If you’re looking for PPC strategies to boost your ROI, this blog is your rescue. Today, the world has gone online and so have most businesses. Ad spends are needed to bring about brand awareness and visibility and of course, conversions. It can really transform any business. Read about the importance of digital marketing and its need for any business to sustain itself in today’s global environment. 

PPC in digital marketing stands for pay-per-click. Advertisers pay a certain fee every time an ad is clicked by a user. Instead of organic visits, marketers may look at buying visits to their website to increase traffic. 

Thus instead of paying for estimated impressions, here you are paying for all the traffic that these ads generate, making them a good option for there is not much to lose and the business has control over their budget. 

Some popular PPC ad platforms include Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and Microsoft Ads. PPC ads can be used for various purposes. 

Quick Tip: Consider learning Google Ads for all your PPC needs. 

7 Types of PPC Ads

There are many types of PPC Ads. Even though you may have access to many types of PPC ads to choose from, it is advisable to use a permutation and combination of these types of ads to maximize ad results. 

• Search Ads

Search ads are extremely common ads that are displayed in search results. They are commonly placed on the top and bottom of a search engine. There is a disclaimer that mentions that the content is paid.

• Paid social media ads

Social ads are any form of ads on social media that are paid. There are many social media platforms you could use such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn.

• Remarketing Ads

Have you ever visited a website and then come across an ad from the same brand? Yes, this is what remarketing ads are all about. It is used to re-engage audiences that visited a platform but had zero conversions. 

If you are aware that people are interested in your business but simply need time to consider your products, invest in remarketing ads. Real estate PPC ads work well with this model. 

Bonus Read – Digital Transformation for the real estate sector.

• Display Ads

Display ads are a type of pay-per-click ad with which you can reach out to people who are interested clients. These ads appear on all of Google’s partner websites and are usually more visual than textual to grab a user’s attention. 

The goal is brand recall and getting your audience to notice your brand. These are a good choices for travel PPC ads and real estate PPC ads. 

• Google Shopping Ads

Google shopping ads are the ads that are displayed on top when you search for a particular product. It gives a preview of the prices, products and ratings to the user before they can click on the website.

It gives them a feel of window shopping as the user can compare the prices and what kind of products are available.

• Video Ads

Video ads are the ads that are displayed before any video platform, for e.g. Youtube. These ads can be placed before and during the video. It can be non-skippable, full-screen or even a small bar at the side. The intent is to ensure the visibility of your brand. 

• Sponsored Gmail Ads

Email marketing is a great way of reaching out to people but has its limitations such as running out of databases to send out emails to. Paid Gmail ads are a great way to target those people who are actively searching for the products and services your brand has to offer. 

These ads look like any other generic email but have the ‘ad’ tag and appear on top of the Gmail inbox. 

To understand the PPC strategies better, you must be able to clearly differentiate between these types of ads.

Top 21 PPC Strategies and Best Practices to Grow Your Business

1. Use long-tail keywords

Long-tail keywords are a phrase that comprises 3-5 words. This is a great strategy as the longer the keyword, the more significant the search volume. This high-quality traffic generated from these PPC ads has a higher chance of conversions and hence this is one of the basic PPC strategies everyone should implement.

2. Optimize incomplete data

News is that Google is going to start giving incomplete data because Google wants advertisers to rely on its machine learning data accuracy. Thus, to rise in such situations, the best strategy would be to identify repetitive patterns in the search queries rather than focusing on the search term individually. 

And importantly, it is important to optimize the remaining data that Google will be providing. 

3. Automation

Automation is one of the newest PPC strategies. With everything moving forward towards automation, PPC is no exception. Give your information in such a way that the algorithm can sieve through seamlessly and give you the best results. Sywdo, WordStream PPC Advisor, Optmyzer, etc are some of the great industry standard automation tools for your PPC strategy.

4. First-party data

Focus on eliminating your dependence on extracting data from third-party cookies and instead find first-party data retrieval solutions because that provides more room for customization and detail-oriented informative strategies. 

Data is going to be the next big thing and the sooner you shift to first-party data, the more fruitful it gets. 

5. Ad Copies 

You may have found the best target audience and a perfect budget in place, but if your ad copies are poor, your entire campaign goes out for a toss. Give equal attention and effort to perfecting your ad copies to seem relevant to the audience. One of the PPC strategies to create better Ad Copies is taking the opinions of the team.

