PPC advertisers must take a strategic and nuanced approach to campaign management to stay ahead of the competition.
At SMX Advanced, PPC experts Sarah Stemen and Christine Zirnheld, senior digital marketing manager at Cypress North, shared their top actionable recommendations to help you create better-targeted ads, effectively manage ad spend, and run advertising campaigns. more successful e-commerce and B2B.
Here are 10 key takeaways from their session.
1. Keep broad match keywords in separate campaigns from phrase match and exact match to allow for different bidding strategies and more aggressive targets for broad match.
The main advantage of this approach is the flexibility it offers in campaign management and bidding strategies.
Broad match keywords require smart bidding to be effective, while phrase and match keywords can use a variety of bidding strategies.
By separating them, advertisers can set more aggressive goals for broad match campaigns, which is crucial given their broader reach.
This separation also makes performance management easier, because different match types typically yield different results.
Additionally, it makes it easier to control the budget, preventing broad match keywords from consuming the entire budget when mixed with other match types.
The strategy also simplifies negative keyword management, allowing advertisers to focus on phrase and exact match campaigns because broad match search terms can be overwhelming and less actionable.
This approach aims to optimize campaign performance by enabling more personalized management of different keyword match types, leading to smarter spending and more effective campaigns.
2. Use custom segments to win over competitors by targeting people who have visited competing websites or used competing apps.
You can do this by adding your competitor’s name to your list of search terms.
You can also use the website option by entering the URL of your competitor’s website. Google Ads will find people who have visited this or similar sites and target them again when they browse the Google Display Network, YouTube or Discover.
This is a great way to target your competitors’ current customers or similar people. You can also do the same with apps if your competitor has one.
3. Leverage Microsoft Advertising search term reports to find keywords to add or remove in Google Ads campaigns, as Microsoft often provides more detailed search term data.
Use your Microsoft Advertising Search Terms report and apply what you’ve learned to your Google Ads campaigns.
Take this example: a Google Ads campaign had an exact equivalent on Microsoft Ads with the same keywords.
- On Microsoft Ads, there were 10 conversions and 10 search terms related to those conversions. No conversion terms were listed in this other bucket.
- On Google, there were 32 conversions, and only one of them had a search term in the search terms report. The rest was under “others”.
So use Microsoft Ads to research keywords, decide whether to add or remove them, and apply that information to Google Ads as well.
4. Invest in video assets for campaigns as Google emphasizes the importance of video in new campaign types like Performance Max and Demand Gen.
For Performance Max, you must provide a video. If you don’t, Google will create one for you, which may seem unprofessional.
At the very least, upload an existing video from your YouTube channel. Next, invest in creating rich video assets for your campaigns.
Whether you work with a freelancer or hire a designer, you can streamline the process using templates. For e-commerce, you can display products on screen with their details; For lead generation, you can use testimonial videos.
Either way, video is crucial going forward, so make sure you have quality video assets in your account.
5. Consider using more aggressive bidding strategies initially to accelerate the learning phase, then move to more effective strategies like Target ROAS or Target CPA once spend increases.
Here are some bidding strategies to consider:
- Maximum conversions.
- Maximum conversion value.
- A very low target ROAS,
- Manual or enhanced CPC.
- Maximum clicks.
Once your spending has increased and you’ve left the learning phase, it’s important to move from an aggressive bidding strategy to a more effective strategy, like Target ROAS or Target CPA.
Dig Deeper: How Each Google Ads Bidding Strategy Influences Campaign Success
6. Use flexible budgeting to allocate expenses based on fluctuations in demand throughout the year rather than using a fixed monthly budget.
This means planning your budget for the whole year.
When demand is high, you can spend more, and when demand is low, you can spend less. If you stick to a fixed monthly budget, you won’t have this flexibility.
This is useful for e-commerce because consumer behavior can be difficult to predict.
For example, if there are shipping delays and people start shopping earlier, like in November, you wouldn’t want to save your entire budget for December and then find out that most people have already finished shopping.
Ultimately, you react to the market and increase or decrease your budget based on performance, then capitalize on it. This also works well for seasonal campaigns.
7. Break down campaigns by advertising calendar, or where budget allows, to set more tailored performance goals and strategies, especially for B2B campaigns.
There are significant performance differences between weekday and off-hours (weekends, mornings and evenings) in B2B advertising.
To take advantage of this, create separate “out of hours” campaigns with more aggressive targeting, allowing for smarter spending and the ability to set specific goals over time.
This approach is particularly useful for B2B scenarios, such as optimizing phone calls on weekdays but not on weekends when no one is available to answer.
In these cases, it is important to rotate goals based on release schedules.
8. For lead generation campaigns, optimize for qualified leads by integrating your CRM to target lower funnel lead stages
This is the best way to test broad match in your account.
You’re opening yourself up to any related search term, but if you optimize for bottom-of-funnel prospects, you can find a way to make broad match work for lead generation.
Plus, this is truly the only way to use Performance Max. Optimizing Performance Max only for form submissions and lead generation accounts leads to bot attacks, marking them all as good leads when they are not.
Integrating with your CRM and ensuring it works properly is crucial. You should check it daily or set up a script to monitor it, as any issues can directly impact the health of your account.
Google is making this task easier by offering a data manager to all advertisers this year. This should simplify CRM integration with Google Ads and improve lead generation.
9. Use data exclusions to prevent bidding algorithms from being skewed by anomalies like site outages, and use seasonal adjustments before sale periods to help algorithms anticipate increased conversion rates .
Data exclusions are important. If conversions are down, report it to Google so you don’t overbid or mismanage your campaign.
Remember, as a paid search manager, you understand upcoming trends better than the algorithm.
Before a sales period, make adjustments by informing the platform if you expect the conversion rate to double. This will help the system increase bids more quickly during this time.
Dig Deeper: 5 Hidden Areas of Google Ads You Probably Didn’t Know About
10. Don’t neglect SEO efforts, as they remain critical to PPC success by impacting quality scores and providing signals for Google AI-driven ad creation and targeting.
Leverage your SEO team to ensure the metadata and your on-site copy match what you want to see on the ad platform.
This is a great way to draw additional attention to your asset options that you might not otherwise have.
When it comes to product data optimization, sometimes you’ll hear that it’s the only thing we can control.
If a GTIN (Global Trade Item Number) is optional, enter it and have your SEO team come in and essentially optimize your feed with the keywords you want to display.
Watch: 30 Ideas in 30 Minutes: Advanced Strategies for Google Ads
For 20 more practical tips, watch the full SMX Advanced session here.