PPC advertising is effectively captivating the attention of an audience and driving traffic to a website. But since PPC campaigns aren’t free, you want to make sure that every dollar you invest offers a good return on advertising.
In this blog post we look at 10 essential tactics you can use to ensure a PPC campaign delivers a great return on advertising spend (ROAS).
10 strategies that will improve your PPC ROAS
1. Hyper-targeted keywords
Before launching a new PPC campaign, dive deep into keyword research to ensure the keywords you use to target those who are more likely to convert.
In other words, target keywords with high purchase intent. These are keywords potential customers type into search engines when they’re almost ready to take action.
2. Competitor research
Competitor research tools can yield valuable insights and reduce or eliminate guesswork.
We suggest using these tools to find out:
- Which keywords your competitors are ranking for.
- The type of copy, call-to-action, and offers that have lower bounce rates.
- How your competitors’ ads are performing in the long term.
To lower your ad cost, you can also use keyword research or discovery tools to explore keywords your competitors have overlooked, as their cost-per-click will be lower.
3. Negative keywords
Both Google Ads and Bing Ads feature a negative keyword tool. With this tool, you can create a list of keywords that aren’t likely to generate conversion immediately. When someone does an online search using those keywords, your ad won’t be shown to them.
Negative keywords are the keywords you don’t want to pay for. Let’s use an example to illustrate this.
Imagine you sell laptops and launch a campaign for gaming laptops. In your negative keyword list, you could add terms like “laptop 500GB HDD.” Gaming laptops have a higher HDD capacity and, therefore, cost more, so there’s no point in getting clicks for a product that the user isn’t willing to buy.
4. Seasonality adjustments
In 2019, Google introduced a seasonality adjustment feature that can maximize PPC ROAS at specific times of the year. To use it, you need to know how a seasonal campaign performed in the past, for example, by looking at year-on-year data for Black Friday.
Let’s say you find out that you got the highest conversion rates on Friday during last year’s Black Friday campaign, but they dropped significantly on Saturday. Using the seasonality adjustment, you can invest more ad spend on this year’s Friday campaign and less on Saturday.
5. Personalized landing pages
If your campaign targets more than one buyer persona, you can use different landing pages and personalize them to each persona. You can then use the keyword of geo-location filters to ensure the landing page copy changes dynamically based on who sees them.
Some studies show that conversion rates can be 25% higher when using dynamic landing pages.
6. Optimize every aspect of conversion
Speaking of conversion rates, you must make sure every aspect of conversion is fully optimized. This includes ad copy, the user experience, call-to-action-buttons, forms and check out pages, and abandoned cart re-targeting.
7. Focus on local traffic
This strategy is good for small businesses or those with a physical store. This allows you to target a smaller audience (so the ad costs are lower) while ensuring the audience is highly likely to convert.
To dial in your local PPC campaign, use location targeting or geo-targeting. This feature is available in most campaign tools. Geo-targeting allows you to define who sees your ad, limiting it to users within a specific distance from your location.
8. Improve Ad Quality Score
Google lets you check how well your ad performs when compared to competitors. The ad performance is given a score from 1 to 10, with 10 being the best score you can aim for.
To improve your score, make sure your ads are hyper-targeted, relevant, and useful.
9. Product Listing Ads
Conversion rates for Product Listing or Google Shopping ads are 30% higher than for regular ads. To drive more traffic to product listing ads, use all the strategies listed above, and consider optimizing your Google Shopping campaigns. Effective Google Shopping management involves refining product data, setting competitive bids, and ensuring your feed is up-to-date.
If you create small product groups in your PLAs, you’ll have a more granular view of how your campaign is performing in case you need to make adjustments.
An optimized product feed is crucial for maximizing PLA performance. By providing Google with the most accurate titles, descriptions, images, and attributes, you improve your chances of showing up for relevant searches and achieving higher click-through and conversion rates. To get there:
- Use feed-management tools like DataFeedWatch to automate optimizations, fix errors, and apply custom rules at scale.
- Leverage advanced features (e.g., keyword insertion into titles, sale price scheduling, and custom labels for seasonal or clearance items).
- If you lack the time or in-house expertise, consider partnering with a dedicated feed management service. These specialists will not only build and maintain your feed but also continuously refine it based on performance data—so you can focus on strategic growth.
Remember, a high-quality, well-optimized feed is the bedrock of a successful Shopping ads program. Without it, even the best bid strategies and budgets will underperform.
10. Analyze, analyze, analyze
Boosting your ROAS involves tracking and analyzing campaign performance constantly. Having a well-designed analysis strategy allows you to be agile and fine-tune your ad campaign as needed to get even better results. If you’re having a hard time here sometimes it’s good to outsource PPC to someone that can provide good insight and value.
Conclusion
Now that you know how to improve the ROAS of a PPC campaign, don’t forget to incorporate these tactics into your 2022 marketing plan.
Author Bio:
Diarmuid Hennessy is the Operations Manager of HomeCheck. Since 2016, they have been providing property survey services to homeowners throughout Ireland. To learn more click here – https://homecheck.ie/.
