Find out what PPC management is & how it can benefit your business — along with any further questions you might have — in our comprehensive guide.
What is PPC management?
PPC (pay-per-click) is an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites). It works by charging a fee for every time a customer ‘clicks’ on one of your adverts. This is how it gets its name.
Effective PPC management is about sustainably growing your business by driving customers to your website and increasing sales and interactions with them through targeted ads.
Managed PPC also involves:
✔️Continually refining and strategising with your ads so that the engagement rate keeps increasing. As well as seeing an increase in conversion rate from Google Ads based on relevant targeting.
✔️Making sure your ads are relevant to your business and service offering so that they only attract the right people (i.e. your target audience, the people who are most likely to go on to convert and generate revenue for your business).
Would my business benefit from PPC management?
We’ve enjoyed PPC marketing success for clients in almost every industry, including in niche or obscure industries and with start-up companies offering novel services/product offerings.
Factors that can influence success rates include:
✔️If there’s demand for your product or service
✔️Your price point being competitive within the industry
✔️Your gross profit margin
If you’ve got a good margin for your product, the right targeting and the potential audience, you’ve got more chance of making money from each sale. So if your PPC manager can find the right audience for your product, you will be successful — so long as you have that price point competitiveness.
Businesses we’ve enjoyed lots of PPC success with include:
✔️A niche B2C food company, selling British cuisine to expats based in North America.
✔️B2B building and industrial suppliers where there’s a need not a want, especially in the current economic climate.
✔️An ecommerce store selling chocolates for special occasions.
✔️Home Decor products
I’m in a competitive industry, how effective can PPC management services be?
Very effective. Say, for example, you have a clothing brand. Maybe you’re a small business and competing against big instantly recognisable competitors. And with clothing, because there’s so much demand, the cost per click can be a bit higher than in other industries.
You can still outcompete them. The key is to find your ideal target audience. And then to target specific keywords that will appeal to them.
To do this, we as PPC managers will look for specific match types like exact + phrase keywords — rather than broad keywords that cost more to bid on. This is especially important if you’re operating on a lower budget (which, at Add People, many of the SMEs we work with are).
Good to know
Even small websites can beat big household names with PPC ad management. The key lies in effective keyword research that’s very specific and understands what your target audience is looking for and what resonates with them.
If your clothing brand has a niche offering — vegan products or sustainable fabrics for example — then an effective PPC manager might choose to target keywords relevant to those. Rather than simply bidding on broad search terms like ‘shoes’ or ‘trousers’ which would be extremely competitive and expensive to bid on.
This is just one example of how SMEs can find ‘gaps’ of opportunity and achieve success advertising their products.
The bottom line is, that if you have a price point advantage, and so long as your ads are targeted to the right people, PPC should work for your industry.
What does a PPC manager do?
At Add People, the first thing our PPC managers seek to do is build an intimate relationship with our clients — so we can learn the ins and outs of your website and business.
During your welcome call — which takes about an hour — we discuss what it is that makes your business unique and the budget you have available. All of this information helps us to tailor your ad placements and the PPC strategy we’ll use for your campaign.
But that’s just the start. All good PPC management services should include the following:
1️⃣Target audience research
We use multiple tools within our day-to-day to build a profile of your ideal customers. This includes but is not limited to:
✔️Looking at audience data in the backend of your website, to see who is purchasing what.
✔️Google Analytics (GA4) & Google Ads. Both of these tools show metrics for different kinds of demographics. They can reveal data such as customer age, gender, location, the device they visited your website on — and even their household income.
✔️Microsoft Ads (Bing Ads) & LinkedIn database. This up-and-coming platform is especially useful for more niche and specific B2B industries as it allows you to target specific companies, job types and B2B industries that people work in. Allowing you to look into any historical data, find what has worked in the past, and expand on it.
With all of these tools at hand, we can look through all of the data, identify common themes and then tailor your PPC strategy accordingly.
2️⃣Set clear (realistic) targets for your website.
Your PPC account manager should make it clear what these targets are and work towards hitting them so that you can grow as a business.
3️⃣Find the best channel for you to advertise on.
