11 Actionable PPC Tips and PPC Optimization Strategies

Successfully managing a PPC campaign is a complex undertaking. Ask any experienced PPC manager.

There’s an overwhelming amount of information available, making it difficult to find the right resources to improve your PPC ad campaigns. This is partly because many experts keep their best tips and tricks under wraps.

11 PPC Tips For Your PPC Campaigns

We’re here to shed light on the matter. Our team has sought the advice of 11 top PPC experts globally to bring you actionable, insider tips to enhance your PPC advertising efforts.

From landing pages to ad groups, negative keywords to ad copy, target audience to bidding strategy, we’ve got you covered. These tips will help maximize your ad spend, improve your ad copy, and reach your ideal audience through effective ad groups and PPC ads.

Elevate your PPC campaigns with a strong focus on search engines and watch the results unfold!

1. Demographics Targeting & Reporting

Adam Robinson is a senior paid media specialist at Marketing Signals with an in-house and agency background. He has a wealth of knowledge across various industries and helps clients get the most out of their budget.

There has been a recent expansion of the targeting & reporting aspect within the demographics section of Google Ads – and many advertisers are potentially missing out. This section allows businesses to investigate any potential visitor trends and not only optimise according to the data – thus improving the ROI – but also adapt future marketing efforts (both offline and online).

Predictions about people interested in services are all well and good, but the possibility remains that there will be correlations and niches that have not been considered. This information helps to plug that gap and improve your PPC campaigns.

2. Utilise Pay Per Conversion In Your PPC Campaigns

Justin Deaville is the Managing Director at Receptional and has over 20 years of marketing experience. Having worked with many of the UK’s leading businesses, he helps them get the most out of their budget and achieve their goals.

Recently, Google released a new feature called “Pay Per Conversion” that means it’s now easier to get sales from display. You simply set a cost per sale target. Then provide Google with your ad collateral.

Google will deliver sales. And – here’s the thing – you only pay when customers convert. And you’ll never pay more than your CPA price. It’s an innovation that opens up great opportunities for performance marketers. People who need to deliver sales (or leads) at a set price.

3. Dark Posting on Facebook Ads

Jon Maher is the co-founder and CEO of Esper Inbound, an inbound agency that helps clients with all areas of their digital marketing strategy, including landing page optimization and PPC optimization strategy. A huge fan of Google Adwords, he loves talking about all things paid media and the importance of search volume in driving successful search ads.

If you’re trying to get the most out of Paid Social ads on Facebook / Instagram, I heavily recommend Dark Posting your ads. “Dark Posting” refers to the act of using the same ad ID across multiple campaigns and ad sets.

The Dark Posting strategy is awesome because it allows you to amass viral type social value on your ads in the form of likes, comments, and shares.

And if someone tags their friend or shares your ad, the engagement received by their network is free! I’ve seen clients get a 20% boost in traffic out of their ad spend with this type of social engagement and there’s no reason you can’t do this on your PPC campaigns.

Typically when duplicating an ad across multiple ad sets in Facebook, the platform creates a brand new ad (and ad id) for each duplicate – This hurts your potential for generating viral social value on a post.

To Dark Post – Create an ad, then grab it’s ad ID by previewing the ad and copying the second string of numbers in the preview URL (it should be a 10-15 digit number). Next you take that ad ID and create a new ad elsewhere, but choose “Use Existing Post” and paste the ad ID. That’s it, you’ve dark posted!

4. Keep An Eye Out For Long-Tail Keywords

Stephen Browne is a Senior Client Manager at PPC Geeks with over 10 years of experience managing PPC accounts for well-known brands. With plenty of hands-on experience, he’s always willing to share a tip or two.

Find long-tail keywords – they’re often cheaper and have less competition.

Something I often notice in accounts we take over that many people have strayed away from properly researching and actioning on the data within their account.

Because of this long-tail keywords often still offer great value and much less competition. So don’t forget about the ‘old ways’ and make sure you build your PPC campaigns for success!

5. Make Use Of Rule Bidding

Tom Sangers is the Managing Director at MetricHub, a specialist PPC and SEO agency that helps businesses improve and grow their digital strategy.

I like to add rules to accounts and the one I like best can help maintain position and decrease CPC.

Every day set your keywords to decrease by 3%, if for example in position 1.1. Then set another rule to increase your position by 3% if lower then 1.5.

This balances the account and means you do not overpay for keywords that are in 1st place, but maintains the first position at the lowest cost.

This can work very well for brand keywords and help you get the most out of your PPC campaigns.

