3 Actionable PPC Strategies To Instantly Improve Your Ad Campaigns

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Meet our hosts:
Dave Pancham
Dave has spent over 12 years in the industry where he has managed an e-commerce supplement shop for 8 years where they grew from 6 figures in yearly revenue to over 8 figures, managed millions in ad spend on Facebook, and founded a 7-figure fitness franchise marketing agency specializing in paid advertising, lead nurturing, and membership growth coaching which currently has over 100 clients.
Alex Ivanoff
Alex's specialty lies in psychology, paid advertising, funnel building, technology, and finance. He has managed millions of dollars in ad spend on various social platforms, and solved complex problems with thousands of businesses.

A simple “PPC strategies” google search can give you an idea of how the internet is saturated with “tricks” and “shortcuts” for a better PPC campaign strategy. But it’s simpler than it seems. All you need is a good understanding of your avatar customer, and a technical understanding of how to target that specific customer to ensure the highest possible returns on your advertising budget.

If you are currently building your eCommerce store, then you know that it can be a tricky endeavor. At first, you are not sure where to start. Whenever you fix something, you find a million other obstacles waiting for you.

Well, let us help you get a step closer to achieving your eCommerce success using our top three simple picks to have a lead-generating beast of a store.

But first, What makes a successful PPC strategy?

The PPC strategies world is vast, and it can get confusing if you don’t know what you are looking for. That is why the best PPC strategy for your business is the one that actually helps you achieve your marketing objectives.

Are you starting a new business and looking for exposure and brand awareness? Then you can try paying for impressions.

Or maybe you are past this phase, you have a more stable business with relatively decent traffic and you are looking for conversions and monetization. Then you can look into the idea of paying for acquisition.

No matter what your plan is, you can always find a PPC strategy that fits your specific business needs.

So today we decided to save you some time and brought to you our top 3 PPC strategies picks, with 3 bonus tips to optimise your ad campaign for maximum efficiency.

Let’s dive into it.

  1. PPC strategy one: Utilize Long-Tail Keywords

Back in the stone age of the internet, PPC strategies were all about short search terms, sometimes even stand-alone words. But now that voice search and organic AI speech is on the rise, PPC has become a lot more wordy in essence.

And here is where “long-tail keyword research” comes right into place.

But before getting into the specifics of using this strategy, let’s go over the simple concept of “Semantic Research”.

LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing is a way for the search engine to essentially be able to “understand” what you are trying to search for.

And then by extension, Latent Semantic Indexing keywords are words or phrases that are commonly found together within a single topic and are semantically related to each other.

Think of the phrases Google suggests while you are typing in the search bar. Although the algorithm of course doesn’t know English, it can very effectively predict and suggest search terms depending on what other people generally search for when using those specific keywords.

On the other hand, Long-tail keywords are keywords or phrases which are very specific to some niche or product. Think of something like “red 1964 Chevrolet Impala ss coupe”.

“Long-tail” keywords refer to longer and more complex search term queries.

Whereas a simple search for sneakers with stripes would be “sneaker” or “striped sneakers”, a long-tail keyword might be “best sports sneakers with stripes in the US”.

We have a new-founded conversational way of using the internet now. Whereas you can google a question you could ask your best friend and wait for google to actually give you a logical answer.

This technology has resulted in more complex techniques of inducting keyword research which is like an infinite web of interlocking words that correlate with each other in such a way that makes search engines seem like they can basically speak English.

That string might be, “Where can I find the best sneakers with stripes near me?” However, there’s more to it than just appealing to users who rely on long search queries.

Anyone who’s implemented a PPC campaign knows that some search terms are more difficult to leverage than others. Our example “striped sneakers” is too generic and could put a small vintage sneaker store in competition with big brands like Adidas or Nike. and that’s exactly what you are trying to avoid.

These heritage brands have large advertising budgets and are more likely to bid higher for ads related to that general search query.

“Best vintage sneakers with stripes” is more specific, and even though we all know that large sneaker brands do have vintage shoes, you’re less likely to find them on sale on their websites.

Using long-tail keywords helps you stand out from the competition and gives small businesses a leg up with their PPC campaigns. 

And the ironic thing is, the more you get specific with your keywords, the more warm leads you generate for your business.

But to do this effectively, you’ll need to research keywords that are relevant to you and look at metrics that list the competitiveness of each keyword you enter, or the “difficulty” to dominate those niche queries.




  1. PPC strategy two: Plan Your Bidding Strategy

PPC bidding strategies are the pit that swallows all your marketing budget if done blindly.

On the other hand, if you carefully consider your PPC bidding strategy, you can turn it into your business’s greatest investment.

PPC (or pay per click) is a general term for many forms of internet advertising. The four core PPC bidding strategies consist of:

  1. Cost per mile: (CPM): Cost per 1,000 impressions—ideal for increasing brand recognition.
  2. Cost per click/view: (CPC/CPV): You pay for every click on an ad or view of a video.
  3. Cost per acquisition: (CPA): Pay only when an individual completes an action such as signs up for an email subscription or makes a purchase.
  4. Maximize clicks: Helps you maximize traffic over a time range when you’re working on a tight budget

Depending on your budget and your marketing priorities, you might like a strategy more than the rest. Crunch the number, decide which of those approaches can help you better actualize your gains.

