Table of Content;
15 PPC Best Practices to watch for in 2021
- Choose the best keywords
- Understand the buyer’s journey
- Always include a CTA
- Focus on both new and returning customers
- Re-evaluate campaign budget
- Go for testing various platforms
- Come up with creative ad messages
- Focus more on mobile devices
- Utilize the power of first-party data
- Improve quality score
- Remove clicks that don’t convert
- Go local
- Landing pages do matter
- Know who’s actually viewing your ad
- Don’t miss out on testing
- In the bottom line
Are you following the right best practices for your pay-per-click ad campaign? If not, then you just dropped into the right place.
2020 has been a roller-coaster year for all of us with the ongoing pandemic shutting down most of the businesses. This year, the marketers didn’t have the opportunity to think about the PPC advertising campaigns that can help in their business growth.
Perhaps in the upcoming year, 2021, we can expect a better future for PPC advertising. The marketers have already geared up to follow the best strategies and practices in order to gain a competitive edge.
You will be surprised to know that almost 50% of your internet visitors are more likely to convert into leads than just being a part of the organic traffic.
PPC serves as an innovative approach for driving in more leads to the business. Also, paid ads have a CTR of almost 11.38% on Google.
Types of PPC that a marketer can focus on
1. Display ads
For getting better brand exposure and immediately grabbing the occasional leads, display ads are very useful. This kind of ad appears on the partner websites of Google. This typically includes a text and a photo.
2. Search ads
These are the first ads that you generally see directly on the search results page. These ads are found both at the top and bottom search results on Google.
Whenever you search for a service or product online in any search engine, shows up a results page that consists of both sponsored and organic results. These are known as search ads.
These ads can be displayed in various ways, but the search engines particularly indicate which results should get sponsored and which shouldn’t be. Search ads are basically text-format ads.
3. Social ads
Another type of paid advertising is social media ads, which appear on various social media platforms. You must have come across several sponsored ads while scrolling the newsfeed of LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
These sponsored ads often come in the form of products/service carousel or videos. Marketers these days generally prefer social media for promoting their brand as more than half of the global population are hooked on social media platforms 24*7.
As per Statista, the number of social media users will increase to 4.41 billion by the end of the year 2025.
4. Google shopping
While searching for any particular product, the first thing you find is a carousel of various products from different companies. Google shopping ads adds the feel of ‘window-shopping’ to the internet user.
It helps the user in choosing the best product as per their budget and brand preferences. Once the user clicks on any one of these products, they will be redirected to that particular website.
This kind of campaign is very useful for e-commerce websites.
5. Remarketing ads
If you are a marketer, then you would never want to lose your loyal customers. The remarketing ad is another type of PPC campaign, where you can re-engage your loyal customers
Often, you will see that people visit your website, check out your services or products, gather good knowledge about them, but they do not ultimately convert. It may be because they are confused about your business or maybe they have found some other better alternative.
Remarketing ads are a kind of tracking pixel through which you can get a better glimpse of what actually the users view on your pages. If you are already running a Google PPC ad then you can easily add this kind of tracking pixel in your existing campaign.
6. Local services ads
Although the local service is limited to certain types of businesses. However, you can still leverage this if your business category falls in any of the available market options.
Local service ads are easy to setup. It just takes 3 steps. First, you need to sign as a local service provider, then set your budget, and at last, start with your ads on Google directly.
Local service ads mainly cater to the specific queries that people are making in and around your neighborhood, city, or zip code.
7. YouTube instream ads
Everybody loves streaming videos on YouTube. And if you have ever noticed that while watching a YouTube video, often a non-skippable video or content ad pops in.
These are the sponsored in-stream ads that you often see while watching a video on YouTube.
If the ad entices the attention of the internet user then they are more likely to click on it and get themselves redirected to the website.
8. Gmail sponsored promotion
Reaching the interested audience right into their inbox can be done with Gmail sponsored promotions. With Gmail ads, you can rightly target your potential audience.
