Managing a successful paid search campaign requires a range of tactics and strategies. Most importantly, though, paid search accounts need consistent optimization and analysis to produce a positive ROI. You can’t just set and forget your campaigns over time!
To ensure your paid search campaigns deliver great results, make sure you’re doing these five things at least once a month.
1. Pace your ad spend
Paid search campaigns need a monthly budget to continue running. It’s crucial to pace your spending appropriately so that ads run consistently. You don’t want to blow through your budget in the first two weeks and have to go dark for the rest of the month!
Once a month—if not more frequently—check in on your account’s spending. See how much you’ve spent thus far and how much you’re spending per day, on average. This can help you determine how much your campaign is on track to spend by the end of the month.
Take this information and adjust your ad spending as needed to both continue serving ads while remaining within budget.
2. Check search terms
The search terms that trigger your ads can provide a lot of valuable information for your paid search campaign. Check the search terms for irrelevant terms that waste your campaign’s money.
You can also review the search terms to discover keywords you might not have thought about before. Adding these new keywords boosts your campaign’s performance, since they are relevant terms customers are already searching for. This helps keep cost-per-click (CPC) low and improve your rankings.
3. Optimize bids
Checking and optimizing your paid search bids allows you to maximize your campaign’s budget and improve ad rank results. Depending on your campaign’s structure, there are many bid adjustment levers you can pull to improve paid search performance.
The first thing to do is tweak your keyword bids. Changing the bid amounts for individual keywords lets you increase or decrease your daily ad spend without altering the campaign’s overall budget. Look for very expensive keywords as well as well-performing keywords that have a low bid that might push your ad below the first page.
Next, you should optimize bid adjustments that help you capture the right customers at the right time. Take a look at audience, device, location, schedule and demographic-focused bids. Use data to inform these decisions.
If a certain audience segment is less likely to convert on your ads, you might consider bidding lower on those search users. Then, you can use the extra money to bid higher on a segment that’s more likely to convert.
4. Fix disapproved ads
The platform that displays your paid search ads will have rules and restrictions on what your ad can contain. If you accidentally break these rules, your ads might be “disapproved.” This means that your ads won’t be shown, which can disrupt your campaign’s performance.
You might be alerted about disapproved ads, but you can also find them by filtering your ads. Read the platform’s reason for the disapproval and fix the issues quickly to get your ads back up and running.
5. Evaluate campaign performance
Running a paid search campaign means little if you’re not checking its performance and making changes to reach your goals. It’s crucial for paid search managers to look over their campaign’s data and evaluate how the campaign is performing against their KPIs. Without this step, you won’t be able to optimize your ads in the best ways.
Don’t forget to compare current performance with past performance, either! Looking at historical data allows you to spot trends and patterns. A once-successful keyword might not be performing well anymore, and that might indicate a shift in customer behavior or another change. By analyzing the data, you’ll get a more comprehensive understanding of your campaign and how good your ROI will be.
Turn to AlphaGraphics Pittsburgh for paid search assistance
Paid search managers have a lot of tasks, but these five are some of the most important to ensuring long-term success in your campaigns. While most managers can do these things once per month, your campaign might require more or less frequent monitoring and optimization.
If your team needs help with your next paid search campaign, AlphaGraphics Pittsburgh is prepared to assist! Contact us online or call us at 412.261.1300.