Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns can deliver tremendous returns for online businesses, when PPC Campaign are managed effectively. Studies show 93% of digital agencies in the UK manage PPC campaigns for their clients as a key customer acquisition strategy.
But without the right expertise and diligent optimisation, PPC campaigns can also haemorrhage budgets with little ROI. Mastering PPC campaign management is essential for driving consistent growth.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll walk through the key components of successfully managing and optimising PPC campaigns in the United Kingdom to maximise results. Follow these best practices to get the most value from your PPC campaign investment.
Ultimate Guide | PPC Campaign Management
Define Your Business Goals and PPC Campaign Strategy
The first step in any effective PPC campaign is defining the concrete business goals you aim to achieve. Are you driving leads and conversions? Increasing brand awareness? Achieving bottom-line revenue growth?
Having clearly outlined goals and targets, provides direction for your PPC campaign strategy. For example; online retailer like ASOS can set an objective to increase quarterly revenue by 10% using PPC campaigns with a target return on ad spend (ROAS) of 3:1.
You also need an overarching paid strategy tailored to your objectives. A retailer may choose a maximising ROAS approach while a B2B startup like HubSpot focuses on lowering cost per lead for their PPC campaigns. Match tactics to goals.
According to Google search engine survey, 75% of businesses consider clearly defined goals and targets essential for PPC campaign success. So take the time to outline the “why” for your PPC campaigns before diving into the “how”.
Segment and Research Your Target Audiences
The next step is gaining in-depth understanding of your ideal target audiences for your PPC campaigns through segmentation and research.
Break down demographics like age, gender, income level, interests, location and behaviors. Look for patterns in existing high-value customers you can replicate in your PPC campaigns.
For Example; If SaaS company like Sage wants to target the IT managers or business owners between 30-45 years old with budget authority. Then, they need creative landing pages for PPC campaigns that is tailored to convert specific potential audience into customer.
As per latest case study, consumer research shows 76% of UK shoppers are more likely to purchase when advertising is personalised to their preferences and needs. So take time to analyse customers for your PPC campaigns.
Set Up Your PPC Campaign Infrastructure
To execute PPC campaigns, the underlying technical infrastructure must be in place. Key setup tasks include:
- Creating accounts within PPC platforms like Google Ads for your PPC campaigns, or you can use Bing ads. PPC campaigns are available in search engines and social media as well. We have created a short guide to help you choose between Bing ads, Google ads, and also facebook advertising as well.
- Integrating conversion tracking between ads and your website or app for your PPC campaigns.
- Establishing product feeds, API connections and other data integrations for your PPC campaigns.
- Building out tracking dashboards and reports for monitoring your PPC campaign analytics.
- Developing attribution models to measure ad impact across channels for your PPC campaigns.
Proper technical configuration lays the foundation for PPC campaign success.
UK fashion retailer ASOS saw PPC campaign conversions increase 57% month-over-month after fixing broken tracking integrations causing missed attribution.
Manage PPC Campaign Execution
Ongoing optimisation tasks for PPC campaign management include:
- Crafting and A/B testing ad creative across placements for your PPC campaigns.
- Researching new keywords and negative keywords to refine targeting for your PPC campaigns.
- Setting bids and budgets based on goals, seasonality and opportunity for your PPC campaigns.
- Closely tracking PPC campaign KPIs around spend, clicks, conversions and ROI.
- Making strategic tweaks to continually improve PPC campaign performance.
Measure and Optimise for Conversions
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Leading indicators like clicks and impressions matter. But the true test is real business results for your PPC campaigns.
Closely monitor conversion metrics to assess PPC campaign impact:
- Cost per acquisition or lead from your PPC campaigns
- Sales attributed to your PPC campaigns
- Return on ad spend (ROAS) from your PPC campaigns
- Conversion rates of landing pages for your PPC campaigns
- Lifetime value of customers acquired from your PPC campaigns
Analyse this data to identify opportunities to optimise your PPC campaigns. UK Auto retailer Evans Halshaw optimised underperforming landing pages which lifted PPC campaign conversions by 22%.
Continual optimisation of your PPC campaigns based on performance data lets you refine elements and strategy to maximise conversions.
Maintain PPC Campaign Accounts and Scale Efforts
- Accounts remain properly configured as new features roll out
- Campaigns maintain tight alignment with evolving business objectives
- Testing pipelines enable continuous PPC campaign improvement
- Reporting and analysis shapes future budget and strategy decisions for PPC campaigns
How UTDS Optimal Choice can help you with PPC campaign
UTDS Optimal Choice is a digital marketing agency that specialises in managing and optimising PPC campaigns for UK businesses across industries. Our PPC campaign management services include:
- Conducting in-depth audience research and segmentation to refine PPC targeting
- Developing highly-optimised PPC campaign architecture aligned to your business goals
- Creating compelling, high-converting ad messaging tailored to your brand
- Monitoring campaign analytics constantly and making data-driven optimization decisions
- Leveraging automation and proprietary tools to efficiently manage PPC accounts at scale
- Providing strategic consulting to maximise ROI from your PPC campaigns long-term
Our PPC experts become an extension of your marketing team, allowing you to focus on your core business operations while we manage your PPC campaigns for optimal performance. Get in touch to learn more!
Key PPC metrics to monitor include impressions, clicks, click-through-rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC), conversions, cost per acquisition (CPA), and return on ad spend (ROAS).
Check campaign performance daily and make incremental optimizations like bids, budgets and targeting. Bigger changes to strategy can be done every 2-4 weeks based on results.
Use one campaign for branding keywords to build awareness. Create separate campaigns per product/service targeting commercial keywords to drive conversions.
Weak account structure, misaligned tracking, poor keyword strategy, generic messaging, lack of ongoing optimization, focusing only on CPC not conversions.
Increase budgets incrementally, broaden targeting and placements, try advanced ad formats like shopping campaigns, leverage more automation.
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