Learn the best ways to deliver extraordinary results in a PPC campaign with the least amount of money. Keep reading to find out more!
Research from Statista shows that, on average, a PPC campaign is 20% more likely to bring back a higher clickthrough and conversion rate. Thus, it is a highly recommended marketing approach if you want to boost your ROI. However, most tips and tricks on PPC campaign optimization call for a large amount of initial investment. So what can you do if your business has a limited budget?
The answer lies in the article below. Let’s dive into the top 3 actionable steps to take advantage of PPC campaigns at an acceptable cost!
How To Get Optimal PPC Results With A Limited Budget (3 Practical Steps)
1. Sketch out realistic goals
Usually, an ad campaign aims at achieving multiple goals simultaneously, from reinforcing brand recognition to raising sales. But if you are tight on the money, try to narrow down your expectations and tailor the campaign so that it focuses on one or two main purposes. Not only does this help you weed out unnecessary practices that might end up being expensive, but it also makes sure you can channel the time and effort into creating high-performance ads.
For those who are still struggling to designate a suitable objective for a PPC ad campaign, a look at the marketing funnel might help. This theory puts forward the idea that to optimize an ad campaign, advertisers should follow a 5-stage procedure instead of throwing ads randomly.
- Awareness: If your business is new to the market and has yet to make an impression on potential customers, that is exactly what you need to do. Write ad copy and create visual assistance that emphasizes the brand image. Here, impressions come first, other business metrics come later.
- Consideration: After planting the seed into your customer’s head, it is time to offer them more insights into your services. The goal of your PPC campaign at this phase is to provide online guidance, informative blogs, tutorials, etc, to best illustrate how the products can solve their pain points. Provoke the sense of urgency and rely on FOMO as the psychological trigger to persuade your potential shoppers into taking action.
- Conversion: In the next step of the marketing funnel, customers are more or less ready to seal the deal. It is your job to ease the transaction by displaying ads leading directly to the payment interface or exclusive promotion codes for first-time buyers only. Appeal to your buyers on a personal level and gently push them forward. If you notice any cart abandonment, your ads may include reminders so that consumers do not forget about their pending purchases.
- Loyalty: If your campaign is retargeted at existing traffic, jumping right to the fourth stage is ideal. Now, suppose you have successfully converted a number of shoppers in the past. How can you continue to keep them updated and coming back for more? Let’s show them ads regarding the ins and outs of their purchase and greet them with regular listings and new arrivals.
- Advocacy: Many businesses stop after retargeting, but you can take one step further and transform customers into marketers themselves! Words of mouth still hold significant weight in today’s shopping culture. When you take care of your past shoppers, you are effectively asking them to spread the good words around. Hence, your ads at this stage should be about the rewards and incentives for those willing to leave a review, feedback, or place repetitive orders.
2. Choose match types
Match types determine which phrases will be covered within your bidding keywords. The broader the match type is, the more compatible search terms are, and the more you end up having to pay for them. Therefore, with people running ads on a tight budget, the first step is to curb unnecessary ad placements by restricting the match type.
For example, if you go for phrase match, your ads will be on display every time someone types in something containing the original keywords. Should your keywords be “Fashionable shoes,” the ads may appear on searches ranging from “best fashionable shoes for 2021” to “fashion shoes worth the money.” This particular match type grants you better control of the budget and still brings back relevant clicks. If you want further insights into how match types work, consider asking a PPC agency for more tailored advice.
3. Manage keywords
A rookie mistake made by business owners is to go for high-volume keywords. Not only are popular terms and phrases costly, but their performance is also overrated sometimes. What if the sought-after keywords have few ties with your products? Or what if your competitors also utilize the same keywords to showcase their items? Obviously, you want to avoid the stiff competition and head for niche markets.
This is when long-tail keywords come into play. It is true that these keywords are usually not as high-volume as shorter, more readable phrases. However, they are usually high-intent and are more prone to a successful conversion. If any user types “secondhand women jackets under $50”, they sure are ready to make a purchase as soon as something catches their attention pops up.
Another section of keyword optimization is using negative keywords. Telling the search engine what your products are not is equally important in eliminating wasteless clicks that lead to nowhere.
Conclusion
Contrary to common beliefs, running a PPC campaign with little money is not entirely impossible. With enough attention and experience, anyone can elicit profitable action from customers and gain what they set out to achieve in the first place.
But for those of you with no solid foundation in digital marketing, asking Olifant Digital to handle the work is an excellent alternative. Rest assured that however low your budget is, the agency will still find a way to customize the campaign and live up to your expectations. Check it out now and see for yourself!