6. Negative keywords

If you’re paying to show your ads on certain keywords, you don’t want them to be diluted by being on shown on similar keywords which are totally irrelevant to you. Use the negative keywords feature which allows you to precisely tell Google, which keywords you do not want to be ranked on. 

7. Bid strategies 

Bidding is a slightly technical concept and you need to ace this one to be able to get better at PPC. Where Google’s automated bidding strategy is good enough, it’s not the best. It leaves no room for adjustments and personalization. Thus, go for manual bidding. 

You might fail a couple of times but once you understand the hack, you will realize how manual bidding works wonders. You can constantly adjust it to meet your campaign goals. 

8. RLSA

RLSA (Remarketing lists for search ads) is one of the most popular PPC strategies and a must-use. You must have separate remarketing campaigns for particular search queries because they are highly intent-driven and have the maximum potential for conversion. 

9. Diversify your platforms

Don’t limit yourself to PPC adverts on Google. You can also expand to Bing, Amazon and Hotstar. These platforms have been enjoying massive viewership and you must leverage it to your advantage. 

10. Retargeting campaigns

With retargeting you are exposing the users who have visited certain pages of your website or app with display ads. It is to re-engage potential customers who displayed a certain interest in your offering. 

This can lead to possible conversions as the user has interest but maybe needs some time to convert. Hence, brand recall can be established with conversion as the end goal. 

11. Reverse your conversion funnel

In order to convert users faster, many marketers believe in saving clicks. They do this by getting the user to faster through the funnel. However, sometimes getting people engaged through your ads can work better. Reverse engineer your conversion funnel to understand what works best for your strategy. 

Adding an extra component to your funnel may add value. For e.g., adding a spec sheet or interactive video can actually convince the user to make the purchase. Therefore, really striving for them to convert immediately may not be the best strategy. 

12. Customize your landing pages according to audience type

You can customize your landing pages according to the kind of target audience is also one of the PPC strategies you must focus on. According to the target audience, design the creative and formulate the content for more reliability. 

13. Use Mobile-Responsive Ads

Your ads need to be mobile responsive. 60% of marketers have invested in mobile-friendly ads as they understand the need of the hour. Most users log in through their smartphones. If a mobile-friendly ad is not in your plan, use it as one of the urgent PPC strategies you must implement. 

14. Content is key

Content is a very crucial factor when it comes to PPC campaigns. Your ad needs to look very appealing for a user to even consider clicking on the ad. The content also needs to be bang-on. It cannot look cluttered and at the same time, the content needs to add value to the advertisement.

15. Set realistic budgets

To set a realistic, outline what your goals are through the campaign. Then work on the budget accordingly. If this is not your first campaign, then evaluate what worked for you and accordingly reallocate your budgets. The best part about these ads is that you have control over your pay-per-click budgets.

16. Optimized landing pages 

Mobile-friendly ads are a great idea. However, the whole point is lost if your landing page itself is not mobile responsive. Did you know more than 40% of users convert through their mobiles and more than 50% of ad clicks are through the phone?  

A landing page cannot take long to load as this would lead to a user losing patience, therefore, losing interest and you losing out on a purchase.

17. Turn off audience network in Facebook ads

To counter the problem of fraudulent clicks from sketchy, not-so-trustworthy sites, you have the option of turning off the audience network for Facebook. This can save you the pain of excluding them from your reports as well, in just one simple click.

Check out How to build an effective targeting audience on Facebook. 

18. Use direct and indirect keywords

Keywords have a direct relationship with brand visibility and conversions. By using direct and indirect keywords, you can broaden the spectrum of your ad. Indirect keywords have a not-so-direct relation but they can give great results. Check out how to do keyword research for the best results.

19. Use extensions

Ad extensions are very important to your PPC strategies. You can use message, price and call extensions. 

• Message extensions –

Users can chat with the team through a chat box or email address. Automated responses can also be set up. This works well for hospitality PPC campaigns and travel PPC campaigns.

• Call extensions – 

 Include your contact number so that users can connect with you through call directly. These work very well for any kind of service.

• Price extensions – 

Price extensions work well for users to know about your products and services and pricing options. This makes it convenient for users to compare with other sellers and is recommended for eCommerce shops.

Experiment with all the PPC ad extensions and understand what works for your brand. You need to stand out from the crowd and PPC ad extensions really attract users.

