Optimising a pay-per click account can be a testing task at the best of times. If you have a large PPC account you most likely have a lot of keywords, in a lot of AdGroups, in a number of different campaigns. This also means lots of text ads, or other ad variations, and this can all become a bit of a headache that requires superb memory and lots of time! Luckily there is a way you can quickly and easily identify where your account is working and where it is falling short. Here, I will present an ‘acid-test’ method that will allow you to rate every part of your PPC account and help you identify exactly where you need to put some work in.
The Elements of Pay-Per Click
Essentially, there are three main elements, or parts, to the overall PPC theory. These elements can be summarised as follows.
Visibility
Attractiveness
Effectiveness
Let me explain these a little further. Visibility is the first thing you should be concerned about. Let’s say that you have set yourself an aim to use Google AdWords to sell birthday cakes. The first thing you will need to do is become Visible. This means that when someone searches for birthday cakes, they will see you there. You may not be aware of it, but you are achieving visibility by adding keywords and changing your keyword bids, all tasks like this help you to get visibility so that people know you are there.
The next part of the PPC puzzle is attractiveness. Attractiveness refers to the success of the visibility you have already gained. Say for example, you have achieved excellent visibility on the term ‘birthday cakes’ and you are sat nicely in position number 1, the next stage is that you want the user to engage with your ad, the more attractive your ad is, the more likely the user is to engage with it.
The final part of the PPC mission statement is concerned with the overall effectiveness of your PPC efforts. Effectiveness refers to the final stage, the user finds you (visibility), engages with you (attractiveness) and then finally converts / completes your goal. This final conversion stage is the key to the effectiveness of your PPC campaign.
You can take this theory one step further and remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, this means that regardless of how ‘attractive’ you are, you wont get everyone to engage! The trick is to be there for those who will be interested in what you have got to say!
Optimising Your PPC – Ask The Right Questions
The beauty of viewing your PPC efforts in this way is that you can begin to boil down all of the elements into the three stages of PPC and clearly identify at which point in the chain your PPC work is missing the mark.
Am I Visible?
The first question you should ask yourself is ‘am I visible?’ or ‘can the customer find me?’ You then need to determine the answer to this. This means you need to review a couple of key metrics within your Google AdWords account. The first metric here is the impressions metric. Looking at impressions will immediately let you see if you are reaching people. If you have a very low number of impressions then you know, regardless of any other issues, your PPC account is falling at the first hurdle. Try adjusting keywords and match types to get some more impressions.
The next metric you should use to review your visibility is your average position. Average position is all about where your advert is appearing on the SERPS. Chances are you could be using the correct keywords and impressions are fine, but the impressions you are getting are very low down the page making your visibility much lower than it should be. Try changing your CPC bids to get your position higher, or improve your quality score to get better results, even consider bidding on less competitive keywords, after-all, there is no point in bidding for ‘cars’ when you only sell ‘red cars’! Fix these things and then take a look at the next stage.
Are My Ads Attractive?
Once you are getting the impressions, and you are in the position on the SERP you want to be you must establish if you are attracting people. There are really only two key metrics to look at when it comes to attractiveness of your PPC efforts; clicks, and probably more importantly, click-through rate. Clicks is a good place to start, it will show you that people are at lease engaging with your advert, the downside is that you could be getting 100 clicks a day, but this is from a few million impressions, that would be no good at all! On the other hand, click-through rate takes into account your amount of clicks and your amount of impressions and gives you the percentage of people who have clicked through to your website.
If you have a low click-through rate, then you can see if there is something wrong with your attractiveness, i.e. your ad is ugly! That means it is time to put in some work on your ad-text. When reviewing ad-text I always find it works best to take a very methodical approach, which is to only change one element at a time. If you are changing the ad headline, create 3 identical ads that are the same in every way except headline. Using 3 different approaches to headline will let you see if the type of headline you have makes any difference in how people engage with your advert.
It is important to add here that attractiveness does not begin and end with ad-text. Another key factor is that whilst your ad-text might be the best it can be, if you are targeting the wrong keywords, you are targeting the wrong people, and the people who do see your ad will see it as ‘ugly’. If changing ad-text makes no difference, try reviewing your keywords and get into the mind of the people you want to search for you; what would they be typing? Crack both of these and your ad will look very tasty!
Am I Effective?
The final piece to the Google AdWords (or PPC) puzzle is how effective your efforts are. In order to look at this stage you need to have made sure that efforts have been made to make your ad visible and attractive, you are getting impressions and you are getting clicks; now work out if you are getting conversions.
Really I have already given away what effectiveness is measured by: it is the conversion and conversion rate metrics. Put simply, measuring conversions are incredibly important; they are essentially why we are all here. Whatever your goal is, there is sure to be a way to measure every time someone completes it, make sure you are tracking your conversions.
If you are getting a low conversion rate, but visibility and attractiveness have passed your test then it would seem there is a problem after the user has clicked on your ad. That means landing pages. Try A/B testing which landing page users are sent to, try changing calls to action, try changing design and try changing how the landing page works. If none of this works, maybe your keywords and ads are still targeting the wrong audience, and then it is back to the drawing board.
Easy As 1,2,3
As you can see, each stage affects the next and this really is the key to running a successful PPC campaign. Make sure that you always keep your end goal in mind. Know exactly who your customer is and know exactly what they will like to see. Experiment with different ideas and always ask the 3 simple questions of your PPC account: am I visible, am I attractive and am I effective. If the answer is no, you know where to start to have a dig. Just don’t get lost in there!
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