Pay per click (PPC) is a powerful search engine marketing tool, but it can be time consuming and challenging to set up. If you’re new to PPC, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the terms, strategies and options available. To help get you started with your first campaign, here are four of the most popular bidding strategies that many advertisers use when setting up their PPC campaigns:
Maximize Conversions
Conversion rate is the number of conversions divided by the number of ad clicks. This can be influenced by a number of factors, including landing page quality, keyword match types and ad copy.
Conversion rates vary widely across industries and businesses; however, there are some general benchmarks to consider when trying to maximize your conversion rate:
- The average conversion rate is between 1% and 5%. If your business has an average conversion rate below this range (or if it’s higher than 20%), it could benefit from optimization strategies like A/B testing or re-evaluating what constitutes a “conversion” on your website.
Control Cost Per Click (CPC)
Control Cost Per Click (CPC)
CPC is the amount you pay for each click on your ad, and it’s the most important metric to track. You can control CPC by bidding and optimizing your ad copy.
- Bid strategically: The higher your bid, the better chance of getting clicked! But don’t go too high or else it will be too expensive.
- Optimize landing pages: Having relevant content and landing pages means more conversions which means less wasted money!
Maximize Click Through Rate (CTR)
Maximizing CTR is the most reliable way to increase your ad’s effectiveness. It’s also a measure of how relevant your ads are to users, so improving your CTR will help you get more traffic from them.
To understand what this means, let’s take a look at click-through rate (CTR): it’s the number of clicks divided by impressions — or how many times an ad was shown on Google Search and/or YouTube videos, including video extensions in search results pages. In other words:
Clicks / Impressions = Click Through Rate
Maximize Average Position (ARP)
Average Position (ARP) is the position of your ad in the search results. Higher average positions mean more exposure for your ads, which can lead to more clicks and conversions. ARP is calculated by dividing the number of impressions by the number of positions. For example, if you have three ads with 100 impressions each and they’re ranked first through third on Google’s SERPs (search engine results pages), then your ARP will be 33%.
Advertisers use this metric because it gives them an idea of how often their ads are being displayed alongside other advertisers’ banners or text ads within a given set of results — but not necessarily where those ads actually fall among those competitors’ advertisements themselves!
Target Your Audience
Bid on keywords that are relevant to your business.
- Target specific locations: If you’re an ecommerce site, target cities or states where customers are likely to buy from you. If you sell software, bid on keywords related to specific industries like “software development” or “manufacturing.”
- Target devices: Use device targeting if your service isn’t available on certain platforms (like mobile devices) or if it’s easier for people who use those platforms (e.g., tablet users) to access it. For example, if a user searches on their desktop but clicks through from Google Ads onto a mobile site when they see an ad for something they want more information about, then the company might consider bidding higher for desktop-only ads since getting them there means less work converting them into buyers later down the line.
There are a number of factors to consider when you’re setting up your PPC campaigns.
There are a number of factors to consider when you’re setting up your PPC campaigns. The most important question is: what do you want to achieve? If your goal is brand awareness, then it makes sense for your ads to appear on search engines and social media platforms where people are searching for information about products and services like yours. If you have a more specific target audience in mind, such as young families living in the suburbs who have children between 8 and 12 years old (and therefore will be looking for after-school programs), then it makes sense to focus on those types of sites instead.
When selecting keywords, think about how much money should go into each keyword bid depending on its relevance and competitiveness with other advertisers bidding on that keyword phrase; this will help ensure that there’s enough budget left over so that all bids aren’t too high relative to their actual value/potential return-on-investment (ROI).
There are many different ways to set up your PPC campaigns, and it can be overwhelming to try to figure out which one is best. But the important thing is not to get overwhelmed! You don’t need to do everything at once–just start with one strategy and then work from there. There are two main things you should keep in mind:
