hero
Expand Beyond Google Ads
Diversify your ad platforms. While most companies use Google ads, don’t forget about social media platforms. Running ads on Instagram, Facebook, and even Twitter can be extremely beneficial. Each platform represents a unique market and has PPC opportunities that may benefit your brand. By diversifying your ad platforms, you expand your reach, making the actual cost of PPC worth it.
Melanie Bedwell, Olipop
Programmatic Advertising Tools Make PPC Painless
Programmatic advertising tools, like AdRoll, take the pain out of running paid ad campaigns, enabling digital advertising to reach new heights. Most marketers only target three or four options in their search ad campaigns. These targets may include keywords, interest, time of day, or location. But automated programmatic demand-side platforms (DSPs) integrate with customer data software and deploy hundreds of targeting signals.
As users see the ads, DSPs record information about them. Then a profile is built up over time based on what type of content the user consumes, where they click on advertisements, and how often they do so. The improved targeting capabilities of these tools enable digital marketers to run personalized search ad campaigns that engage consumers at each stage of the funnel.
Jason Sherman, TapRm
Diversify Your PPC Portfolio
Diversify your PPC portfolio to broaden your reach and scope of opportunities. Build your PPC beyond one platform so that you can maximize the potential of your ads. Consider promoting on the top social media Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, the platforms that have considerably the biggest markets and the most content engagement.
Brogan Renshaw, Modelers Central
Use Automated Bidding the Right Way
Automated bidding can really help you improve your PPC results provided you’re using the right categories. Start with “Target ROAS” to ensure your marketing dollars are actually bearing fruit. In time, with the right data, you can expand to other categories like “Maximize Conversion” or “Maximize Clicks” to save yourself time while eliciting strong results.
Nate Tsang, WallStreetZen
Regularly Update Negative Keywords
Many business owners set their negative keywords once and forget about them, or don’t use them at all. You should regularly review the kinds of search terms that are irrelevant or don’t lead to conversions. The more you can add, the more refined your PPC strategy will be.
David Patterson-Cole, Moonchaser
Personalize Landing Pages
Personalization is a hot topic in marketing and advertising, and it’s absolutely true that consumers feel more connected to a brand when content is hyper-relevant to them. That’s exactly why one of the best practices when it comes to PPC ads is to personalize landing pages: ensuring that they’re unique to each campaign, or going even further and customizing them based on search terms will have far more impact on a consumer than a generic page. A targeted approach is the key to successful marketing and to encourage your audience to perform a desired action.
Nick Drewe, Wethrift
Consider the Right Target Audience
Take the time to think of the right target audience for your campaign. If the right people see your PPC ads and respond to them, this will make all of the effort put into your PPC ads worthwhile. You would not want to waste a lot of time creating engaging headlines, calls to action and graphics only to not get in front of the right viewers.
Drew Sherman, Carvaygo
Optimize for Mobile
One of the best ways to make use of your PPC budget to gain best results is to optimize for mobile. Because people are on their smartphones most of the time, it will only harm your budgeting when you do not consider mobile users or ensure it is visually appealing and user-friendly for mobile phone users. A mobile-friendly campaign can be a lot more effective for users who are constantly scrolling through their phones and can boot your click-through rates. When making a campaign optimised for mobile phones, you should also consider using short-tail keywords as it is more suitable for mobile users who use shorter keywords.
Michael Nemeroff, Rush Order Tees
Use a Bidding Strategy
One best practice when it comes to PPC is using a bidding strategy. This technique allows you to set the price that your ad will be shown for and sets limits on how many times an advertisement can run before it’s removed from search results, targeted display or sponsored listings. Bidding strategies allow advertisers with different types of budgets and goals to compete equally in order to get their ads seen more often by prospective customers.
Jar Kuznecov, Water Softeners Hub
Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published.