PPC account management 101: The dos and don’ts you should keep in mind
On average, paid advertising has a return on investment of around 200 percent, and pay-per-click advertising can generate around double the internet traffic that search engine optimization does (TechJury). Of course, these statistics are only true when you have strong pay-per-click account management.
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Learn more about how you can up the ante on your own digital marketing strategy and provide more value to clients with strong PPC account management by checking out the dos and don’ts of PPC below.
What is PPC account management?
PPC account management services are professional services that include implementing and managing a pay-per-click advertising strategy, often for digital marketing clients. Some tasks included in PPC account management are:
- Keyword research
- Copy creation
- Ad and copy testing
- Campaign optimization
- Reporting and performance analysis
- Bid management
PPC advertising is a well-known low-cost digital marketing technique, and strong account management and support can provide benefits such as:
- Driving up ROI while lowering metrics such as cost per click or cost of conversions
- Ensuring the right ads show up for the right audiences at the right time
- Enhancing ad performance with better copy or more alignment between ad targeting, copy, and landing pages
- Identifying new keyword groups or target audiences to increase reach and brand awareness
8 dos of PPC account management
While Google is certainly the champion of search and paid advertising online, your agency teams may also manage ads on other platforms. Whether you’re dealing with Google Ads account management or other networks, the eight tips below remain relevant.
1. Do set clear campaign goals
When you’re packaging SEO and advertising services, it’s critical to ensure you and your client know what success looks like. Otherwise, you can run into communication and customer satisfaction issues quickly. When offering PPC services, take time to:
- Understand the client’s business-facing goals. Know whether clients want to improve click-through rates, boost brand awareness, drive more conversions, or achieve some combination of these goals. Ask the client which goal is most important.
- Define the objectives of PPC efforts with SMART goals. Create goals for each campaign that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.
- Create reporting mechanisms to support goal monitoring. Ensure you have an accurate way to capture metrics that measure your progress toward those SMART goals, and share that data with your clients regularly.
When everyone involved is working toward the same goals, knows how that goal is measured, and can see the measuring stick, the entire relationship tends to be stronger.
2. Do conduct comprehensive keyword research
Whether you’re engaging in local SEO marketing with a PPC element or seeking to connect with a wider geographic audience, keywords are key to success. As an agency providing PPC services, ensure you do comprehensive and updated keyword research. You should never take a few keywords or ideas provided by the client and run with them.
By identifying high-performing keywords and keeping a constant eye on keyword trends, you can improve the performance of client PPC campaigns. Consider using tools such as Semruh and Google Keyword Planner to find keyword groups and discover new keywords that your client hasn’t tried targeting yet.
3. Do create targeted ad groups
Structure every campaign with targeted ad groups based on considerations such as demographics, interests, audience behaviors, and the intent of keywords.
For example, a clothing brand with products for men, women, and children might have different ad groups for men, women, parents shopping for children, women shopping for the entire household, and grandparents or others shopping for gifts. This is just one example of ways you can target ads.
Not sure where to start with ad targeting and PPC management? White-label Google Ads management might be a product to consider, as it lets you offer value to your clients and expand your agency services to ad management without substantially increasing or leveling up internal staff.
4. Do write compelling ad copy
On average, Google Ads have a click-through rate of around 2 percent (The Social Shepard). That means for every 100 people that see the ad, around two will click on it. Of those, an even smaller number will convert, or go on to take the desired action.
One of the reasons for this seemingly low figure is the sheer number of ads online. The average American is exposed to thousands of ads daily (Forbes). Most people have learned to “tune out” or ignore ads unless they are especially attention-grabbing or relevant.
Here’s where compelling copy comes in. PPC ads are typically only a few hundred characters and perhaps a few dozen words at most. Taking time to craft high-quality content for those ads and test variations to find what performs best can help you increase click-through rates for clients.
5. Do optimize landing pages
If PPC advertising were fishing, the ad itself would be the bait. Without a strong hook, a good rod and reel, and some experience as a fisherman, you’re not likely to reel in a big catch even if you have great bait. In the online ad world, the rest of the package comes in the form of a landing page.
Back every ad campaign with a landing page that:
- Is relevant to the ad. When the landing page doesn’t live up to the promises of the ad, it’s bad for the brand. It seems spammy or, even worse, scammy.
- Provides value to the user. Ensure landing page copy answers common questions related to the ad keywords and supports the intent of the searcher.
- Delivers a high-quality user experience. Test functionality such as page load speed, visual appeal, and links to ensure the page works well on desktop and mobile devices. Even if the content is stellar, if the page doesn’t work well, internet users will click away—perhaps to a competing brand.
- Directs the person to the next step. Provide easy-to-follow instructions for any next steps to help guide consumers further into the funnel.
6. Do monitor and analyze performance
Use PPC advertising intelligence tools and options such as Google Analytics to understand how ad campaigns are performing so you can make proactive adjustments to improve outcomes. Consider metrics such as click-through rates, conversion rates, click-through costs, and return on ad spend to get a holistic picture of performance.
One of the great things about PPC ads is that you can impact performance in real-time. Agencies can make changes on the fly to ad campaigns and see immediate results, so there’s no need to wait for the end of the month or quarter to improve performance.
7. Do conduct A/B testing
Because you can make immediate progress on performance, A/B testing is especially useful whether you’re handling everything in-house or using white-label PPC for agencies. Here are a few things to consider testing:
- Ad variations. Test the wording and format of ads. You might find that ads highlighting free shipping perform better than those that don’t or that display ads with bright fonts capture more clicks than other designs, for example.
- Keywords. Target various keyword groups to discover new audiences or find searchers with commercial intent. Remember that keyword trends change over time, so test regularly.