This kind of ad looks almost similar to any other mail, except an ‘ad’ tag symbol which appears on the left-hand side of the email. This kind of email can be viewed in both mobile and desktop Gmail app.
15 PPC Best Practices to watch for in 2021
Being one of the most effective tools of the digital marketing domain, the pay-per-click ad campaign brings qualified leads to one’s business, if implemented properly. I have listed the top 15 PPC best practices that you cannot afford to skip in the coming year:
#1. Choose the best keywords
PPC ads work the best when you are targeting specific keywords. It is very much important for the users to stumble across those keywords which you are targeting.
Therefore, you have to ensure that you are bidding on the exact keywords. A Keyword Planner is an essential tool that can provide you with keyword suggestions.
For beginners, the Keyword Planner is one of the most effective tools to start with.
#2. Understand the buyer’s journey
This is one of the most prominent strategies that the PPC marketers will focus upon. It is very much essential for you to understand the entire picture of your audience for whom you are aiming.
Those marketers who adjust their PPC marketing endeavors with the buyer’s journey will remain ahead in 2021.
This can be accomplished through understanding your client’s requirement and their technique when they decide to purchase from you. Think about the accompanying:
- What they may be looking for?
- How are they interacting with your products or services?
- What amount of time the purchasing cycle takes?
Advertisers need to develop their methodology and consider connecting with the correct audience. The two significant areas that are important for reaching out to your clients are the usage of proper keywords and images.
#3. Always include a CTA
A CTA or call-to-action button is the key to bringing more leads to your business. CTA is a kind of small button-type popup that contains some kind of exciting description that will attract the audience to register or provide their mail ID.
You have to show what people can achieve from your products or services within a single-line description, that would entice them to click on it. The CTA should have the potential of converting the customer to a lead.
An effective call-to-action button should have a clear message along with a compelling clickable button, like ‘Download Now’, ‘Sign Up’, ‘Start My Free Trial’, and so on.
#4. Focus on both new and returning customers
If you are aware of the marketing funnel then it has two stages. The first stage is generating interest and awareness about your products and services.
This is the exact place where the PPC campaigns are aimed. Smart marketers use keywords for targeting both existing and new customers.
Focusing on new customers is highly crucial, but you should never forget your local customers. They are the ones who can be your brand’s advocate if they are satisfied with your products or services.
Keep on updating them about your new products or services wire mails for sending them free ebooks are white papers via mail.
#5. Re-evaluate campaign budget
Sadly, advertisers can once in a while can get busy with some other stuff, thus forgetting or neglecting to rethink and audit the dispersion of their media budget plan.
While dealing with your reviews, you should mull over whether the campaigns which performed poorly in the past have been removed. This is important to free up the budget for different campaigns.
Serious metrics should be taken a gander at to recognize whether there is any extra traffic that helps in providing better outcomes, leading to a winning campaign strategy.
#6. Go for testing various platforms
If you want to ensure your success in your PPC campaign, then the first thing that you should do is to test out different social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and so on.
Check how your customers are getting involved with your ads on different platforms. Find out which platform works better.
If you think that you need to utilize several other features to make it work better then it’s the best time for you to do it.
Leverage the benefit of social media, as these platforms are the only places where you can find the maximum number of audiences.
#7. Come up with creative ad messages
When it comes to writing down the text or choosing the right image for your ad campaign, then be creative as much as you can. Remember, you have a long list of competitors who are fighting to grab the topmost position with the strongest keyword bids.
You may use any type of PPC ad campaign strategy, but it is your duty to make sure that you are providing an eye catchy image or an enticing message, that is sure to grab the eyeballs of your users.
If you don’t come up with creative ad messages or pictures, then you are surely going to lose leads, as the user will just skip your ad and move to the next one.
#8. Focus more on mobile devices
More than desktops, you will find your users hooked into their mobile devices. While browsing their Facebook on the Instagram newsfeed or by watching any YouTube video, they might land up finding your sponsored ads.
And if your ad is creative or enticing enough to make the user click on it, then they will be redirected to your website.