20. Use multiple ad platforms

We cannot stress the importance of this point enough. Using multiple platforms will increase visibility, thus increasing your chances of conversion. Facebook ads are a go-to for social media promotions. 

21. Check, check & check

A strategy that nobody can afford to skip. You must triple check all your campaigns and be very observant of the results of each campaign. With every learning, you will get better at PPC. But everyone needs a headstart and we’ve got one for you – IIDE’s Online Google Ads Course led by experienced trainers. 

Top 9 Advantages of PPC Strategies

• PPC ads are cost-efficient

Pay-per-click ads allow you to have control over your budget, targets and placements. Therefore, you can control the relationship between results and budgets.

• PPC ads provide instant web traffic

Organic marketing is largely focused on getting a search engine ranking. However, with PPC ads, there are reserved spots for these ads. Hence, you won’t need to worry about getting there and focus on growing your business.

For instant results, this works great as organic rankings can take months to achieve with keywords and organic SEO efforts.

• PPC ads offer the right leads

PPC ads reach the right users at the right time. In fact, the ad reaches them in real-time when they are searching for that particular product or service that you have to offer. This makes them very cost-effective as well.

• Test your SEO strategy

Your PPC keyword data can be used for your organic SEO strategy as well. Most organic keywords are hidden due to privacy issues. With a paid search, there is no such limitation as such and you can see which keywords lead to conversion, at what cost and percentage. 

Therefore, you can apply this to your SEO strategy and test it out without any additional costs.

Bonus Read – Benefits of Search Engine Marketing 

• User-Friendly

PPC ads are extremely easy to make. They do not require any special designs. Hence, they are hassle-free to create.

• Stable

Since PPC ads are not affected by any kind of algorithm revisions, they are much more stable than content and SEO marketing. The changes are less dynamic in nature which means that there is less scope for major fluctuations in campaign performances.

• Effective Targeting

With PPC ads, you can target various metrics such as age, likes and preferences, location, etc. You can even expand your target on an international level or target a specific location. Hence, you can target users on different platforms as well. For example, you can create ads for women on Youtube who look for makeup videos. 

Looking for some more targeting strategies? Check out Digital Marketing strategies for startups.

• Synergistic Approach

An integrated strategy with PPC ads, search ads and social media ads can increase conversions, much more than a standalone campaign. Google’s audience observations feature narrows down the better performing audiences and you can utilize the same target group for your social media targeting as well.

• Retargeting 

With PPC ads you can identify those users who didn’t convert and retarget them. For example, a user looking for a frying pan may not buy it on the website but can be reminded of it with ads on another platform. You can attract new customers and increase brand awareness.

FAQS

Q. What does PPC mean?

PPC means Pay Per Click which means that an advertiser pays the publisher only when a user clicks on the advertisement. 

Q. What are PPC strategies used for?

PPC strategies focus on the optimization of ads for a higher conversion rate which is a benefit for businesses. 

Q. What are the 4Cs of PPC?

The 4Cs of PPC that are regarded as very important when executing PPC Campaigns are cost, communication, customer, and convenience.

Q. What are some effective PPC strategies in 2023?

The following are the most effective and popular PPC strategies in 2023:

• Long-tail keywords
• Optimize incomplete data
• Automation
• First party data
• Ad copies
• RLSA
• Negative Keywords
• Bidding Strategies
• Diversify your platform
• Retargeting Campaigns
• Reverse Conversion Funnel
• Optimize landing pages
• Content is key
• Mobile-responsive ads
• Set realistic budgets
• Direct and Indirect Keywords

Q. How much does a PPC Campaign cost?

Since PPC Campaigns are totally flexible, their cost totally depends upon the budget and the CPC for the keyword you are targeting. For example, if the CPC for that particular keyword is INR 50 and your budget is INR 10,000, you can expect to get 200 clicks in that campaign. 

Conclusion

With so many strategies to choose from, make sure that you have an integrated plan that covers all aspects and gives you maximum ROI for every PPC ad. Also, connect it to other social media platforms for better reach. If you liked these strategies, we recommend that you read the best digital marketing strategies for a holistic approach. 

If you’re looking to understand digital marketing better, we recommend the 4-month online digital marketing course.

For something more in-depth, the Post Graduation Digital Marketing is great for upskilling and also for assured placements and career guidance.

Now that you have understood what PPC is and how you can leverage it, tell us how you would use these strategies in the comments below!