Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing – a type of online marketing based on the principle of advertisers paying every time someone clicks on one of their ads – has been around for a long time now. However, that doesn’t mean you can depend on easily executing a successful PPC campaign every time – at least in the absence of proper planning.
The careful planning of your brand’s PPC efforts – including evaluating past efforts, keeping informed about new trends and technologies, and fine-tuning your strategy – will always be crucial. So, here are some of the best ways to achieve exactly that.
Define the goals for your PPC campaign
When it comes to any kind of online marketing drive, it is vital to set clear goals to guide the decisions you make with your campaign.
This is no less the case with PPC, with both primary and secondary goals important. You might set a primary goal, for instance, of generating leads from your ads, perhaps teamed with secondary goals like attracting page views and/or your site visitors adding products to their shopping cart.
Identify the elements of your campaign to automate
Artificial intelligence (AI) is not, of course, a substitute for well-judged strategy and creativity by human beings. There is, however, scope to make the most of AI in Google Ads campaigns in 2024, such as by using automatically created assets and/or steering the AI in Performance Max campaigns.
So, the planning stage of your next PPC campaign is the time to decide which elements you wish to automate. This will be much easier to do if you have already long proactively informed yourself about the latest features of platforms like Google Ads.
Look again at the keywords you are using for PPC
There has been an evolution over recent years in the part played by keywords across paid media and PPC. Match types have become less precise, loosening up to take account of searcher intent.
In the past, for example, “exact match” keywords would literally match with the exact search query. Now, however, if someone performs a search query that merely has the same meaning or intent, this could be enough to trigger an ad.
So, at the planning stage, it could be a good idea to lay out keyword groups and assess whether they are continuing to accurately represent your products, services, and/or wider brand. Also make sure you understand how keywords work on the specific platforms you’re using, as this can make a big difference to the effectiveness of your campaigns.
With the midpoint of 2024 having finally arrived, if you followed the advice that we set out in our article in January about New Year resolutions to set for PPC campaigns, now could be an excellent time to reflect on your progress. You can also, of course, reach out to Jumping Spider Media’s experts to learn more about how we could support your brand’s PPC efforts.