2020 was the biggest rollercoaster anyone has ever been on. Especially for entrepreneurs and marketers all around. The aesthetics of digital marketing changed with the entry of innumerable new players across all industries. This led to an increased marketing cost for some.
It’s a basic rule of economics – the price remains stable only when demand equals supply. Now although demand surged with the speed of light, the supply theoretically remained the same. And exceptionally so in the case of PPC marketing.
The concept of PPC is getting you the best value for your money with a budget that shall only be used on if someone clicks on your ads. It involves ranking for a particular set of words for a particular crowd in a particular area. The unexpected paradigm shift has made everyone compete at the same level.
But, just because the world has moved, shouldn’t mean your bottom line has to as well. Taking on PPC in London through a planned map and strategized moves can still land you up in the top-tier without the excess cash burn.
Below are some tips, tricks, strategies and tactics to get you to the other side of PPC marketing without the budgetary speed bumps.
Small Ad Groups
Relevance and generalization don’t go together. Splitting your ad strategy into a tightly knit set of keywords and targeting them towards a focussed audience is a great way to achieve higher conversions with lower costs. Be extremely specific about what your consumers are searching for and bring together only those keywords that share some kind of direct resemblance. This way, you could segregate your campaigns to capture the market that is leveraged towards the product or service you offer.
Google Ad’s features like Modified Broad Match and Phrase Match are your best friends here. Find exactly how your audience searches for you and you shall find them without looking all over the place.
A/B Testing
You can never know if you never try. PPC Marketing isn’t a one-trick pony. You need to understand what works for you and what doesn’t. Split Testing, or A/B Testing, gives you the space to experiment with different keywords, strategies, audiences and landing pages to find out what works the best. Although testing could be a little financially excruciating, to begin with, it would eventually save a lot of unnecessary costs through focussed efforts.
Remember to run campaigns for a limited amount of time and gather the data to enter the next round of experimentation. The results can show a certain amount of variance depending upon your sample size and campaign implementation. Nevertheless, choose a horse to bet on and pause all the other ads to concentrate your funds towards better conversions.
Quality Score
Quality Score is the metric that allows you to stand above your competitors, even with lower bids. Think of it as building a reputation with Google and then, banking on it to get better services than others. But, Google only helps those who provide value to its visitors. CTRs, Ad relevance and landing page experience help in doing this for you.
The most fool-proof way to get better CTRs is writing an ad copy that lures your audience in. Don’t just scratch the surface but, carve your own space. Secondly, the even best ad won’t work if the audience is wrong. Choose your target audience, optimize your relevant keywords, create a structural approach, and you shall find yourself floating above without too much effort.
Negative Keywords
Be selective in who you promote your brand to. Negative keywords exclude the phrases for which you need not be found. Keywords that might be similar to your ad group but, irrelevant to your business could burn a hold in your pocket. Make a set of words that you do not wish to be ranked for in any circumstances, and you shall not only be saving money but also creating a better ad group. Google’s Search Terms Report gives you a view of the keywords that should form a part of your campaigns and helps in excluding the ones that don’t.
Using psychographics in marketing, you could drill down on how your consumer thinks and what they look for when they need you, to have better keyword research. Additionally, there are also tools like Bing’s negative keyword conflict report that let you know when you have gone overboard.
Manual Bidding
The best way to ensure a low-cost PPC campaign is by taking over all the controls. With Google Ads, you can set an upper limit for each click and ensure that your bottom line is maintained no matter what comes. It goes without saying that not all clicks will turn to conversions, so there can never be a direct structure. You can find a correlation between your campaigns with a good learning curve and optimize them for maximum ROI.
The other facet to manual bidding is creating a weighted strategy where you can allocate a higher budget for high-performing keywords and balance out the rest. Using data from your earlier campaigns and A/B tests, you could easily move away from automation for a low-cost-high-value plan. It is important to note that you shall need to keep a regular check to ensure you’re not over or underpriced in any case.
Conclusion
So there it is. PPC Marketing can be done with a shoestring budget and still give you those valuable conversions. Yes, you might need to take a little effort with trying and testing different bidding strategies. Once you get accustomed to the system, adapting to every change and data point should come almost naturally.
If ever in doubt, you can always look up a PPC agency that can hold both your budget and your goals in place. Remember to create a line of focus with all the aspects and distribute your resources depending upon the past performance. The key to creating a successful marketing channel is always understanding your core audience. Once you know who to speak to, a million ways can be found on how to do so.