PPC advertising is perhaps the most effective form of digital marketing.

As you’re likely already aware, it works on a pay-per-click basis. In a nutshell, when an ad is clicked on by a user, the advertiser pays a fee to Google.

Seems straightforward, right? PPC advertising is able to bring targeted and qualified traffic directly to your website. It’s consistent and scalable. Success with PPC is all just a matter of optimizing your PPC campaigns efficiently and avoiding the common pitfalls.

But what do you do when nothing seems to be working? How can you improve PPC performance when all else fails?

Choose the Right Bidding Strategy

Your bidding strategy is what lays the foundation for your entire campaign, so you much consider it wisely. Start out by defining your goals:

• Are you looking to increase website traffic?
• Convince people to take action on your social platform?
• Boost your brand awareness?
• All of the above, and more?

Google AdWords Offered Bidding Strategies

Google AdWords provides a few bidding strategies to help your needs, including conversion-based, impression-based, click-based, and views or interaction-based strategies. Take your time considering the options you have available for your bidding strategy.

If your goals are unclear at the onset, it will be much harder to pinpoint the proper strategy and measure your results in the end.

Rotate Your PPC Ads to Improve PPC Performance

You might already know that, if you’ve created several ads, you can’t display them all at once. That means you’ll need to create something of a rotation. In AdWords, you have four options for your rotation optimization:

• For Clicks: This option optimizes your rotation based on the ads that have received the most clicks in the past. These ads are more likely to be shown more often.
• For Conversions: Similar to optimizing for clicks, this option prioritizes ads that create a lot of conversions.
• Even Rotation: This option doesn’t pick favourites, instead all the ads will enter a similar number of auctions. That said, this is no guarantee each ad will meet the standard for impressions. What’s more, if you leave ads in this option and they go untouched for 90 days, they are automatically optimized for clicks or conversions.
• Indefinite Rotation: This option is the same as even rotation, except nothing happens after 90 days.

When in doubt, optimizing for conversions is a great place to start.

Use Ad Extensions to Improve Click-Through-Rates

The main reason to use ad extensions to improve PPC performance is to give people a little more information about your business to help them make their decision. What’s more, ad extensions are a proven way to boost your click-through rate (CTR). Extensions can include all sorts of information, like a phone number, address, links to a landing page, and plenty more.

This little bit of information gives your ads more visibility on the SERPS, which improves their value. Setting up extensions is usually done manually, but on occasion, AdWords will sometimes show ad extensions automatically if it thinks your performance will benefit.

The one thing you’ve got to remember is that just adding an ad extension will not guarantee it will appear with the ad. Your rank must also meet a certain level, and the extension must be relevant and provide value.

But the best part about adding ad extensions to improve your PPC performance is that is it completely free!

These are just a handful of the options available to marketers who are looking to improve their PPC campaign performance. If you’re looking for a bit more advice, or some more hands-on help to improve your PPC performance, book your free consultation with Asset Digital Communications today!