5 Best Practices for PPC Quick Wins | (un)Common Logic

Digital marketing is a game of inches. Paying attention to the details and sweating the small stuff are what can make the crucial difference between succeeding and just treading water. Generating results from digital marketing typically takes time (it’s an investment, not a band-aid). However, the responsive nature of paid search advertising lets you see results fairly quickly. And these PPC best practices can generate impressive results in one quarter.

5 PPC Best Practices for Fast Results:

1. Eliminating irrelevant keywords
2. Shifting spend to high performers
3. Testing and adjusting ad copy
4. Adjusting bids manually
5. Using sitelinks strategically

All these paid search best practices can be implemented before your account(s) are rebuilt, so you can start getting better performance ASAP.

Eliminating irrelevant keywords

Our client had thousands of active keywords in their account, and we reviewed all of them. We determined that 400 keywords didn’t apply to the client’s offerings at all and blocked them. Those irrelevant keywords had been responsible for $147,746 in advertising spend in the previous year, producing low-quality leads with a cost per lead that was nearly double the client’s goal. We were able to invest the previously wasted spend into relevant, high-performing keywords.

Shifting spend to high performers

This client had been allocating spend fairly evenly among keyword groups, even those that were underperforming, because of a sense that the low-performing terms best captured the company’s offering. However, the high-performing terms were still very relevant to the client’s business, even if they weren’t perfect. We reduced their spend on the low-performing keywords, paused the worst-performing keywords, and increased their spend on the high performers. Within just 90 days, the client’s overall click-through rate had increased by 89% and their paid search conversion rate was up 31%.

Testing and adjusting copy

Another client’s existing ad copy template did not allow for optimal ad rendering. It might seem like a minor issue, but it damaged their ads’ click-through rate and Quality Score. We rewrote their ad templates and copy based on best practices for messaging, content, and formatting. Within 2 months, lead volume for the rewritten ads was 21 times the volume of the non-optimized ads, while cost per lead was cut almost in half.

Adjusting bids manually

Many agencies use automatic bid adjustment tools for managing paid search, to maximize their client capacity but not necessarily achieve the best possible results. We use our human intelligence, years of expertise, and attention to detail to manage paid search spend on a granular level. Applying this level of care to a client’s account allowed us to achieve a 36% reduction in costs per click and an 84% increase in the conversion rate, all in the first 90 days.

Using sitelinks strategically

Sitelink extensions add up to four additional links to a paid search ad. Our client’s previous sitelinks went to pages such as “About Us” or their blog; we replaced those with sitelinks targeting the pages and assets searchers were most likely to seek. Ads with searcher-centric sitelinks had a lead volume 1,846% higher than those with company-centric links. Furthermore, their conversion rate was 689% higher than the company-centric ads, while their cost per lead was 79% lower.

And a Bonus Paid Search Tactic for Fast Results

Because analytics and tracking tend to come at the end of a paid search campaign, it can be easy to move them to the back burner in the early stages of PPC management. However, making sure your analytics accounts are connected to your ad platform(s) and tracking events correctly should be one of the first steps you take. This ensures complete, accurate data, which deepens the quality of insight on paid search performance even in the first 1-3 months.

None of these paid search best practices seem as impactful as an account rebuild, but each of them, used properly, can have a major impact on performance.

If you’d like to learn more about how best practices can be implemented for fast, sustainable results, let’s talk about the growth opportunities a paid media audit can reveal.