A business focused solely on sales might benefit from a CPA campaign (Cost Per Acquisition) since it pays only when a visitor completes a specific lead flow. In contrast, a business that’s just starting might be better served by a CPM (Cost Per Mile) or maximize clicks plan.

Incidentally, maximize clicks plans are also popular on social media platforms since you can create a budget, spread it over days, and are guaranteed to get an estimated reach over that date range.




  1. PPC strategy three: Escape False Clicks

These days, web bots are savvier than ever.

Research shows that as many as 25% of all PPC ad-generated clicks are not relevant. Google Adwords respectively calls them “invalid clicks,” but they reference clicks from spam bots, unintended clicks from live people, accidental double clicks, and other impressions designed to drop your click-through rate.

While there are programs that can filter out bots and click errors, they’re not 100% effective though.

To minimize click fraud, you’ll need to look at your traffic sources through your analytics software. Keywords with high click-through rates that don’t convert or have poor conversion rates should be immediately flagged for either review or removal.

If yours is a business that primarily gets domestic traffic, and you suddenly notice a spike of international traffic along with a bump in ad expenditures, you can apply filters to prevent your content from appearing in irrelevant regions, therefore, protecting your hard-earned ad budget while also maintaining your CTR (Click-Through-Rate).

One last thing, you might also want to look at your website to ensure that SEO boosters like backlinks aren’t coming from low-quality websites, which can be bot-havens.

Bonus tips for an ad campaign that sells

  1. Not All KPIs Are Created Equal

One huge mistake that marketers make is to get too hung up on each and every ad KPI, making them feel overwhelmed and the campaign seems too big for them to handle.

What if you thought about your objectives and started tracking the KPIs that actually matter?

For us, this would be revenue attributed to advertising, and cost per acquisition (CPA). Too simple? well, it should be.

Instead of burning your fuel by focusing too much on Click-through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC), know that they do not pose an immediate threat to your campaign.

The whole point of paying per click (PPC) is for you to directly invest your dollars into ads that will come back and make you money through direct sales revenue.

Simply, advertising = revenue.

In the end, if you have the highest CTR in the market but you can’t actually close a sale. You need to ask yourself, is it worth the struggle?


  1. Optimize Your Click-Through-Rate

No, This is not the section where we do a full 180 and totally contradict ourselves by telling you to focus on your click-through-rate.

Sometimes the best way to improve your campaign performance is by optimizing your click-through-rate (CTR). You can put up promotions and highlight your best deals and exclusive offers or discounts. Customers are more likely to click on your ads when they know what’s in it for them, and it makes it all the more effective if they know that it’s a special offer or a one-time opportunity.

However, Don’t let it consume all your energy by trying to always put out deals and promotions thinking that this is the only factor, it’s not. Instead, optimize a good deal that you know will attract customers and move over to optimize the rest of the KPIs.

  1. Increase Website Speed

In this day and age, customers' attention spans are shrinking. And they will certainly consider the competition if their website or platform is smoother or faster.

Think about that website you couldn’t figure out, did you end up making a purchase? You certainly didn’t.

The thing is, no matter how unfair it seems, if you have the best website on the face of the earth, customers won’t even notice and they will simply make the purchase and go about their day.

But if you happen to have a “bad” or slow website, your customers will certainly notice, and they are less likely to make a purchase. Not just that. They will go around telling their friends and families about that one website that took ages to load.

Okay, now that you know how important your website's loading speed is, how can you actually make it faster?

To make sure our website loads quickly, we usually compress images.

Images help boost your website’s look and increase the quality of your content. However, large images can delay loading time to a point where it drives away potential prospects.

One of the easiest and most straightforward ways to increase website loading speed is to compress and optimize by changing their file formats, enabling lazy loading, and compressing images through lossless compression.

 By reducing your images file size, you can ultimately reduce their virtual “weight” on your website. Ultimately making them faster and easier to load while still retaining image quality. 

Like images, removing unnecessary assets on some of your website pages and reducing file sizes on others helps reduce the overall average website loading speed as well.

As a result, You can expect an increase in website loading speed anywhere between 30% to 50% depending on your initial website state. Also, You can instantly expect a decrease in bounce rate. And up to 20% more traffic. Therefore, an increase in sales as more people will visit and stay on your website navigating through more and more of your products.

Conclusion

You reaching this far only tells us that you are very serious about boosting your business and investing in yourself. So let’s go over what you can achieve using these strategies for you to be able to implement them as soon as you are done reading this article.

First, when you consider your marketing objectives, You then choose the PPC strategy that best suits your business needs at the moment without distracting yourself.

Second, After you choose the PPC strategy you see fit, you can start focusing on building and developing this strategy with tweaks that are unique to your niche.

This way your exposure won't be diluted by inefficient customer targeting.

Thirdly, aligning your bidding strategy with your current business goals will allow you to benefit from your ad campaign while avoiding any fluctuation in your ad budget.

Last but not least, increasing your website loading speed will guarantee that your customers stay for longer periods browsing your products, enabling you to lock in more sales.

That is it so far, start implementing those PPC strategies today, you can also save this web page to return back throughout your website’s optimization process.

Victoria Petersen
Helping businesses navigate their growth to the upper echelons of eCommerce domination.