Pay-per-click advertisements are the backbone of any modern marketing campaign, so we’ve rounded up five of the most essential ingredients for successful PPC campaign management. There’s something here for everyone, whether you’re a newcomer to the world of PPC or an experienced digital marketer.
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Google Ads/Google Ads Editor
It’s an obvious choice, but the world’s largest search engine is also the world’s largest advertising platform. It’s hard to imagine a PPC campaign that didn’t feature Google Ads.
For smaller businesses, it makes sense to start with Google Ads. It offers the most opportunities for immediate growth, and it’s simple enough that you can learn how to use it yourself, with a little practice. It’s also cost-effective for beginners, as you aren’t paying for the tool, just the advertising campaigns. You can experiment with different bidding strategies to match your marketing goals.
For larger businesses, and more experienced PPC campaign marketers, the Google Ads Editor application provides great additional functions, like the ability to roll out bulk changes quickly, and offline working which can be used as a testing area, or a training ground for new hires.
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Bing Ads
Some marketers treat Bing Ads as an afterthought, but it’s worth looking at the data.
Bing’s popularity as a search engine is still growing steadily – as of December 2021, Bing accounted for 7% of the global search market.
While that figure in itself may not seem like much, it represents a huge market of potential customers – with a lot less competition for ad space. Consequently, your ads receive better positioning, and cost-per-click is an average of 33.5% cheaper.
Bing Ads is arguably easier to use than Google Ads, too. You’ve got a lot more control over the settings of your ad groups, which means you can create custom ad groups with different networks, locations, ad scheduling, ad rotation and language settings, without having to create a new campaign. Bing also allows you to target different device types, so you can create specific ad groups and campaigns for mobile, desktop, and tablet users.
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Call tracking and conversation intelligence
Understanding the results of your PPC campaign allows you to constantly improve and focus your ads for the best outcomes.
Working with a call tracking and analytics partner like Call360 will allow you to combine Dynamic Call Tracking with your PPC campaign. This means different ads will display different phone numbers to call, so when the customer rings Call360 can track which ad they’ve been viewing, which allows you to understand which of your ads are driving conversions.
As well as providing call transcripts, Call360 uses conversation intelligence AI to analyse each call for intent, sentiment, and outcome, so for each ad campaign, you can identify any issues that might be hindering the conversion, or confusing the customer.
Call360 can be fully integrated with Google Analytics and other web analytics platforms to provide a seamless analytics experience within the user interface of your choice.
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PPC Protection Software
In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need to include PPC protection tools. However, PPC advertising’s main benefit – only paying when someone clicks the advert – is also a factor that leaves us vulnerable to dirty tactics from dishonourable competitors.
If you’re unlucky enough to have competitors willing to commit click fraud, you may find your ad budget being swallowed by seemingly random clicks that don’t provide leads, as your rival intentionally puts time and effort into spending your money.
Thankfully, several products are now available to protect your PPC campaigns from click fraud. Smaller firms may find PPC Protect to be the most cost-effective, ‘set it and forget it’ solution to their needs. Larger firms with time to invest will appreciate the granular control offered by a more versatile tool like ClickGUARD.
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Adzooma
If you want to manage all your PPC campaigns with a multi-platform tool, there are lots of options. As a certified Google Partner, Adzooma is definitely one of the best products offering this service. You can easily manage your Google, Bing, and Facebook Ads within one easy-to-use interface.
Adzooma’s ‘Opportunities’ function provides a good alternative to Google Ads recommendations too, with a greater focus on helping you reduce wasted spend across all your campaigns.
If you need call tracking data and conversation intelligence to maximise your PPC campaigns, Call360 can help. Contact us to start your 14-day free trial.
