Have you ever had an advertising budget you thought was “enough”?
If you’re like most marketers you have to squeeze every ounce of effectiveness from for paid search advertising budget. Even if your budget is reasonably large you don’t want to squander it. After all, savings go to your bottom line along with sales.
There are lots of ways you can tailor and tweak your paid search advertising, especially if you’re a smart cookie. In the “leave no stone unturned” department, have you considered – and followed up on – every one of these ideas?
Use economies of scale.
If you’re just starting out or your budget is simply small, concentrate on a niche that’s compact but relevant for you, something you can easily manage. Niche markets are generally less competitive, so your CPC should be lower. You can expand later as you start to generate income. That way your paid search advertising is always paying for itself.
Refine your strategy.
If you aren’t already using Yahoo! or Bing perhaps you should rethink your options. These PPC avenues can be very effective indeed, if campaigns are properly designed and managed. And they can be much more cost-effective. With Google, use the Display Network, but be sure to separate search and display campaigns so you can accurately distill analytics to understand how each type of marketing is working.
Sharpen your targeting.
A smaller group of highly effective keywords will produce enough informative results to provide useful analytics. If you’re spread too thin you’ll never figure out what’s actually working. Or not. Earning is good, but learning from your paid search advertising efforts will earn you more in the long run. Remember these details:
- Focus on keywords that convert most frequently but cost as little as possible. Long-tails are your best friends, because specificity is less expensive and more targeted.
- Using negative keywords at every stage of paid search advertising can be especially productive. There’s no point in wasting your precious spend budget to attract searchers you don’t want.
- Double-check your geo-targeting to avoid advertising in areas where you don’t do business. For the vast majority of businesses, “global” is your functional universe, not the entire world.
- Dump broad search in favor of modified broad search or phrase match.
- Is your website isn’t fully optimized for mobile users, try to exclude these searchers – your site will just frustrate them anyway. Focus on targets who can easily get the results they need when they click through to you.
Set your ego aside.
You really don’t need the #1 position to reap results from paid search advertising. In fact, studies show that positions #3-10 – anything that keeps you on the first page – are often nearly as productive, depending on your markets, competition, etc. And heaven knows these slightly lower positions are less expensive. Let your results be your guide.
Schedule to advantage.
Get rid of unproductive days or time slots, so paid search advertising shows only when it’s working hardest for you. Further hone ad delivery based on how quickly your daily ad budget is used up. If all your ads are displayed early, you’ll miss later and potentially lucrative day-parts. Instead, schedule your ads to be evenly distributed throughout the day.
Test smartly to learn more.
Fiddling with ad details too soon will just muddy the waters and delay getting reliable analytics, wasting money you don’t have. Make one A/B change at a time, and give it enough time to generate useful results to evaluate before choosing the next A/B change. Only keep the very best — this is no time to let “pretty good” meet your standards.
The biggest budget in the world won’t help you if your ad campaigns are poorly designed. Be sure you aren’t frittering away your PPC budget with weak copy or especially with off-target landing pages.
To paraphrase an old cliché, to the clever go the conversions. So don’t let budget cuts or a chronically petite budget hold you back. Be savvy, get creative and manage your campaigns shrewdly. Flexibility is the foundation of paid search advertising, so match that with your own flexibility and willingness to explore ways to exploit every avenue to make the most of whatever budget you do have.
As your business grows – and your paid search advertising pays off – you’ll be smartly positioned to expand your PPC campaigns, with good structural foundation
And don’t forget that paid search advertising consistently builds name familiarity, too. Just showing up as one of someone’s search results puts your name in front of people, reinforcing your good standing with existing customers and building reputation with prospects. That incremental progress may be subtle, but it’s certainly a valuable investment over time. Even the tiniest budget can contribute to that.
great article for those of us who focus on growing our clients. I’ve come across so many clients who have had previous PPC campaigns that were poorly constructed. I would like to interject that I tend to position my clients at #1 in PPC and then tune down the max CPC and keep watching to maximize the conversions based on position. To each their own though.
Hi Tyler,
Thanks for reading and for your input! Great to hear from you!