6 Ways to Win in Competitive and Expensive PPC Environments
When you work in different vertical markets, there is something you will learn instantly about CPC – it differs fiercely.
For example, the cost per click for a sweatshirt will be completely different in comparison to searches for lawn care services.
Usually, if what you are advertising does not cost much, the average CPC will be low.
It’s truly the work of economics for retailers and services – every sale is worth only so much, and costs that don’t align with that are illogical to spend.
In short, all clothing retailers will max out around the same scopes since their margins are not utterly different from each other. And this is likely to set the price for the specific vertical market.
Nevertheless, this raises problems for cases where the cost per click is higher: each click is important and costs a great deal.
Numerous retailers are happy to pay those prices either because what they are offering is worth that money or they know that they are going to recover it gradually because of the customer lifetime value.
There are so many brands competing in insanely high CPC environments and working in-house to do it currently.
On some days, it’s like an all-or-nothing sort of gambling, but good ROI does not necessarily have to be difficult to catch.
What follows is a list of six ways that will help boost your ROI when your costs begin breaking into a sweat and help you win in aggressive and costly PPC environments.
- Establish Proper Tracking
Seems like a piece of cake, isn’t it?
It’s shocking to see brands competing in competitive and costly environments and still not tracking the phone calls triggered by their ongoing PPC campaigns.
Features such as call tracking used to be a little too complex for local businesses back in the day. From coding to additional subscription fees, there was too much hassle involved, and considering the low CPCs at that time, it just didn’t seem worthwhile.
However, things have changed now. Industries such as real estate, legal, or hotels and travel can usually pay above $100 per click, meaning they may lose a great deal of money if they don’t use a platform to track calls.
Today, just a direct signup and a snippet on your site can offer you a fair amount of insights into where those costly leads are coming from.
Doing so can help you focus your marketing budget on areas where it is best spent while freeing up your money from fumbling campaigns.
- Pay Attention to Keyword Matching
A lot has changed in the keyword matching world ever since Google made Exact Match… not really exact.
You need to look at everything when it comes to the search queries and the way the search engine matches your keywords to them.
Merely checking your broad match or modified broad match isn’t good enough anymore.
So, if you want to compel the search queries to match to a particular ad group, then you need to put in more effort now than ever.
Like it or not but these days, Google takes heaps of liberties with your keyword matching, like replacing terms with the ones it thinks are similar.
To complicate things furthermore, Google has also stopped displaying all the search terms or queries that the campaigns are matching for to the advertisers.
This means it has become even more crucial now to be as watchful as possible about your data.
- Launch With Bold Negative Keywords List
While this used to be restricted for Broad Match only, the current problems pointed out in the section above have made it all the more crucial.
With Google’s Exact Match taking more liberties than before and a lack of transparency into your keyword matching, determining negatives right from the start can help diminish their impacts.
The big thing to keep in mind here is that a single irrelevant click may cost you upwards of $100!
So, to steer clear of such losses, the ideal thing to do is use keyword research reversedly to discover terms that you don’t want to be triggering your campaigns.
You can use the Google Keyword Planner to explore the relevant terms it suggests. Besides this, you may also want to take the help of Google’s suggestions that pop up when you enter a term in the search bar. Go through the list and see if it suggests any long-tail terms that you strictly want to avoid.
For instance, a lot of businesses exclude queries containing “jobs” because the user is seeking employment; they are not a prospect.
Moreover, you can also choose to exclude queries like “customer service number” or “login” that indicate the user is an existing customer just looking for information.
- Assess Device Relevance for Conversions
Sometimes people tend to show behavioral differences while using different devices such as laptops, tablets, or smartphones. However, in a high-spending environment, it is not persistent.
Let’s understand this better by taking a look at two examples:
Let’s assume you reside in Connecticut, and suddenly, your air conditioner stops working during the month of July in the scorching heat.
Now, HVAC clicks are notably high-priced, and well, one can easily see why – for starters, when someone searches for their service, they need them NOW, and secondly, the job is worth good money.
So, imagine their situation. How do you think the majority of those people are performing searches?
Well, they are most likely using their phone while trying to make their AC work magically instead of sitting on their laptop and doing in-depth research.
In such cases, mobile users are invaluable for the business, mainly because they will most likely click on the “call now” CTA button from your ad directly and may not inevitably visit websites first simply because they need an immediate solution to their problem!
Now let’s take a look at an entirely different example of a B2B (business-to-business company).
When it comes to cost per click, a lot of B2B verticals are also very pricey, but the reasons are different in their case. They are costly deals that may take anywhere between a couple of months to a few years to close!
Sure they are worth a lot, but of course, the reason is different than our HVAC example.
What do you think – how are most of these users researching for a costly solution?
On their phones? – Probably, no.
In cases like these, desktop users are likely to be considered more valuable as compared to mobile users.
In order to make your bid strategy effective, you must understand where your most conversion actions come from.
Last but not least, be sure to pay heed to all your data not just in Google Ads but also in any other Customer Relationship Management software (CRMs) that you may use to grasp the buying cycle of users and their devices completely.
- Use Remarketing to Drive Lower Click Costs
Do you know there is a way to display your ads for highly competitive keywords but probably for less money? Want to know what it is?
Using Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) is the answer you’re looking for right now!
Bidding on keywords in an open auction is no less than going on a war against all your competitors.
However, it also means that there could be searches pointing to a potential customer (for example, information searches like “what is…” or “how to…”, so an expensive cost per click for where they’re standing in their customer journey sounds quite illogical.
Using RLSA is an excellent way to remain present as users perform searches without having to holler for them in the open auction.
Similar to display remarketing, in RLSA, too, you can apply a list of customers of your choice and display your ad only to people who especially search for those high competition keywords.
This helps keep your brand consistently on the top-of-mind of your customers but at a relatively lower cost.
You can apply RLSA at the Campaign or Ad Group level. Pick your audiences and “Targeting” as your setting. This will make sure that any keywords in that particular Ad Group display only to the list of audiences you have stated. You can also set different bids for these audiences according to whatever suits your metrics best.
- Use Audiences to Bid Based on Relevance
This strategy is quite the same as RLSA discussed in the previous section. The only difference between them is that in this one, rather than using your own customer lists, you use Google’s.
For instance, if you know that your ideal customer tends to be into home renovations or a food lover, you can make sure that only users that fall into this category or belong to this audience group see your ads when they search.
This works just like the RLSA function, but here you get the options to choose “Targeting” or “Observation.”
If you select “Targeting,” only the users who fall into your selected group of audiences will be able to see your ads.
On the other hand, if you select “Observation,” your ads will be displayed to all the users, but you will be able to see the behavior of users who specifically fall into those audiences.
Based on your results, you can also make bid adjustments.
Conclusion
The bid environments will continue to remain the same highly competitive as it is now or maybe even increase, but there’s no going back. With every passing day, we are only seeing the CPCs increase in developing industries as they evolve.
While PPC professionals have criticized Google Ads a lot for deleting some of the controls that they used to enjoy earlier, there is still a little maneuvering that they can do to mitigate the losses in such competitive environments where there is a lot on stake. This is an excellent way to get ahead of your competitors too.
Using the data you have in the right way can help you improve your targeting, reduce your expenses, and help your campaigns perform better while yielding great results.
Moreover, you can combat the lack of transparency to a great extent by utilizing research tools available in Google’s very own inventory.
Typically, getting better results is an outcome of the mixed efforts that you put into launching and running a campaign. Implement these six ways to increase your return on investment (ROI), cut your costs, and win in this competitive PPC environment successfully.