How much did your last Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign cost? Do you regret that the campaign was all about impressions and clicks but didn’t yield any quality leads? 

Well, you are not alone. 61% of ad spend is wasted on search terms that never convert as per a study from Search Engine Journal. If you ask any PPC marketer about what goes into a successful PPC campaign, pat comes the reply:

• Reducing Cost Per Click (CPC)
• Improve Ad Visibility by increasing Click-Through Rate (CTR)

As a 5-Star PPC agency on Clutch, Fractional CMO knows what it takes to execute high-performing PPC campaigns and deliver positive Return On Investment (ROI) 

Here are the four ways to reduce Cost Per Click and improve your ad visibility:

Keywords

Keywords are the core of any Pay-Per-Click campaign. The typical keyword strategy can fall into three buckets - generic, branded and competitor outrank keywords. Let’s take an example to delve more into this. Say you own a company (say XYZ Computer Solutions) that sells laptops. If you were to run an ad campaign and incorporate the aforementioned strategy, your keywords would look like below:

Generic - Best laptops under students | Cheapest gaming laptops | Laptops for IT professionals

Branded - XYZ laptop reviews | XYZ laptop features 

Competitor Outrank: Assuming you want to outperform your main competitor ABC Computers, the keywords might look like - ABC laptop alternatives | ABC laptop comparison | ABC laptop benefits

Though this is an excellent approach to begin the keyword research, you must focus on adding long tail keywords. 

What are long tail keywords?

Long tail keywords are those which are highly specific phrases. These keywords have low search volume and clear search intent. This will drive high conversion rates and better quality scores. The end result - low Cost Per Click (CPC).  

Using negative keywords

Negative keywords ensure that your ads are not shown for irrelevant search queries. You can add them before starting the campaign but a look at the search query report will give you insights on all the keywords that your ads are showing for.

Consistent addition of negative keywords will refine your PPC campaign and improve your Click Through Rate (CTR) thereby increasing the quality score. 

Ad Scheduling

Ads that are shown to the right people at the right time will do wonders for your ad campaigns. Most of the ad-serving platforms allow you to schedule on specific days at certain time slots that you believe will reap you dividends. 

Running your ads 24*7 can be a very costly affair. After running the ads for a week, you can gauge how your target audience is reacting to the ads. This will enable you to pick the time slots that will lead to high conversion rates.  

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Geotargeting 

Geotargeting helps you to show ads to the locations where you want to target. You can choose to target an entire region, a country, a city, or particular areas within a city. Ask yourself which location will bring you maximum traffic and conversions and decide the target location. 

Quality Score 

Every ad is assigned a quality score by Google. Ratings encompass keyword relevance, landing page and ads that add up to the entire score. n

The quality score determines the position of your ads and how much your spend will be on each ad. So Ad Rank = CPC bid * Quality Score. If you have a low-quality score, the campaign might not manage to enter into auctions. This translates to an ad not being shown for keywords and even if it were to be shown, you end up paying a lot of money for it. 

How to improve quality score?

Below are the two ways that you can improve your quality score:

Landing page experience

When someone clicks on your ad, the landing page becomes an important touchpoint with your company and the brand. You do not want visitors to bounce and exit the page. So ensure that what you are promoting in the ad is being delivered with the offers and content in the landing page.

We are sharing a checklist that will help you to create winning and high-performing B2B landing pages.

Ad theming and ad copies

Create tightly coupled ad groups so that your keywords, ads, and landing pages are coherent and increase relevancy.  

Final Thoughts

While there may be many ways to reduce Cost-Per-Click and improve ad visibility, the above-mentioned four tips stand the test of time and also play a key role in you understanding your audience and refining the ad strategy. 

Need help with strategizing and executing ad campaigns, get in touch with us.