The Truth About PPC Management Budgets: 4 Ways to Stop Wasting Money

Online marketers favor paid search advertising because of its ease of use, measurability and real-time responsiveness.

In comparison to organic search, it is easy to spend more money in pay per click or PPC management due to an increased number of advertisers bidding on high-volume keywords.

Paying more money to acquire customers makes financial sense, if you convert first-time buyers into long-term customers.

PPC company Wpromote.com reported that one-third of pay per click agencies say that their average client spends between $10,000 and $100,000 on paid search programs, it is very easy to lose money with an ineffective bidding and customer acquisition strategy.

Because it is so easy to lose money with your PPC keyword campaigns, use the following tips to save your cash and decrease any chances of overbidding for clicks.

Set limits by geography--

Based on your buyer personas, you can limit the range of your ads depending on a specific population of people. For example, if you are selling shoes to moms in the Midwest and Southeast USA, you do not need to target international shoe keywords.

Setting geographic limits can save you more money in the end, even if you sell inventory nationwide. To find your geographic targets, look at your analytics to locate the top regions where your most lucrative buyers live.

Drop keywords that don't convert--

Various tools can help you measure search volume of lucrative “buying keywords” in your particular verticals. Each month you should analyze your conversion analytics and identify high-volume keywords that generate hits to your landing pages, but do not necessarily convert. Add any non-converting keywords to your negative keyword lists.

If you have keyword groups that are responsible for driving traffic to your physical storefront, keep click-through rate, instead of conversion, as your key metric.

Monitor your negative keyword list monthly--

You can optimize your PPC campaigns by adding negative keywords to your paid search accounts. These negative keywords will remove ads from search query results that contain non-converting or undesirable search terms.

For example, if you are selling sports equipment or sporting goods, you don’t want to market to people who are looking for careers in the sporting goods industry.

Often a PPC manager will start their paid search campaign with a large list of keywords. By analyzing your traffic data monthly, you easily delete the keywords that do not perform and retain the high-converting ones.

Perform ad copy testing--

Similar to other forms of direct mail advertising, such as mailers, flyers or door-to-door solicitations or coupons, you can improve your click-through rate through testing your advertising copy.

On the web, pay-per-click ad copy can have a large effect on your quality score and your return on investment. By switching headlines or adding more benefit statements to your text ads, you can improve the number of impressions and raise your quality score.

If you raise you quality score, you cost per click (CPC) goes down. As a result, you will spend less money on your PPC campaigns and your ROI will increase.