- Landing pages. Test variations of your landing pages. Try changing up titles, calls to action, formats, the location of links, or overall content.
- Campaign settings. Try out different demographic and other settings to find what works best to connect with the audiences that are most likely to convert.
8. Do leverage remarketing
Some of the biggest wins from PPC campaigns come from remarketing campaigns, which are campaigns that retarget people who have already interacted with a brand’s social media, website, or ads. It works like this:
- Someone indicates potential interest in a brand or product by clicking on an ad, searching for a related keyword, liking the brand’s social media page, or some other online behavior.
- You tailor ads to users who fit that behavior profile.
- Ads show up repeatedly for the user as they navigate the web, reminding them about the brand or product and increasing the chance that they will click through again and potentially make a purchase.
The power of remarketing rests on old marketing wisdom that it takes seven or more “touch points” before you earn a conversion.
8 don’ts of PPC account management
Now that you know some important things you should do when it comes to PPC account management services, you might feel ready to launch digital advertising services. Before you get started, consider some don’ts of PPC account management below.
1. Don’t neglect negative keywords
Successful PPC ad campaigns rely in part on targeting the right keyword groups and searcher intent. But language is a funny thing, and words don’t always work exactly how you intend them—especially in the hands of computers. It’s helpful to provide as much information as you can about the intent of your ads so that automated ad processes work best.
For example, consider a consulting business that offers job-hunting and career help. Its services include resume review and editing, interview prep, and support for networking. A lot of the keywords used for this business’s ads would be tangential to hiring processes, but this company is not a recruiting organization. It may want to ensure its ads don’t show up for employers looking for help with recruiting.
To remove specific intents from your ad targeting, you use negative keywords. These are keywords you want to ignore for the purposes of targeting your ads. They can be a powerful way to ensure ads show up for the right users and not the “almost right” users.
2. Ignore ad scheduling
This is another way to target your ads more effectively. You can determine when and how your ads show up for users, which can help you increase exposure during a sale or at other critical times.
You might even want ads to show up most when you’re open or when they might resonate more with people. Ads for a breakfast beverage shake might perform better in the morning when people are still thinking about their frustration with consistently eating a balanced breakfast, for example.
3. Set and forget PPC ad efforts
Someone should consistently manage any PPC ad efforts you are responsible for, whether they’re for your own services or for clients via your PPC reseller program. Ad and keyword trends change constantly, so you can’t settle for what worked yesterday and expect it to keep working in the future. Ensure you have the resources—internally or externally with a white-label partner—to manage ads proactively on a daily basis.
4. Overcomplicate ad structure
Yes, there are many ways to target your ads and seemingly unlimited methods for setting up ad structures. While you should always target appropriately and use the tools available to you to increase ad performance, you also want to avoid overcomplicating things.
The best way to approach ads is to keep campaigns and structures as simple as possible while also meeting targeting and business needs. Don’t add layers that aren’t necessary. If you find that you’ve tweaked ad campaigns and structures so much that things have become labyrinthine, consider starting over with a new concept.
5. Neglect mobile optimization
More people access the internet on their mobile devices on a regular basis than get online via laptops or other desktop devices. To engage with the highest number of consumers, you should always ensure your ads are optimized for mobile. Some tips for doing so include:
- Using the right ad assets. Google Ads let you select from ad assets such as addresses or phone numbers. Think about how mobile users might be likely to interact with your ad and choose assets that support those actions.
- Write with mobile users in mind. Mobile users may only spare your ad a quick glance, and they may not even see the entire thing at once. Put the most important, attention-grabbing information first.
- Create a short, easy call to action. Mobile CTAs tend to work best when they are two to four words and include strong verbs. Examples include Call now, Sign up, or Place order.
6. Solely rely on broad match keywords
It’s tempting to think that the keywords with the highest number of searches will get your ad in front of more people. That might even be true. But that doesn’t mean those people will be interested in your ad or click on it.
Instead, rely on a mix of broad match keywords for added exposure and more specific keywords for a better match to intent. For example, a local burger chain in Dallas, TX, might include the broad match keyword “burgers in Dallas.” But it should also include more specific keywords relevant to its services and audience, such as “family-friendly burger bar” or “best vegan burger in Dallas.”
7. Ignore Quality Score
Google uses a metric called Quality Score to rate PPC ads based on the relevance and quality of the ad content and the keywords. In short, this metric looks at who the ad shows up for and who clicks on it—along with user behaviors—to understand whether the ad is right for those users.
Low Quality Score can mean that your ad isn’t targeted correctly or that the content in the ad isn’t relevant to the user or to the landing page or services connected to the ad. Paying attention to quality score can help you ferret out big problems with ad campaigns before you waste a lot of ad dollars.
8. Forget about competition
By paying attention to what others in the industry are doing, you can create more competitive ad campaigns. You can also discover what is working well and what doesn’t seem to work for others, and you can apply those lessons learned to your own ad management.
Whether you’re using resources such as while-label PPC management services or you decide to manage PPC ads for your clients on your own, understanding the overall ad landscape in your niche is important.
Frequently asked questions about PPC account management
What metrics should I track to measure the success of my PPC campaigns?
Quality score helps you understand whether people will find your ads helpful or relevant, and click-through and other traffic-related metrics let you know whether your ad was initially effective in capturing user interest. Conversion rates are often a final word on the success of PPC ad campaigns. If thousands are clicking but no one is buying, the campaign may not be successful after all.
How often should I review and adjust my PPC account?
Successful PPC ad campaigns are watched and tweaked consistently—often as much as daily. You can use programmatic tools to adjust bids and other PPC factors automatically to reduce the burden on your team. However, human eyes should look at PPC accounts and campaigns on a regular basis and make decisions based on analytics and reporting to help improve performance.
