What is PPC Management?
As such, the term ‘PPC management’ refers to the overseeing of a pay-per-click ad strategy and its budget. This can usually be done by either an individual or a marketing team depending on the scale of your campaigns.
Nowadays, the best way to reach out to a wider audience is to advertise online. However, what really helps attract new leads beyond the ones that already follow you is paid advertisement. Compared to organic growth, this type of marketing focuses on directly targeting your audience with a set budget, instead of waiting for people to find you. It’s something that has helped brands grow quickly, even by only investing a small amount.
In fact, successful PPC marketing can be done just by spending very little and still gaining great returns. That’s the goal: reaching out to the interested demographic and encouraging them to click on your call to action. The most popular platforms for PPC campaigns are Google Search Ads, Facebook, and Instagram. Many companies tend to adapt their campaigns for the different platforms and run them at the same time to see what sticks. However, smaller companies with a smaller budget can still get great results even just by investing in the platforms that seem to be largely populated by their target audience.
How does PPC Management work?
Exactly as you would with your website strategy, PPC Management requires careful planning and testing to be successful. Usually, you can expect this process to entail the following tasks:
Identify what your audience is searching for and select the platforms to use for advertising
For this, you can use the audience you have already identified when you were working on your website strategy or developing your online branding. When it comes to selecting the platforms, instead, it should be a quite straightforward process unless your business is highly specific (for example, if you’re a B2B company that offers manufacturing resources, running ads on Google search would probably be a better choice than Instagram). Otherwise, you can just run campaigns on every media channel and then decide which one you should invest more in and which one you should drop.
Analyze the competition and spot the strengths and weaknesses in their online branding, then use that to tweak your campaigns accordingly
PPC ads are all about discovering the right formula that makes them successful. Thankfully, you don’t have to start from a completely blank canvas. In fact, it’s good practice to view what the competitors in your industry are doing and take inspiration from their ads. Platforms like Facebook allow you to easily see the currently running ads of any company you can think of – if they have a Facebook page, then you can instantly see if they are advertising through it. How can you tell if they’re successful? If an ad has been running for a while, then you can assume the reason for it is that it has been generating leads and sales for the company. Use this information to your advantage – whether it’s examples of ads that seem to perform well or ones that fail to deliver. You can then create your ad campaigns to follow a similar format or to highlight a strength that your competitor doesn’t offer.
Monitor the performance of your campaigns and optimize them based on data to better convert leads
You won’t know how well a PPC ad will perform until it goes live. This means that optimization will only be effective once you have launched your ads. That’s when you will get enough data to judge which ad is going to bring a return on investment, and which one is only draining your budget. It’s better to be objective when it comes to the ads – your target audience might not respond well to them, regardless of how much you think the ads effectively highlight the strengths of your product or service. If the ad didn’t convince people to click on your call to action, then it’s ultimately better to edit it in a way that it might. Sometimes, it might even be better to re-create it from scratch. It’s important to monitor the performance of your campaigns, as the data is clear proof of which strategy you should follow and what doesn’t work. Once you get going on different platforms, you will have collected enough analytics to have a good idea of what to do exactly with your campaigns to have them succeed and avoid wasting your budget.
Run A/B testing across your media channels to figure out what delivers the biggest results and what doesn’t work
Don’t fall for the trap of only testing one type of ad. Every company runs A/B testing with ad campaigns or even with email campaigns. This is because it allows them to save time on testing ads, and also ensures the best use of your budget. Sometimes, all that is stopping your ad from succeeding is the wrong headline or a not-so-convincing call to action. Try launching an ad with a different headline or CTA, and suddenly you may see a boost in conversion. That’s the magic of A/B testing! Ultimately, it will help you save time on trying to figure out what works the best with your campaigns. If you have multiple ads going live and reaching out to your target audience, you can get a faster response and access more statistics than you otherwise would if you focused on launching a single ad.
How to create & manage a successful PPC campaign
So, based on the points above, what are the best strategies you can try to improve your PPC campaigns and the way you manage them?
Invest in the right channels
Of course, once you know who your target audience is, you need to figure out where to find them. This will vary based on each demographic and might require some trial and error before you figure it out. Ideally, you should run your campaigns across different media channels, and then invest more in the one that suits your business model the best.