6. Search Attribution Reporting

Darren Taylor also known as The Big Marketer is a digital marketing specialist that has worked with various large and small companies over the years. He now teaches a range of SEO and PPC courses to share his knowledge.

A tab often forgotten about in Google Ads is the search attribution report  (under the measurements menu). It’s important to understand how people convert on your website by measuring the touchpoints they have pre-conversion.

A great attribution report is the “top paths” report that shows the keyword path a user takes by impressions and clicks. This will allow you to see how keywords contribute to your overall campaign performance. If a keyword appears to have a low conversion rate, pause for a moment before deleting it and check this report. That keyword may provide the first touchpoint to further conversions down the line.

Depending on your business model and niche, if you are too hasty in removing keywords like this, it could negatively impact your conversion volume.

7. Don’t Get Caught Up On Spend Targets

Mark Dymond is the Director of Paid Search & Social at LSEO, a specialized PPC & SEO digital marketing agency. A US Search Awards winner, Mark has a deep understanding of PPC which he brings to his clients.

Something that is completely overlooked by many PPC professionals is setting up in-market audiences in observation mode for search campaigns because it allows you to collect a lot of data without screwing up the current ads you have running.

You can then use the data you collected and use it later on when you are optimizing the campaigns. This should allow for optimal performance.

When a client signs on for PPC help they are expecting results. Constant testing and data collection will allow you to deliver the goods by going above and beyond their expectations.

8. Aggregate Similar Conversion Events Into A Single One

Heiman Safeen is a Senior Growth Marketer at Genero and helps brands get the most out of their digital marketing strategy. With a strong background in SEO, social media and PPC, Heiman loves reducing client’s CPA metric.

I’ve seen many use a separate event for conversions that could essentially be categorized under one. By aggregating those under one event, you are giving more data to e.g. Google or Facebook, which can do a better job in optimizing your ads delivery using machine learning.

The more data you can give on a conversion point that is important to you, the better results you can get from your advertising efforts. If you use Google Tag Manager you can simply add the different conversion points triggers under one tag to aggregate the data. 

The first step would be to go through your conversion points, group them and then map out whether they are tracked under different events or not. If they are, then make the necessary changes and see how your performance improves over time.

9. Turn Off Auto-Application Of Ad Suggestions

Lewis Kemp is the CEO of Lightbulb Media, an SME focused digital agency that provides effective and affordable marketing solutions without the agency price tag.

We all know Google’s suggestions are usually based on what’s best for Google, rather than what might actually be best for you.  

Head to Settings > Account Settings > Ad suggestions and switch this off so that you have full control over any changes in your account.

You’d be surprised at how much money you can save once you finally have full control over your ads.

10. Use Segments In Your Tables

Dale Powell is the CEO of Atomic Marketing and helps businesses get the most out of their monthly marketing budget. Specializing in Google Ads, Dale works with clients from all over the world to get them the best return on investment.

Make good use of the data from the ‘Top vs other’ segment in your tables. 

In some niches such as legal, cost per clicks can be pretty high. I like to use the data from this segment to see if I can get traffic and conversions when my ads appear below organic, ultimately paying less for them. 

Target those users who do make their way to the bottom half of Google’s SERP with a nice compelling ad that is rich in features and benefits.

11. Embrace The Automation!

Matthew Ramsay is a Senior Client Manager at PPC Geeks. An award-winning agency, PPC Geeks are known for their creative ads which are led by Matthew and his years of PPC marketing experience.

Manual CPC bidding strategies used to be the best way to optimise an account, but in most cases, the automated strategies provided by Google are the best way to both grow and control bidding.

They used to be considered the lazy or unpurest ways to manage Google Ads, but the technology behind the strategies has vastly improved.

When coupled with effective and strategic management, realistic targets and compelling products, automated strategies are the best option.

Commonly Asked PPC Questions

How Can I Improve My PPC Performance?

Improving the performance of PPC campaigns can be a full-time job, but luckily there are plenty of PPC tips users can implement to boost their performance. Some actionable tips are, taking advantage of automation in your campaigns, and turning off ad suggestions to have full control over your account.

What Makes A Good PPC Campaign?

A good PPC campaign often comes down its overall profitability. If the campaign is profitable, then it’s a good campaign. The more profitable, the better! Bad campaigns often underperform and never end up making a profit, even after week or months of optimizations. The key to a good PPC campaign is knowing when and how to optimize.

Does PPC Affect SEO?

Pay per click marketing affecting SEO rankings and performance is a common myth that many beginners often believe. From our research and first-hand experience, it’s clear that running PPC campaigns like Google Ads does not help SEO rankings.