Just read a great article from Bryan Eisenberg called “7 Signs Your PPC Campaign Needs Optimization“ and he pretty much nails it on the spot. His list:
1. You use the set it and forget it strategy to PPC
2. You don’t have proper tracking in place
3. You have not tested at least 3 variations of your PPC ad
4. You have not testing matching options
5. You have a long list of keywords in your ad groups
6. You have poor scent from the ad to the landing page (looking for relevant information)
7. You aren’t testing your landing pages to maximize conversion
While there is knowledge and wisdom in Bryan’s list, such knowledge and wisdom aren’t often put into practice by PPC managers. An example comes to mind of a coworker who started using Facebook ads to expose their brand to their target audience. Her ads were generic, untested, and unmonitored, and by using keywords with little search weight (on both ads and landing page), she wasn’t able to target her ads as effective as she could have been. Thus, the metric results did not perform as solid as she was hoping for.
In my own experience, I KNOW I have probably done all of these during my first few tries in managing PPC campaigns, and can attest to the value of running such campaigns so as to obtain very positive results for your clientele.
This is a great refresher for those that are having issues with certain aspects of their campaigns, or have not yet done such things and are looking to create more positive ROI for their company and/or their clients.
Great list! Now it is just about finding the time to do all of those on a consitent basis!
Thanks, Kevin. The fact that it should be best practices in any PPC campaigns shows how generally PPC managers do not yield to best practices from the beginning – because most PPC managers aren’t really PPC managers at all… They’re marketing managers or project managers who are forced to wear many hats.