5 Quick Ways to Improve Your PPC ROI

We know managing PPC campaigns can be time-consuming and fiddly. There’s such a lot to look at and monitor it can soon become overwhelming, particularly if you’re new to PPC.

Whether you’re a beginner or a pro here are five really simple, and quick, ways to improve the ROI of your PPC campaigns.

Run a Keyword Report

If you analyse your PPC performance at a less granular level, say at the campaign or adgroup level, you could be losing money. Looking at account performance at a top level will help you gauge how things are doing generally, but there could be keywords lurking beneath the campaign/adgroup umbrella that is not working.

Simply run a keyword report and look for keywords with high click numbers and/or high costs that are not delivering conversions. You may decide there are problems with the keyword, its match type or the Max CPC. As an added recommendation, look at the Search Funnels report provided by Google to make sure any offending keywords are not part of a common ‘search path’ taken by people before converting.

Search Query Reports

Search query reports should be run on a regular basis. Look out for search terms that are accruing clicks but not delivering conversions. Also, look for keywords with high impression numbers and low CTRs – this suggests relevancy problems somewhere along the line. As a result of running a search query report, you may decide to add new negative keywords, adjust match types or update your ad text.

Check Campaign Targeting

This one may sound obvious but it is always worth double-checking the targeting settings of your campaigns. Check the language and location targeting in particular. Targeting people outside of your delivery zones, or those who speak another language in that which the website is written will lead to nothing but low conversion rates and a poor ROI.

Also, consider checking the device targeting settings of your campaigns. It is recommended your campaigns target mobile and non-mobile devices separately. If you do want to target multiple devices within one campaign ensure your website renders “nicely” and is usable (at the very least) if accessed from a mobile device.

Check Ad Text

When reviewing ad text there’s always a big focus on CTR, and yes, this is important, but so is an ad’s conversion rate. It is worth keeping your eyes peeled for ads that have high CTRs but low conversion rates. Ads like this highlight a problem of some kind – most probably with ad text promises and landing page letdowns. Make sure you sell/offer what your ad text states. The problem might not be really obvious straight away so you may need to do some digging. Common problems include hidden USPs - make sure everything is really obvious and clear to your website visitors.

Ad Extensions

These are really important to certain types of businesses advertising their products/services online. Well optimised location extensions and call extensions can ensure your customers are able to find or contact you at that critical moment. Consider a London visitor looking for a Sushi restaurant. They search for “Sushi restaurant Soho”; they see a PPC ad with a call extension and a location extension. They can immediately call to book a reservation followed by using the location extension to direct them to the restaurant.

Of course, there’s a lot more that can be done to improve the performance of a PPC campaign which we here at SilverDisc specialise in. If you’d like help improving the ROI of your online marketing campaigns then drop us a line!