2012 Resolutions To Improve Your PPC’s Bottom Line

PPC Strategies to Improve Your Bottom Line:

Our clients simply had awesome PPC results in 2011; higher click volumes and click-through-rates (CTR), lower costs, and better positioning on the search engine pages. However, it was the clients who tested some of our more advanced strategies and embraced new opportunities that truly experienced phenomenal results:

Two Methods to Approach Increasing ROI

Oftentimes, advertisers neglect the impact of rising costs on the bottom line. To achieve phenomenal results – creative marketers should be able to both increase revenue while decreasing cost. So how did we find those low-cost, high-value opportunities?

Look Beyond Paid Search Channels

• Search engines do their best to reward a website that provides users with their ideal experience. If a keyword is successfully driving traffic to your organic website, chances are it would also be relevant for your PPC campaign.
• Client A found more of their website traffic coming from keywords containing “downtown” and has had great success with a “downtown” ad group.

Improve Your Targeting

• Don’t create a one-size-fits-all campaign – the more specific you can become in your targeting (i.e. geography, device, language, etc.) the better.
• Client B runs separate campaigns for English, Spanish, and Portuguese speakers as well as different campaigns for computers, tablets devices, and mobile devices.

Focus on Your MVPs

Keywords, ad groups, and campaign aren’t created equal, so don’t treat them as such.

• Identify the most profitable keywords/ad groups/campaign (not just the highest clicks, CTR, etc.) and redirect funds to ensure your top performers are getting the best exposure possible.
• If you examine your campaigns, you’ll probably find that 80% of your revenue is coming from 20% of the keywords. If keywords haven’t performed well historically, chances are they never will. Consider a major “detox” of your PPC campaigns to start 2012.

By looking beyond paid search, refining current campaign targeting, and focusing on the “star” keywords as opposed to trying to improve the 80% of poor performers, any PPC campaign can have a successful 2012. For some additional reading and PPC strategy resources, please also visit: the Top 5 Successful 2011 PPC Strategies and Top 10 Best Practices for Optimizing PPC Campaigns

The views and opinions presented are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the company. Any changes to a pay-per-click campaign should be done only after careful research and analysis – any changes made to an account are at the discretion of the advertiser and the authors cannot be held liable for the results of any modification.

___________________________________
Contributed by
Jonas Pauliukonis, Sr. eStrategist and
David Addison, eStrategist