Call Toll FREE: 1-888-221-2826
Here are some steps to take to optimize your pay per click accounts and improve your ROI:
1. Do Proper Keyword Research – Keyword research is the first and perhaps most important step you can take to improve the ROI of your SEM account. By finding keywords that your competitors aren’t bidding on, you can have a good chance of getting clicks at low cost per click. If the traffic is relevant, you should be able to convert that traffic at a profitable ROI. Check out this article on Keyword Research for SEO for more keyword research tips. Remember that in many industries, the long tail of keywords can bring in 50% or more of the traffic and revenue. Don’t forget about your top terms, however.
2. Watch Your Top Terms Closely -In most PPC accounts, there are 5-10 keywords that make up 40-50% of the cost structure. Yes they bring in revenue, but they are highly competitive and are frequently caught up in bidding wars. If you are using automated bid managment software, it may be 1-2 weeks before your algorithms pick up changes in CPC, ROI or other metrics you are using to change your bids. Your top terms should be hand managed and checked frequently throughout the day. Think of PPC as day trading. Decide what you can afford to pay per click to achieve your target ROI, and don’t exceed that even when a bidding war drives the cost up.
3. Expand your ROI Horizon – Most PPC account managers measure ROI based solely on what percentage of the product price they can afford to spend. If an item sells for $100, and there is a 20% margin, then they figure that they can afford to spend up to $20 on their PPC marketing costs and still break even. Or they will only spend up to $10 per conversion to preserve their profit margin. But if your not taking into account your customers lifetime value, then you may be leaving money on the table. First, figure out what your return customer rate is. Then figure out how many times per year your customer returns and what they spend on average. Use this info to create a lifetime value for your customer. This will increase the amount that you can spend on a conversion and allow you to stay more competitive.
4. Watch Your Match Type -If you are running up costs on a keyword that has a good CTR and a decent conversion rate, consider only using exact match for that keyword. This will filter out some searches that are less relevant and help to pull your ROI in line. On the other hand, if you are running a great ROI on an exact match keyword, but your volume is low, consider trying broad match to bring in more traffic and see if it is worth it to your bottom line.
5. Split Test Your Ad Copy Regularly – It is surprising how simple this is, yet how often it is neglected. One problem account managers sometimes have is dealing with the sheer volume of ad copy to change. Try changing your copy in bulk in excel by having constant phrasing for description line 1 and 2. You can then use a find and replace to change key phrases or product names. This makes it easier to edit large amounts of copy without spending all day at it. Also, try using keyword insertion in your title to increase your CTR’s.
6. Research Your Competition’s PPC Strategy – Use Spyfu.com and other competitive analysis tools such as batchsearch.com to analyze your competitors keyword strategy. By understanding where they are, you can formulate a strategy to be where they aren’t.
7. Track Your Offline Revenue Back to Your PPC Channel – In many E Commerce businesses, your customers will likely find you through a PPC ad, and then pick up the phone to place their order. This will likely break your conversion tracking and web analytics. There are ways you can connect the marketing dots with promo codes, different phone numbers, etc… that will allow you to find out how a customer found you and then allow you to attach that revenue back to your PPC accounts. See this article on setting up offline tracking for web analytics for more info on how to implement offline tracking.
8. Set up Multi-Variate Testing For Landing Pages – It is amazing how different conversion rates can be for two different landing pages. Content, design, layout, images, titles and promotions can all affect your customer in different ways. If you are using a standard A/B split test, you may not know exactly what it is about a certain page your customer likes or doesn’t like. By using multi-variate software (there are some affordable options out there), you can isolate different areas of your landing page to test.
9. Turn on Content in a Different Campaign – Content works well in some industries and not so well in others. In any case, you should test it out. But don’t turn it on in the same campaign that you are testing your search campaigns. It is best to isolate this test in it’s own campaign. That way you can also turn on a placement campaign and hand-select the websites you want to target with your message. This will allow you to establish a separate ROI for content.
10. Bid On Your Competitors Key Terms – This can be a quick win. Try bidding on your competitors business name and website keywords. They will be very cheap and you can target your ad to try to pull away their business. In one high profile example, expedia.com was able to pull away around 20% or Orbit’s PPC traffic just by bidding on their terms. You may piss some people off, and they may turn around and bid on your terms, but if you are the underdog and recieve less business searches than a large competitor, than this is a great tactic.