How to Optimize a Paid Search Campaign for Conversions

Happy Friday,

I know we’ve discussed the value of Paid Search and PPC Agencies in the past.?

In that article, my recommendation to eCommerce businesses was to establish firm KPIs and realistic expectations. However, to do so effectively, business owners must understand the basics of a strong PPC campaign.

Personally, I feel it’s most advantageous to start with the keyword research that informs the direction of your entire Paid Search marketing strategy.

Proper PPC Keyword Research is vital to the success of your campaigns. When executed properly, it can:

1. Guarantee that your messaging is matched to the right audience.
2. Reduce the likelihood of advertising to the wrong audience.
3. Minimize costs due to precise targeting.?

Therefore, whether you manage an internal team or collaborate with an Agency, it’s important to know what this step entails. After all, if they conduct keyword research without your informed guidance, the results of your campaigns could start to plateau prematurely.

For example, did you know that you must consider negative keywords? It’s true; you’ll have to specify the keywords for which you don’t want to display your ads. If you are running Adwords and your negative keywords are not defined and updated weekly, I guarantee that 50% of your budget will be wasted on irrelevant clicks.

An Agency may be able to make accurate inferences about your business, but you will always be the best resource for this information. However, if you aren’t aware of these factors, how can you properly guide the direction of your Paid Search campaigns?

That’s why I like to offer these 6 tips for boosting your PPC campaigns through keyword research:

#1 - Brainstorm Internally: Do your Sales, Marketing, & Customer Relationship teams have insights into the way that clients and prospects speak about your products and services??

#2 - Use the Latest and Most Capable Tools: You can use free tools to get an idea of the keywords that your Agency should be targeting and excluding. However, as you become more comfortable with keyword research, you may want to consider premium tools that offer more comprehensive data.

#3 - Don’t Forget to Add and Update Negative Keywords: I mentioned this above, but it’s vital that you avoid displaying your ads for inappropriate, irrelevant, or off-brand keywords.

#4 - Align the Keywords with Your Content: This further calibrates the precision of your campaign by supporting your “keyword universe.” Ensure that your PPC campaign matches your content in terms of direction, intent, and perhaps even Call-To-Action.

#5 - Target Using All of Your Available Data: An Agency can gather quite a bit of data on your behalf, but you should always cross-reference with internal data sources. Do purchasers use different verbiage for similar products? Is there a correlation between purchaser behavior and certain key phrases? Take advantage of what your team already knows about your prospects & clients.

#6 - Target and Communicate on How You Fix (Business Problems): Your value proposition should be clear in your ads. Target specific benefits instead of features. For example, if you sell ergonomic mattresses, you can bid on the term “ergonomic mattress”. That’s a very competitive term that will cost you close to $50 a click. However, you can also bid on “how to get a good night's sleep”. The CPC will be cheaper and you will probably get that consumer at the beginning of the decision process. So, define benefits instead of features.?

These are critical facets of effective PPC keyword research and execution, but as you can imagine, this is just a small glimpse into optimizing your Paid Search campaigns.?

Read more about building your PPC campaign, here.

If you want to Skyrocket your Paid Search Conversions, Contact us.

Until next time,

Duran Inci