Pay per click (PPC) campaigns are a great way to drive traffic to your website. With a few clicks, search engines will begin promoting your ads to millions of people.
While Pay per click (PPC) campaigns might save you time and money getting more traffic to your website quickly, it does cost money every time. Every time a user clicks on your ad, you pay a small fee. If you don’t get enough conversions from those clicks, you won’t get a very high return on your investment (ROI).
So how can you increase the ROI of your pay per click campaigns and ensure you get the most bang for your marketing buck? Let's find out.
There are dozens of PPC key performance indicators to help you determine how well your ads perform. The most popular is the number of clicks.
Obviously, you want to know how many people click on your ad. Not only does this give you an idea of what you’re going to pay, but more importantly it shows how many people were compelled to click your ad.
While the total number of clicks is an important metric to track, it’s not the most important. The primary goal of any marketing campaign is to make sales. Clicks aren’t sales; they’re just the first part of the process.
To truly understand the ROI of your PPC ads, you need to track the conversion rate (CVR). CVR shows you how many users who clicked on your ad actually followed your website’s call to action (CTA) or completed a sale. The higher your CVR, the higher your PPC ROI—and that’s what you really want.
Ad targeting in PPC is all about getting your ads in front of consumers who are most likely to purchase your product. If you can show the right ad to the right person at the right time, your chances of making a conversion skyrocket, boosting your ROI.
The internet is a big place. It’s not always easy to ensure your ads will reach the right people. In many cases, businesses will use run-of-network ads where the search engine manages everything to cut down on time and effort. This PPC method is similar to broadcast marketing efforts: you send your ad to as many people as possible and hope it works.
While standard run-of-network ads are great for maximizing clicks, it doesn’t do much for your conversion rate.
Targeted ads have the exact opposite effect. Because you aim at a specific audience, the total number of clicks go down. There are fewer people seeing your ads. However, since the ad is much more relevant to the consumer, conversion rates increase dramatically.
Let's look at a specific example to further illustrate.
In online studies, companies ran identical PPC ads for a month. The only difference between the two ads was that one used a run-of-network method, and the other used a targeted approach. In one of the trials, targeted ads received 64% fewer clicks but saw a whopping 323% increase in conversions per 1,000 impressions!
There are two main types of Pay per click (PPC) ad targeting that can help you get more ROI out of your campaigns: audience targeting and content targeting.
Audience targeting is all about placing your ad based on users’ actions, intentions, interests, or demographics. There are a few ways to harness the power of audience targeting in your PPC campaigns:
Audience targeting is great for getting your PPC ads in front of the right users.
Instead of targeting users, you can also target your PPC ads to certain types of content. This is a great way to boost the ROI of your pay per click campaign by placing your ad in the right place at the right time. Here are the different types of content targeting:
Content targeting is all about getting your ads in the right place. Coupled with audience targeting, you can show your ads to the right people in the right places, which will give your conversion rate—and thus, ROI—a significant boost.
There’s no doubt that thoughtful targeting has a huge impact on the ROI of your pay per click ( PPC ) campaigns. Getting your ads in front of the right people at the right time is always the key to an effective marketing strategy. While you might not get as many clicks, each click you do receive is more likely to become a conversion. Remember, clicks don’t pay the bills!
If you want some expert help to create or manage an effective PPC campaign, turn to the pros at The Creative Momentum. We’ll help you build a marketing strategy to target the right consumers, so you can get more qualified clicks to your site. Contact us for a free consultation. We’d love to hear about your project!