Running a PPC Campaign: A Pathway to Success

The last blog post I wrote discussed how to create a PPC campaign. Now that you have your campaigns up and running and they’ve gathered a good chunk of data, what’s next? Below is a list of different ways you can and should optimize your account.  I’ll also let you know what reports to pull from AdWords that will help you in the optimization process.

Ways to Optimize:

• Lower Bids. Once you’ve gathered data on your keywords you can go through your keywords and decide what keywords are giving you the best results. If your goal cost per acquisition (CPA) is $20.00 then all of the keywords that have a $20.00 or below CPA are doing great. Leave those alone for now. I would suggest exporting all of your keywords in an excel document. Sort all of the keywords by conversions and separate the keywords that have converted from the ones that haven’t. Then go ahead and sort the converting keywords by CPA. This way you’ll know which keywords have a CPA higher than your goal. Look at the data for each of those keywords and if ad position isn’t too low, lower the bids on the keywords with high CPAs. This will allow you to spend less per click and hopefully maintain the number of conversions you’re getting thus getting you a lower CPA.
• Increase Bids. This goes right along with lowering bids. If you’re lowering bids on keywords that aren’t performing well, you’ll need to gather information on all the keywords that are performing well and decide if you should increase bids on those keywords. Increasing bids will give you a higher ad position, more traffic, and possibly more conversions. (Depending on ad position) Refer to Todd’s blog post about avoiding the number one position. Don’t bid too high or else your CPA will increase too much and won’t produce more sales or leads.
• Add Negative Keywords. Negative Keywords are extremely important in every campaign. They prevent you from showing up for search terms that aren’t related to what you do. For example, if you sell toy cars but not red toy cars, you’ll want to add ‘red’ as a negative keyword. A great report you can pull to give you possible negative keyword ideas is the search query report. You can pull this at the keyword level of any campaign from the drop down menu that says ‘see search terms’. You can then select ‘all’ and see what terms are pulling your ads. If some of those results aren’t relevant to your product, add them as negative keywords. You can directly add negative keywords in AdWords from that report to either the adgroup level or campaign level.
• Edit Ad Text. Ad text is crucial in an account. Ads are what potential customers are going to see first so you want to make sure they are direct, targeted, and give the client exactly what they’re looking for. Ad text needs to be compelling so customers want to click on your ad above everyone else’s.
• Never delete keywords! There is no reason to ever delete a keyword. If something isn’t working in your campaign, pause it! You never know when the data gathered from those keywords and/or ads might be helpful in optimizing your campaign.
• Expand Keyword List. If your campaign is converting well (and at a good CPA) and you’re wondering how to get more results, try expanding your keyword list. If you have more products that you’re not advertising for, add those products as different adgroups.

Always remember that data is the key to PPC. You can’t properly optimize your campaign without keyword and ad text data. Optimizations need to be done regularly and you should always be monitoring your account. Changes shouldn’t be made constantly or else you can’t gather the proper data you need for your campaigns but you should be monitoring your campaigns frequently. You’re never done with gathering data and optimizing keywords. When you reach your desired CPA that doesn’t mean you’re finished. PPC is a work in progress and can always be improved!

What are some roadblocks or successful strategies you’ve found while trying to optimize your campaigns?