PPC Campaign Management 101: Launching and Managing a Successful Campaign

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a highly effective marketing medium. It's precise, affordable, intuitive, and adaptable, making it an excellent place for your company to start reaching out to new customers online.

While PPC is simple to implement, it takes some preparation and planning. In this article, you'll learn everything you need to know about launching and managing a successful PPC campaign.

PPC management is the process of allocating budget and planning for your paid advertising campaigns, which includes keyword selection, ad copy, monitoring and analyzing metrics, optimizing campaigns, and conducting A/B testing.

In some cases, you could manage your PPC ads manually or use PPC management software. However, it is a challenging task. 

As a result, many companies opt to work with a digital agency to maximize their spending and conversions. When you choose to work with an agency, they take over your PPC management campaign and make recommendations to improve the effectiveness of your ad.

When done correctly, your PPC management strategy forms the foundation of a successful online marketing campaign. It's an excellent way to get your company recognized in a crowded marketplace and generate new leads. However, without a strategy in place, it is difficult to attract prospects who are most likely to convert.

Now, let’s dive into crafting a quality PPC campaign.

To maximize the impact of your ad campaigns, it's important to align them with your business objectives. Start by defining how your ads will help you achieve your goals.

Consider the specific goals you want to achieve with your ads. Do you want to increase website traffic, increase sales, raise brand awareness, or reach a different audience?  Defining your goals clearly will allow you to measure the success of your campaigns and make sure your efforts are focused on the right parameters.

Define how much you are willing to spend on advertising. Setting a budget will help you make strategic decisions about which channels to use, what types of ads to create, and how much money to spend on each campaign.

Your ads should include the following:

• Who do you want to reach out to?
  
• Your campaign's theme.
  
• How will you measure success?
  
• Which type of campaign will you run?
  

You don’t only need to know where you’ll advertise but also how. There are many different types of paid advertising campaigns, and which one you choose depends on where you can reach your target audience. 

That's not to say you can't advertise in different ways; you can also try a mix of campaign types, as long as you're constantly testing and revising. The following are some of the most common types of PPC ads:

• Search Ads 
  
• Display Ads 
  
• Social ads (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.) 
  
• Remarketing 
  
• Google Shopping
  

Although search ads are the most common, display advertising is on the rise. According to research, display advertising grew 41.2% in 2021, with ad spend reaching $105.99 billion.

Each ad group you create requires a set of keywords assigned to it. This is how search engines know where and when to show your ad. 

You should choose one to five keywords per ad group. These keywords need to be very relevant, as your Quality Score depends on them. 

Choose keywords that are closely related to the theme of your ad group. When you include keywords in your PPC campaign, you are speaking the same language as your customers. That means they can easily find you, and you can easily get their attention.

The keywords you select should be highly targeted, long-tail keywords that reflect the intent of searchers to become customers. If you come across keywords that fall outside of one theme and want to target them, you should create another ad group for them.

It is important to note that you are not limited to the keywords you start with. You should closely monitor your keyword list throughout your campaign, removing those that don't bring in the types of visitors you want and increasing your bids on those that do.

Negative keywords are another important aspect of keyword selection because they filter out keywords that you want to avoid. Negative keywords are words and phrases on which you do not want your ads to appear. They're a great way to narrow down your targeting and keep your ads from appearing on irrelevant searches.

Excluding search terms allows you to focus on the keywords that are most relevant to consumers, and the improved targeting can boost your ROI.

Now that you've identified your keywords, it's time to craft your ads. Each ad should include two key elements: the headline and a call to action.

Your ad's headline should include the keyword you want to target. It can also provide company information, such as recent awards, or simply your brand name. Regardless, most search engines bold a keyword when it appears in an ad, which means you'll immediately catch the attention of potential customers.

Now that you have their attention, use a call to action to convince them to convert. While having a call to action on an ad may appear unnecessary, it helps get clicks and new customers.

Ads can also include your phone number, address, links to other pages, signup forms, and other useful elements that encourage users to trust you and become customers.

Keep in mind, though, that your ad copy should be written in a natural, conversational tone, not as if you're trying to sell something. Your aim is for your ad to look and sound like organic results. Also, copy that sounds more natural is more engaging, persuasive, and compelling. 

Unfortunately, your work isn't finished once your ads are live. In fact, this is the point where the real work begins, which includes tracking your ads, measuring performance, and making changes as needed to improve results. 

A/B testing is a great way to accomplish this because it allows you to run two nearly identical versions of the same ad at the same time, with one important difference. You can change almost any element, including the copy, CTA, keyword, and even the landing page itself. 

You should also have a tool to keep track of important PPC metrics. Google Analytics is a free tool that you can download and use. This way, you can see how your website is performing, how visitors interact with your pages, and what content sticks out to them.

Impressions, click-through rate (CTR), and bounce rate are three of the most important metrics in PPC advertising.

PPC is highly trackable, which is one of the reasons it is so valuable to the marketing industry. You can see how many times your ad appears, how many times it is clicked, and even who clicks on it. With all of that information, you can improve your PPC campaign and even use it to improve your other marketing channels.

There are a few other things you can do to improve the ROI of your paid ads, regardless of time spent, budget, clicks, or conversions.

Your ad, like your keywords, has to account for the searcher's intent. You should give the searcher exactly what they're looking for and ensure that this is clear through the words you use.

Search ads are made up of a headline, a URL, and a brief description, and each of them has a limited number of characters. Make sure your ad copy does the following to maximize this space:

• Speak directly to your target audience.
  
• Include the main keyword for which you're bidding.
  
• Make an actionable CTA available so the searcher knows what to do.
  
• Make the offer attractive.
  
• Use language that matches the copy on your landing page.
  
• Run A/B split tests on your copy.
  

The page that leads to after clicking on your ad is the most important aspect of PPC after the Ad Copy. Your landing page's goal is to convert your new visitor into a lead or customer. A high-converting landing page will also improve your Quality Score, resulting in better ad placements. 

To increase conversions, a PPC landing page should include the following elements:

• A strong headline
  
• Elegant design and layout
  
• Responsive form
  
• Copy that is highly specific and relevant to your target keywords
  
• A/B tested
  

Bid adjustments allow you to adjust your bids based on performance. You can even customize these settings based on device, demographics, language, and other factors. For example, if a keyword isn't performing as well on mobile as it is on desktop, you can include a negative bid adjustment so that when someone searches your keyword on mobile, you'll bid X% less than your normal bid.

In Google Ads, you can schedule your ad to appear only on certain days and times. This can reduce ad spend while increasing relevance for your target audience.

Match types in Google Ads allow you to specify how closely related your ad group should be to a search team. There are four types of matches: 

• Broad
  
• Modified broad
  
• Phrase match 
  
• Exact match
  

Google will show your ad in search results based on your preferences.

When you invest time and money in a campaign, you want to know if it is successful. A PPC audit can help you understand how your campaign is performing over time and how you can improve it. A PPC audit will show you where you can improve the performance of your campaign.

A PPC audit can help you learn more about how your target audience interacts with your ads. You will discover what your target audience enjoys about the ad and what aspects need to be improved to provide a better experience for them.

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a cost-effective form of advertising that can help your company reach new customers online. You can manage your PPC ads manually or with PPC management software, but many businesses prefer to work with a digital agency to maximize their spending and conversions. You can attract prospects who are most likely to convert and generate new leads. With a well-crafted PPC campaign, it can be much easier for you to get your company noticed in a crowded marketplace.