How to Do Small Business PPC Management

PPC management for small businesses can be challenging. The industry is constantly changing, and most small businesses do not have the time to fully capitalize on the opportunities provided by such digital marketing channels. 

But, it doesn’t have to be hard. With a few tricks up your sleeve, you can make PPC do all the work for you while your business grows/

Let’s explain how to do small business PPC management.

Because of its ability to deliver quick results, PPC marketing should be the top priority of your digital marketing campaigns when choosing a marketing channel. 

For most businesses, PPC is probably the most cost-effective option. Let's take a look at the best techniques for increasing the ROI of your PPC marketing campaigns.

It is always important to first identify exactly what you hope to achieve with your marketing campaign. Paid ads only bring prospects to your website; the rest is up to your website's design, user experience, and what you offer.

There are three stages to the user journey.

• Pre-Click: Set goals and assign values to them while creating your campaign. The value of your goals allows machine learning to optimize delivery toward the goal with the highest value. Your ad creative, copy, and keyword strategy will all influence how much you pay for each click. This stage's optimization should be your top priority.
  
• Post-click: The post-click phase includes your landing page speed, UX design, website copy, and product description. When a prospect clicks on your ads, these are the factors that decide whether the click will result in a conversion.
  
• Feedback loop: Your analytics and data-sharing framework will determine the quality of your next click. Data-driven advertising follows the latest trends in your industry. Many factors influence why a customer clicks on your ad, and effective data use provides a clear picture.
  

If you are not sure which keywords to include in your marketing campaign, or you are just getting started with PPC you should first understand how your competitors' PPC campaigns are run. 

When analyzing those keywords, keep in mind their length as well as their potential intent. Some keywords, for example, belong to the research phase of a customer journey, whereas others are more transactional and have a potentially higher ROI.

Here are some things to look for:

• Search volumes - It is important to know how much traffic your competitor receives for each keyword. If you're on a tight budget, don't just go for the ones with the most traffic.
  
• Competitor's budget - Using different tools, you can get a general idea of how much they are spending on PPC campaigns.
  

You should also make a negative keyword list before beginning your PPC ad campaign. Negative keywords are those that will prevent your ads from being displayed. Your ads will not be shown to anyone who searches for that phrase.

Making a negative keyword list can help you in fine-tuning your audience. You'll be able to create ads without worrying about targeting the wrong people. When you pay for every click, the last thing you want is ad clicks from people who aren't even interested in your product or service in question.

Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and Facebook Ads, which include Instagram, are the most well-known PPC advertising channels. A small business will typically begin by investing in Google Ads or Facebook Ads.

Because Google is the world's largest and most popular search engine, it provides advertisers with the greatest potential reach. When someone searches on Google, they are actively typing in keywords to find what they are looking for. 

When someone is on Facebook, unlike Google, they are typically passively scrolling through their feed and may or may not be looking for what your business offers. 

The Microsoft Ads platform may only receive 10-15% of search traffic, but it is present on sites such as Yahoo, AOL, Bing, and MSN around the world. While the platform does not provide all the ad types available on Google, it does provide a good selection. The average cost-per-click is as much as 60% less than Google. This, however, is industry-specific. 

When the audience is already familiar with the brand and product, ad campaigns are much more effective. Using different types of advertisements on the appropriate platforms, you can gradually move your audience through your sales funnel.

When it comes to ad campaigns, no keyword list should be set in stone. If your campaign isn't performing as well as it should, don't be afraid to add new keywords to the list. 

Small changes here and there can make a big difference in conversion; the only way to find out what works is to test constantly.

When expanding your keyword list, make sure to only include words that are relevant to your company and ad campaign. Here are a few guidelines for choosing keywords:

• The new keyword should be included in the ads.
  
• There should be a separate ad campaign group for each new keyword set.
  
• When you add new keywords, increase your budget.
  

Split testing, also known as A/B testing, allows you to test different designs and versions of your ads to see what works best and improve future campaigns. This is something you can do with your ads or landing pages.

Run two ads that are only slightly different - for example, keep the design the same but change the keywords, or change the headline but not the audience. Monitor which one performs better, then take the best-performing one and refine it.