Give your PPC Management company some goals
Every company aims to grow bigger and convert leads. When it comes to PPC management, it’s best to set something in stone that is more specific and that allows you to build a strategy around it. Create some realistic goals that your team can work on achieving – for example, do you aim to increase the number of leads with your campaigns by a set amount? Do you want to boost your online branding so that more people know about your company rather than just product/service?
Think about it, and when you decide, you can create an actual strategy to make it happen.
Follow the right format
Every media channel, whether it’s a search engine or social media platform, requires you to follow some rules to create paid ads. These rules are usually about the word limit of your copy, the image you can use, and the actual content of your ad. The specific details of each channel will vary, but it’s important to be aware of what each one of them requires to avoid wasting time trying to launch a campaign that will not be approved, or that will fail to convert leads due to a few mistakes.
Before you do anything else, become familiar with the rules of each media channel you intend to use and create your ad campaigns within their limits.
Accept the initial costs
Realistically, your first campaigns won’t deliver a huge return on investment (ROI). This is normal, as these initial campaigns are mostly meant to help you figure out how to reach out to your target audience. Then, once you have identified the successful format to follow, you can start using it to really boost sales and convert leads.
The secret with PPC ads is always to have patience and like with any other business venture, to expect to spend more than you make at the beginning. Investments are what lead to growth.
Keep optimizing your PPC Management
The job of a PPC management company never stops. Once you start launching your ad campaigns, you’ll be required to keep monitoring the way they perform and to act based on their results. If a campaign fails to deliver, you need to be ready to either tweak it in a way that data suggests would be better or stop it from running before it bleeds your budget dry with no ROI.
As we mentioned before, it’s a process of trial and error that requires good planning, exactly like you would with other things about your business like your website strategy.
Hire a PPC Management company
If you’re worried about managing your ad spend or unsure of where to start, you can always employ a marketing agency to do this job. They will provide you with a PPC marketer, or a team of marketers, who will be in charge of creating, launching, and monitoring your ad campaigns.
However much or little they do will depend on your preferences – if you know your audience well and only need help with monitoring the ads, then you can always work on creating the ads and let them take care of the rest. After all, the goal of a marketing agency is just to help you achieve the goals you set.
Top PPC Management tools of 2023
Here’s the good news: PPC management can be made easy thanks to a few helpful tools. This type of software allows you to gain a great overview of all of your PPC campaigns, sometimes in one single place. Some of them even help you find the right keywords for your ads, and aid you in the actual creation of the campaign. Here are the most popular PPC management tools of 2023:
Adalysis for PPC Management
If you’re looking for an automation tool that specifically focuses on Google and Microsoft ads, then Adalysis is an option you should check out. They offer features that spread across different key elements of PPC management: analyzing data, automating; monitoring campaigns, and optimization. While it offers a free trial, this is a paid tool that can be used by companies of all sizes.
Adzooma for PPC Management
The Adzooma software allows you to get started for free and offers you plenty of tools to manage your PPC campaigns. From automation to optimization, it can be your one-stop to create, launch, and edit every paid ad across multiple platforms.
Optmyzr for PPC Management
If you’re okay with investing some money in a PPC management tool, then Optmyzr can be a great option. This platform uses machine learning to provide you with all the data you need to optimize your PPC campaigns. However, the level of detail and features of this tool might appear complex to use to some beginners.
Adespresso for PPC Management
Whether you wish to monitor your Facebook campaigns or your Google ads, Adespresso allows you to do it all over one single platform. This tool focuses on split testing and optimization across every ad you have launched on social media or Google – offering features that allow you to create your ads directly, manage them, analyze them, and even collaborate on every campaign with your team and clients.
SEMRush for PPC Management
If you’re a beginner looking to learn more about how to create effective PPC ad campaigns, then SEMRush might be for you. Its features allow you to seek out the best keywords for your campaigns, improve your ad spending, and check out the ads of your competitors so that you can find the best way to position your brand against them.
Google Ads Editor for PPC Management
If you’re interested in creating Google ads, then the Google Ads Editor is a must-try for you. Once you have created and launched your ads, you can use this tool to edit campaigns in bulk, get detailed statistics of how your ads are performing, and edit campaigns even offline. Of course, the only downside of this tool is that it’s limited to Google Ads, so to get insights into your other campaigns you will need to use other tools.