Turn The Tables On These Neglected PPC Strategies

Today, advertising via AdWords is one of the most effective methods of raising brand awareness and attracting new customers. However, paid search marketing can be a tricky path to navigate. If you don’t have a clear path set before you, you may end up spending more than you need to. This post aims to outline several PPC strategies that have been neglected for far too long. Let’s find out how you can take advantage of them to achieve better results.

You Don’t Have to Always be No.1

Average position is a metric that’s often followed and optimized by PPC marketers. The problem is that everyone is trying to outrank their competitors, i.e. fighting fo the 1st position in SERPs. However, you should know that aiming for the top spot isn’t always necessary. Yes, being at the top can get you more traffic. But will your visitors convert? And is it cost-effective? Chances are it is probably not.

Getting to the top often needs a much higher bid compared to what’s needed for second and third positions. This also means that you may end up paying for irrelevant clicks. If the user clicks on your links without fully reading the ad, it is a total waste of your budget. So, analyze your total account results by average position. Determine the position that gets you the best results. Your analysis should be done in terms of volumes compared to price.

Retarget the Right Audience

It’s true that returning users have a much higher chance to convert than cold prospects. That’s why you should retarget your website visitors. However, you do not need to retarget all of them. It is recommended that you set up negative retargeting lists to help you display your ads to the right people. These lists will prevent you from wasting your advertising budget on people who were not really interested in what you are offering in the first place. To create a negative retargeting list, simply create an audience in your account. Next, exclude it from your ad groups.

Utilize RLSA

Retargeting Lists for Search Ads allow you to target your past visitors when they return to search for the keywords that are featured in your campaigns. As these prospects have a much higher chance to convert, you should use RLSA to bid higher and make them come back. To use RLSA in your search campaign, you start by creating remarketing lists in your Google Analytics or AdWords account. For example, it could a list of past visitors in the last 30 days. After creating the lists, add them to your existing search campaigns and use a bid adjustment. This allows you to bid higher on this audience. Simple, isn’t it?

Include Bing Ads

It is important to take advantage of Bing Ads in one’s paid search strategy. They account for approximately 30 per cent of the search traffic in the United States. They also feature a lower cost for most keywords. Setting up Bing Ads and optimizing them is easy. After creating and optimize all your campaigns on Google, simply repeat the steps here! By hopping on the Bing Ads bandwagon, you can enjoy lower CPC and bids for most keywords as well as get more conversions and traffic. What’s more, you are achieving these benefits without much competition getting in your way.

Set Up SKAGS

SKAGS stand for Single Keyword Ad Groups. These are ad groups that contain one keyword only. For example, the ad group can be: tasty ramen. The keywords that follow may include:

• +tasty +ramen
• “tasty ramen”
• [tasty ramen]

As you can see, the sample ad group contains the same search term, with modified broad match types.

With that in mind, SKAGs are designed to help dramatically increase your CTR, which eventually leads to a higher Quality Score and a lower CPC.