Each ad campaign should include at least one of these kinds of tests. This will allow you to fine-tune and improve your campaign by utilizing the best design and copy. 

Testing your ads will allow you to gain insight and learn something new. Whatever the outcome, knowledge will be your ROI.

No matter how successful your campaign is, knowing when to stop and how to control it is essential. It can be very tempting to extend a successful campaign, but it can be even more effective once it is over.

When you've spent your budget, it's time to pause and evaluate the campaign. Examine it thoroughly and determine which strategies worked and which did not. 

In your next campaign, use whatever information you understood from your evaluation. Remove the strategies that did not work and replace them with the ones that did.

A spending cap will keep you from overspending on a single campaign. 

It’s more beneficial to create a budget for multiple ad campaigns rather than to let one PPC campaign continue for so long that it begins to flop. Constantly adapting is the most effective way to manage your ad campaigns.

A bid is the most money you're willing to pay for one click. PPC advertising is auction-based, with three components that go into the auction for each search:

• The highest bid you place
  
• Your ad quality (or quality score),
  
• Your ad's expected performance (based on additional information you include in your ad).
  

In the world of PPC management, sticking to your budget is crucial. Having a strong bid is important for campaigns with low margins since these slim margins could quickly get wiped out with a bad bid.

It is essential to know how well your PPC ads are performing. Although your PPC campaign will continue to run as long as you pay for it, this does not mean you can set it up and forget about it. 

You should monitor your results only to make sure that it is still working for you and your small business.

Monitoring analytics can also help you adjust and improve your ads. As you revise your campaigns, they will become more effective—and generate even more results for your company.

You don't necessarily need to spend more money on extra tools or services if you're a small business just beginning to use PPC advertising. 

The best thing you can do at first is to become familiar with the platform you've chosen to start with and to take advantage of educational resources such as the Google Ads Help Center, YouTube videos on campaign setup and best practices, as well as other educational resources on such topics.

It’s important to realize that managing PPC campaigns isn’t always simple. If you find that you simply don’t have the time to do it yourself, you may think about hiring a marketing agency to assist you with the creation and management of your paid ads.

The amount of control you have over how your budget is spent is one of the most visible advantages of PPC marketing. 

Almost all PPC advertising platforms allow you to set a specific budget, control your target audience or keywords, and adjust your bid per click. You ultimately decide how much you want to spend and how you want to spend it.

You also get immediate, concrete reporting and visibility into how your dollars are spent with PPC marketing. This includes learning about specific locations and devices that perform better, demographics of users who engage with your ad more frequently, and high-performing keywords.

These PPC marketing insights allow you to immediately evaluate the effectiveness of your efforts and gain valuable insight into where you can double down on successes.

PPC advertising requires no SEO or content effort. This eliminates the need to spend time creating content and hoping it will rank organically, which takes time and research to develop. 

Instead, with PPC advertising, you specify which terms or keywords you want to appear for in a search engine and bid on them specifically. It ultimately serves as a quick way to increase your website traffic.

Most PPC marketing platforms, such as Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, or Facebook Ads, allow anyone to create an account and start building campaigns in minutes.

The ease with which an account can be set up and campaigns can be created is a plus. 

However, it also implies you have to be well informed about best practices and errors to avoid for each platform in which you invest.

PPC advertising and organic digital marketing initiatives like SEO or organic social media marketing vary most visibly in how their costs are calculated. 

While PPC advertising charges a fee for each click, the cost of organic channels can be more difficult to calculate. It is usually the cost of time spent writing a blog or designing a social media post, as well as the fees paid to host your content.

Ideally, you would use both PPC and SEO to drive traffic to your company's website. They each have advantages and disadvantages that work best when combined in a cohesive digital marketing strategy.

If you have to choose between PPC and SEO, it completely depends on what your company needs. If you're a small business looking for local results with little online competition, SEO is probably the best place to start.

However, if you're an online store targeting extremely competitive eCommerce search terms, using hyper-specific PPC will help you gain exposure for your company.

But, more than likely, you'll use both over time and mix and match strategies when necessary.

With careful planning and execution, small businesses can leverage PPC advertising to boost their ROI and improve their online presence. There is no one-size-fits-all formula for digital marketing success, but having PPC management tips on hand will put you ahead of the game.