This is the 8th post in the SEM Intermediate Series, a collection of posts intended for search engine marketing professionals looking for guidance in monitoring and adjusting the key performance indicators (KPIs) that determine the success of a PPC campaign.  This series is a continuation of the SEM Beginner Series.

Given the current economic climate and the challenges it brings, maintaining a favorable return-on-investment (ROI) is top of mind for advertising professionals and SEM do-it-yourselfers alike.  Without getting into specifics related to individual search engine marketing (SEM) campaign goals, which can paint very different pictures of what success looks like (e.g. high page views for a branding campaign versus high conversions for a sales campaign), one of the most common calcuations for ROI is (Revenue – Cost) / Cost * 100. 

Keeping an eye on SEM success metrics like cost per click (CPC), click through rate (CTR), click volume and average position will help inform which of the below strategies might be best suited to help improve your ROI, depending upon your particular campaign goals.

Test ad copy with adCenter 
It's a fairly common practice for advertisers test ad copy with one search engine and then apply those results to all others. We recommend that you test specifically with adCenter as the demographics on Bing can be different, which could influence success metrics. For more on ad copy testing, visit the 5th post in the SEM Intermediate Series: Testing Ad Copy to Determine Highest Performers, and also be sure to review Shefali Singla’s post, Optimizing Your Ads for Relevancy; she goes into great detail on improving ad copy performance.

Bid across all match types
Bidding on all keyword match types (within the same ad group) helps to increase impressions, clicks, CTR and CPC. Hana Ondrusek has a great in-depth review on How Match Types Affect Your PPC Campaigns in adCenter.

Add/Update negative keywords based on news and current events
Adding or updating negative keywords helps to qualify the traffic coming to your web site, which can help keep costs down. Because current events can affect performance, be sure to stay on top of keeping your negative keywords up-to-date.  If you own a car dealership, you don't want your ad showing up when someone searches for information on recent recalls of the makes and models you sell, so you'd add "recall" to your negative keyword list. For more information, see my previous post on how to research negative keywords in adCenter.

Include 20 or less keywords per ad group
Including 20 keywords per ad group or less allows for your ad copy to be more relevant to the user based on the user’s search query. For higher traffic keywords, you may want to consider having less than 10 keywords per ad group. This approach helps to improve clicks, CTR and minimize CPC costs based on increased keyword-ad relevancy to the user.

Apply Geographic and/or Demographic Targeting
Depending upon your business and campaign goals, you may want to consider adding geographic targeting to your ad groups. Local businesses may want to target metro areas, whereas purveyors of products or services that are appealing to a specific age group (example: Student credit cards to ages 18-25) may be interested in implementing demographic targeting. Note that targeting is different from setting your market distribution, which Kyle Getz expertly explains in his recent post, Market vs. Geo-Targeting: How to Reach the Correct Audience in Microsoft adCenter.

What do you think?  Do you have any other tips that can help increase clicks and bring down costs?  Share your thoughts in the comments below. 

 

 

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