Another integral part of PPC ad management is finding the best channel for you to advertise on. You can launch ads across multiple channels, including text and display ads on search engines, (Google, Bing Ads, etc.) shopping ads (Amazon Advertising) and social media platforms.
But it might be that your website performs much better on certain particular channels, and not so much on others. The job of your PPC manager will be to determine which channels are a better allocation of your resources.
4️⃣Research how your competitors are running their ads.
Managed PPC also includes gathering information on your competitors’ ads to see what success they’re enjoying — and then using those insights to improve and re-strategise your PPC management strategy. As well as looking to ensure you are being competitive within the auctions you are competing against these competitors.
5️⃣Create bespoke ads for your website.
Your PPC manager will oversee the creation of personalised ads for your business, designed to maximise the number of clicks from potential customers as they see them.
This process includes:
✔️Writing compelling ad copy that resonates with your target audience and encourages them to convert on your website.
✔️Ensure ads are tailored toward taking customers to the most relevant page on your website.
A/B testing both your ads and landing pages. This means experimenting with certain elements now and then to see which iteration of the ad or landing page works best for attracting your audience.
For example, this could mean changing how the ad title/description is written, amending the headlines and images, or suggesting changes you can make onsite to help improve the conversion rate.
These experiments are about testing the waters to see which version performs better at driving clicks, engagement with your audience, and conversion rates.
6️⃣Share frequent reports with you.
Throughout your ad campaigns, our PPC managers will share reports and run through the data with you — so you can understand what’s working and what isn’t, and how we are rolling out your campaigns.
We share reports generally once a month, but can generate and share them more frequently depending on your wishes (or the package you come onboard for), or the nature of your PPC campaign. We also supplement these reports with frequent report calls.
At Add People, we use a reporting software called AP Analytics when sharing reports with our clients. This tool allows us to easily report on data from Google Ads, Google Analytics, and metrics from your website’s CRM all in one place. It makes for much quicker, easier and more visual reporting, as we can create graphs and charts that are better to comprehend than the ones available on Google Analytics (GA4) alone.
Important:
To get the best results out of paid search management, you’ll need to communicate with your PPC manager. The more information we can get about your business, the more we can use this to help refine our target ad process.
You should also be willing to take on advice. Some things go beyond PPC. Getting them right will ultimately help your PPC efforts.
The point is, that an effective PPC management strategy is a collaborative process. The more you put in, the more you get out.
7️⃣Make other digital marketing recommendations that will improve your PPC.
Some things go beyond PPC, and getting them right will ultimately help your PPC efforts. Even if we launched the perfect strategy tomorrow, the following common obstacles could prevent it from being successful:
✔️Poor website structure.
✔️Slow webpage loading times.
✔️High checkout abandonment rates.
✔️Poor copy/content, preventing search engines from ‘understanding’ what your website is about.
✔️High shipping rates
✔️Not having competitive pricing
All of these issues could indicate a problem with your website design, or that it needs conversion rate optimisation or a good SEO strategy.
A PPC manager’s job is to drive customers to your website. But if your website is lacking in certain qualities, they might be put off and leave without buying.
It won’t take us long to find out if one of these common obstacles is causing an issue. Because we will be able to monitor how your customers are interacting with your website. So if we’re seeing a high number of add-to carts and a high number of customers reaching your checkout — but very few of them are converting — there could be a problem beyond PPC.
If these issues are eating into the success of your PPC campaign then we will recommend a service that will help out.
Important:
Sometimes factors to do with your business can result in low conversions, even if the PPC campaign is successful. For example, if you have an uncompetitive price point, or your shipping costs are too high, your potential customers might choose to shop elsewhere.
What are the signs of a good PPC manager?
A good PPC manager will have excellent communication skills and always make time to speak to their clients.
They should also be honest and transparent, and not shy away from positive conflict. A good PPC account manager will, if necessary, push back on what their clients want, and voice their expert opinion if they think they know a better approach to get the best results the client ultimately wants.
At the end of the day, it’s in the interest of your PPC management services to grow your business. So clear, positive conflict with clients is good, along with the communication skills to build a really strong relationship.
PPC myth: If I spend more money on ads, I’ll make more money.
