7 Questions to Ask When Analysing Your Pay Per Click Ad Campaigns

Running a business in the digital environment is everything but easy. As much as it would be great to achieve your goals organically, sometimes it’s simply not possible to make a breakthrough without paid pay per click ad campaigns. How come?

Well, it turns out that pay per click ad (PPC) campaigns maximise the potential of your content marketing strategy. According to Unbounce, PPC visitors are 50% more likely to purchase something than organic visitors. At the same time, a single brand awareness campaign on Google Ads, if done correctly, can boost the metric up to 80%.

With that in mind, do you know what it takes to launch a successful PPC ad campaign? If you are not really sure, here are seven questions to ask when analysing your Pay Per Click PPC ad campaign:

What is the Best Platform for My PPC Campaign?

The PPC market is versatile and offers you many different platforms to promote the brand, but you definitely need a good starting point. A study from NetMarketShare reveals that Google owns 71% of the search market share, while Yahoo and Bing combine for just 24%.

In such circumstances, we strongly recommend you begin with the largest search engine and move on to the other platforms once you’ve gained enough experience to administer multiple campaigns effortlessly. As for the other networks such as AOL or Ask, you shouldn’t waste time thinking about it unless your target audience really likes these two networks.

What is the Average CPC?

This is the question of all questions, but rest assured no one can answer it accurately. Namely, cost-per-click (CPC) depends on many different variables, so you need to put them all into the calculation to find out the real price of your Pay Per Click ad campaign.

The price can go anywhere from a penny to dozens of pounds per click in the most competitive industries, but it’s up to you to limit the budget and determine what is right. However, analyses report that a typical business earns earns $2 for every $1 spent on Google Ads, so don’t be afraid of investing.

Should I Be Using Ad Extensions?

Ad extensions are amazing because they allow you to display more information via structured snippets, site links, and so on. However, there is no general rule on how to use them – ad extensions are intention-driven, so their purpose for you depends on the purpose of your campaign.

Brill Assignment have revealed they use different ad extension features for two primary reasons:

• Awareness: they add structured snippets and links to informational pages to attract first-time searchers.
• Lead generation: they use phone call extensions and URLs to conversion-focused landing pages for low-funnel audiences.

Am I Safe from Click Frauds?

This is yet another very common inquiry – click fraud is an illegal practice where user click on a website’s advertisements to increase the payable number of clicks to the advertiser. In other words, click frauds make you pay for useless clicks. You should rely on Google’s defense mechanisms here since they are constantly coming up with new anti-fraudulent algorithms.

The system keeps getting better, but you can also look for frauds on your own. For example, UK Assignment Holic takes an extra step by checking their account regularly to identify possible locations or timeframes that diminish the ROI. It’s a time-consuming process, but it’s worth it if you want to make the best of your PPC advertising.

How Can I See New Features?

The fifth question is very important since you definitely want to stay up to date with all the PPC news. Fortunately, this is also the easiest question Google-wise because the platform regularly refreshes the Google Ads announcements page with new features and key announcements.

How Come My Ad is Not on Top?

If it feels like you can’t ever win the number one position, you are facing one – or both – of these problems:

• Keyword bids: Perhaps your offer is not as high as competitors’ so you can’t achieve the top ranking.
• Quality score: Search engines don’t only calculate bids but also think in terms of ad quality. If this is the problem, you should consider hiring a writer to help you improve your ad copy so as to match the quality requirements.

However, you don’t always have to target the highest ranking – you should make cost efficiency a basic success indicator instead. The ultimate goal is to earn as much as possible investing as little as possible.

Should I Combine SEO and PPC?

While Pay Per Click ad campaigns can grant you instant visibility, they don’t represent the best solution in the long run. You must combine search engine optimisation with paid search in order to maximise the potential of your business and boost brand recognition.

It seems like everybody is investing in PPC these days, but not everybody knows how to measure and track their efforts. It’s a complex process that requires solid understanding and knowledge, so you need to figure out how things work in this field. These tips can’t make you a PPC guru all of a sudden, but they can definitely help you improve the potential of your campaigns.

Author bio

Scott Mathews is a digital marketer at Careers Booster and ResumesPlanet who focuses mainly on social media and paid advertising. As a dedicated marketing professional, he also enjoys writing articles for Xpertwriters.com and Edugeeksclub.com. Scott lives in London and believes that Hyde Park is the most beautiful place on earth, so you can often see him there jogging with the running group.