That is the reason you should make sure that your website is user-friendly to every mobile device. It is very much important for your website to work smoothly on any kind of Smartphone as nobody likes to navigate a website full of bugs and crashes.
Think from the user’s perspective and then you will understand why you need to focus more on mobile devices.
#9. Utilize the power of first-party data
It’s been proposed by industry specialists that how the sourced data is going to be disrupted. This has happened because of limitations to the third-party cookies across various browsers or programs and changes in worldwide privacy & security policies.
A few experts have even said that search engines don’t need you to follow anything important pushing ahead.
In this manner, it’s significant that you are in a situation to recuperate a lump of your traffic information.
#10. Improve quality score
Numerous PPC stages have their own norms for what can help you win a bid. It’s not just about the amount you’re willing to spend, but the quality of your advertisements, also. In AdWords, for example, this is estimated by a “Quality Score“.
This considers your click-through rate or CTR, however, the significance of the ad promotions to the picked keywords and the relevancy of the site to the advertisements.
Improve your Quality Score, above all else, by ensuring that you’re wiping out any keywords for other ad groups where they seem irrelevant.
#11. Remove clicks that don’t convert
There are many people who are getting exposure to your PPC ad; however, they are not those users who actually want to purchase your products or services.
For instance, if you sell only low-fat dairy products, you don’t want your PPC ads to appear on the searches of people who want full-fat dairy products.
In this case, you can use a negative keyword modifier to ensure that your ad does not appear to an irrelevant or disinterested audience.
Also, there are several other categories of keywords that you do not want to showcase an irrelevant audience. Continue building your list of negative keywords and then utilize the negative keyword modifier.
This will help you in saving your money on the clicks that do not actually convert.
#12. Go local
The physical location of any business plays a huge role in grasping the attention of the nearby internet users, particularly with PPC campaigns like Google AdWords.
If you set the location parameters for a particular area, then people who are nearby that area are more likely to stumble across the ad first; even if they haven’t searched with any specific keyword or location.
Studies show how location-based advertisements could be an essential best practice of the PPC ad campaigns.
#13. Landing pages do matter
Smart advertisers do not waste time by investing in ads for a specific service or product that will take them to their website homepage.
When it is about converting your visitors into potential leads, then it is very much essential that they are being redirected to the landing pages. A perfect landing page can include long-form content or website content with a call-to-action button at the end or somewhere in the middle.
The landing page should specifically meet the interest and requirements of the user.
Also, after you create a landing page for a particular product or service, then make sure that you are going for the A/B testing procedure.
This is very much essential to understand if the customers are getting a reply back mail after they are filling up the landing page form.
#14. Know who’s actually viewing your ad
You will be surprised to know that more than 40% of internet traffic comes through chatbots for bots.
This nonhuman internet traffic is mainly done for PPC Click Fraud. There are several cases of PPC Click Fraud where your competitor will click on any particular ad of yours several times; just to waste your money.
With Click Fraud, your PPC campaign can become much more expensive. In this case, you need to use IP Exclusion for identifying those IP addresses who are clicking on your ad for no reason and not getting converted.
This process also makes sure that your ad does not appear to irrelevant users.
#15. Don’t miss out on testing
As a marketer, you need to go for various A/B testing processes. First of all, you need to test your landing pages. Ensure that they are being received soon after a person fills out the form.
Then comes the competitive keyword testing. Checking on the competitor’s campaigns can inflate both CPCs and CPAs when you can understand what kind of audience are your competitors targeting.
Also, go for testing the dynamic search ads. The goal of the dynamic search ads is to gather new keywords that are outside your lists.
In the bottom line
Going for the PPC ad campaign strategy can definitely come up with fruitful results if those are implemented properly and strategically.
Source: pixabay.com
These 15 PPC best practices pointers can actually help you in boosting your business by converting your potential customers into leads, thus improvising the ROI in the year 2021.
If you have any other queries or want us to help you in PPC management services, then do request for a free quote today.
Happy advertising!!
