5 Essential Elements of a Successful PPC Campaign
What makes a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign successful? Optimizing its five vital elements.
A Chicago PPC agency designs an actionable online ad plan for your business, focusing on the following:
- Keywords
- Ad text
- Landing pages
- Budget
- Bids
Let us dive into how these work together to help drive sales and conversions, especially in search ads. Read the article below. Let’s go!
If you want to learn how Digital Authority Partners can increase your PPC effectiveness, watch this video!
1. Keywords
As they do in search engine optimization (SEO), keywords play a vital role in PPC.
- Search engines, such as Bing and Google, display ads based on your chosen keywords and the user’s query.
- The PPC cost largely depends on these key phrases and terms.
- They are the most basic element in an ad campaign, which can have one or more keywords.
Before, search engines showed ads that exactly matched the queried keywords. Today, PPC maximizes machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to understand user intent.
These innovations also lead to these three keyword match types: broad, phrase, and exact. To understand how they vary, let us say that your business is a flower shop in New York doing pay-per-click. The potential keywords to bid on can look like this:
| Match Type | Definition | Example Keyword | Example Search Query |
|---|---|---|---|
| Broad match | Targets ads to a wide range of similar keywords and phrases, including synonyms, misspellings, and related terms | flower shop | New York flower delivery |
| Phrase match | Triggers ads when searches include the keyword or phrase in the order you specify, with additional words before or after | “flower shop” | Best flower shop in New York |
| Exact match | Pairs ads to queries that match the exact keyword or phrase, with no additional words before or after | [flower shop] | flower shop |
If you want to learn more about keyword match types, you can read Google’s extensive guide to user searches. Essentially, the search engine considers many factors beyond your targeted keywords in deciding which ones to display to the users. These include:
- Your target market’s location (where they are searching or if their keywords are location-specific)
- Previous search history (If the user types “Apple for sale” and had previously read about Macs an hour prior, Google interprets the new query as the laptop, not the fruit.)
2. Ad Text
This element shows up in the search results, on social media platforms, and on networks that agree to display ads. It also comes in different forms, such as:
- Search ads (the most popular)
- Shopping ads
- Paid social ads
- Sponsored ads
- Remarketing ads
A typical ad contains a headline, an ad description, a call-to-action (CTA), and a landing page. You can also include a media asset, such as a video or photo.
As of mid-2022, Google retired text ads in favor of responsive search ads. It uses AI to create the best possible combination of the parts of the existing ads to create more helpful ones. Over time, it “learns” which copies perform best through testing. This way, only the ads that closely match user intent appear.
You can optimize the ad text with these tips:
- Maximize the limit. You can make up to four descriptions and 15 headlines for one responsive search ad. It makes your ad campaigns more flexible to resonate with various audiences.
- Include your targeted keywords. Use phrase- or exact-match key terms if you want highly targeted traffic.
- Ensure that they relate to one another. All of your headlines, CTAs, descriptions, landing pages, and visual assets must be cohesive enough that any combination works.
3. Landing Pages
The landing page is where you direct the audience when they click on the ad. It can be:
| Landing Page Type | Use Cases |
|---|---|
| Click-through | Persuades visitors to click another page, typically a product page or registration form. |
| Lead generation | Collects user information, such as email addresses or phone numbers, in exchange for access to gated content, such as a whitepaper or ebook |
| Product page | Showcases a specific product or service and provides detailed information to encourage users to purchase |
These pages are vital to creating a successful PPC campaign because:
- They accomplish your objective, such as increasing sales or building a mailing list.
- A landing page is one of the primary factors in determining your ad quality score (AQS). Other factors are expected click-through rate (CTR) and ad relevance. More relevant ads produce higher scores and better placement in the search.
4. Budget
We cannot discuss PPC without covering the budget: how much will you spend on the ad?
Usually, small businesses spend around $10,000 a month for this type of paid advertising. But your overall budget depends on several factors:
- Campaign objective
- Ad scheduling (Running ads on peak hours may cost more.)
- Keywords (The more competitive they are, the more expensive they become.)
- Ad placement (A prominent display gives you the best chance to convert, but it also means getting more clicks. More clicks mean more ad spending.)
- AQS (A good score can potentially decrease the PPC cost.)
One of the most common PPC mistakes is under budgeting. Let us say that you allocate $30 for a single keyword that costs $2.50. If this term is competitive, you can easily exhaust the amount in an hour or less. Thus, you miss out on more opportunities for conversion.
Like a forecaster, a Chicago PPC agency manages your budget using its knowledge and tools. It analyzes past bidding and search information to determine how your keywords will perform over a certain period. In the process, they can give PPC cost estimates.
5. Bids
With thousands of PPC ads vying for a customer’s attention, search engines cannot display them all simultaneously. Instead, these copies go through an auction that determines:
- Which ads can appear
- The placement of these copies
Like any auction, you must bid the highest amount you are willing to pay for the keyword. But this is not the end of the story.
Even if you have a set amount, your ad still may not appear on the first page (or at all). Many determinants influence your positions and copy display:
- Bid. Your bid is too low for the actual cost of the keyword. Search engines can also stop publishing your copies when you hit your daily budget for the campaign.
- AQS. A high score usually results in a lower bid estimate.
- Ad rank. It determines where the ad appears. You can calculate rank by multiplying the cost-per-click (CPC) bid with the AQS.
- Ad context. Search engines look at the bigger picture when matching your ad with the user query. They consider the time of the search, location, the device used, and other related signals.
Summing Up
The key to launching and running a successful ad campaign relies on these five PPC elements. Optimize them well, and you will reap generous returns and surpass marketing goals.
But unless you are confident enough to do paid advertising alone, it is best to call on the experts. Digital Authority Partners (DAP) is a Chicago PPC agency specializing in B2B and B2C online marketing management. Contact us today so that we can help you plan and customize your strategies.
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