This isn’t necessarily true and it’s costing businesses a lot of money.
If you’ve got the right marketing strategy and tailoring it towards a place where it’s driving revenue and profit, then yes you can make a lot of money.
However, throwing money at a campaign won’t work unless the strategy has been smartly executed. Your campaign must be in a position where it’s seeing sustainable growth first.
Implementing a smart strategy takes time. It will take learning periods to find your ideal target audience to begin converting at a strong rate, and to find new ways to acquire customers profitably.
For example, a strategic PPC management campaign will involve asking what products and services work best for your business, and budgeting accordingly.
What is PPC Management? | General FAQs
The bidding costs on ads are steadily increasing. And if you’re website is enjoying a successful PPC campaign then your spend will also increase over time.
However, a successful PPC campaign will also generate more revenue for your website. So, true, it will get more expensive as your business grows, but you’ll also make more money — so long as your return on ad spend is at a satisfactory level.
You will know when you’re in a position to grow your business if you are hitting your return on ad spend significantly, and when you are routinely hitting your daily ad budget.
Increasing market competition is also driving cost-per-click prices upwards. But a good PPC advertising campaign will be able to mitigate this by, as mentioned above, tailoring your ads to find ‘gaps’ of opportunity that directly resonate with your target audience after extensive customer research.
We would recommend two alternative services:
✔️SEO
✔️Email marketing
You could try getting your website to appear more visibly on search engines ‘organically’ instead. This approach is known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
With a solid SEO strategy, your website will display automatically on search engines like Google and customers will be able to find you and make purchases from you without bidding on any ads.
Email marketing is also a great tool, especially for ‘prompting’ people who came close to a conversion on your website but never went through with it. We also use email marketing to send out conversion-friendly welcome letters to new customers, which can further help to grow your audience base. As well as abandoned cart emails that can draw customers back to make the purchase they had intent to in the first place.
(For email marketing, we use Omnisend because we’ve found that customers have a higher chance of opening them and reading the contents compared to other tools we’ve tried.)
Yes. At Add People your PPC account manager will discuss your minimum spend on the welcome call. Normally, this is about £20-25 a day.
This is the minimum we’d expect our customers to spend during their first trial with PPC, as it allows us to get key information back and make logical, strategic decisions.
If you only spend £5 a day, for example, you won’t see much business growth. We want to be able to gather enough data to see what works to drive better quality traffic and then in turn to get more conversions.
Only once your managed PPC campaign performance is good — perhaps you’re seeing consistent growth and your successes are only limited by your current budget — will we suggest an increase in spending.
To make our case, we’ll show you evidence of increased sales and the revenue of your PPC campaign, and look to raise your budget within your profitability target.
Some clients are happy to throw money at a campaign. But we like to err on the side of caution, checking our targeted ads work first, before upping anything.
If your campaign is underperforming, we will want to discuss how we can get your profitability up first, before looking to increase our ad spend.
PPC and SEO often go hand-in-hand. A website with good SEO content on it can help with conversions on your website once our ads have driven your customers there.
The UX team in the SEO department can also help make the website ‘look’ and ‘feel’ better, which will help with conversions — you can view our CRO agency page here.
We also share keyword data across departments. For example, your PPC account manager will share your top-performing PPC keywords with the SEO team so that they can target those keywords in their SEO strategy. Likewise, the SEO team will share relevant keywords with PPC that drive the most revenue. So our clients benefit from having both PPC and SEO.
Grow your business with effective PPC management at Add People.
We hope you have found this article useful. If you are interested in working with us at Add People, please get in touch. We’ll be happy to take a look at your business and provide a free, no-obligation quote.
You can view our main pay-per-click and PPC ecommerce service pages here. And don’t forget to check out our TrustPilot reviews to see what our customers are saying about our services in their own words.
Louisa Wade
AuthorLouisa has two-and-a-half years’ experience working at Add People, where she oversees both the Ecommerce PPC Department International Team. She has experience working with clients across the UK and the English-speaking world. She holds a business degree, and in her spare time enjoys playing football and travelling. You can view Louisa’s LinkedIn profile here: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/louisa-wade-44a837138
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