How and When to Grow Your PPC Campaigns

Navigating the realm of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising can be as daunting as it is exciting. With the right approach, PPC campaigns can become the powerhouse of your digital marketing strategy, driving significant traffic, and more importantly, conversions. That is why you need to understand how and when to grow your PPC campaigns. 

Management of your PPC campaigns is not just setting them up correctly.  Expert PPC ad management means you should also know when and how to scale them efficiently and effectively to increase conversions at a minimal cost. By choosing the right PPC ads growth strategy you can get better results from your campaigns.

This expert PPC ads guide will walk you through the essential steps to expand your PPC campaigns, ensuring that your growth is not just sustainable but also profitable. Keep reading to learn all the tips and tricks our top Dallas PPC agency has to offer.

Factors That Can Indicate When To Grow Your PPC Campaigns

When do I grow my PPC campaigns? And how do I grow my PPC campaigns efficiently? All of these questions are important inquiries about PPC ad management, and doing it right is key to successful ad performance.

The decision to scale your PPC campaigns should not be based on a whim; it needs to be as strategic as any other significant marketing strategy decision. Let’s delve deeper into each element of your PPC campaign management:

Performing Market Analysis for Your PPC Campaign

Market analysis is essential to inform the timing and strategy of your PPC campaign expansion. It involves a comprehensive assessment of current market conditions, including consumer trends, search behavior, and the competitive landscape.

Adjusting PPC Bids for Seasonal Trends

Adjusting bids for seasonal peaks in search traffic can capture higher demand. For instance, a retailer might increase bids on winter apparel as temperatures drop. You need to know when the trends necessitate higher budget and CPCs, vs when you should lower budgets and target a lower CPC. 

Analyzing Consumer Behavior

Consumer behavior is always changing. Monitoring shifts in consumer interests can help you write ad copy, or create ad content that better resonates with your target audience. There is also always the emergence of new search terms to be aware of. These terms can provide opportunities to capture new markets or niches with your paid ad campaigns. Keeping your paid ad campaigns current will ensure that your audience stays engaged.

Conversions VS Ad Spend

We’ve all heard the phrase: “Spend money to make money” which is the golden goose everyone chases in The PPC world. Any business owner would put an unlimited amount of money into any PPC campaign if they were always profitable— so why is it so hit or miss? There are a couple of steps you need to take in order to tackle this question, first.

1. Proper conversion tracking: A campaign is only as good as the results that it reads, and to do so effectively, you need to be able to see directly through the end of a customer journey. That means a purchase, a lead, or whatever your final customer end-point needs to be followed and tracked; then it can be optimized by the algorithm. 
2. CPA VS ROAS: As a business owner, you absolutely NEED to have these two data points before you can tell if a campaign is profitable or not. This means you need to know the numbers of your business. The difference between these metrics is simple: one is based upon the cost of a new customer, while the other one is based on the cost in terms of customer value. Yes, they are different. Here’s an example:
   1. A fencing services company example
      1. Their main service yields $100. Cost of labor is $40, supplies are $25, gas to get to the customer’s house is $5 ($70 total in operating cost). That gives us a 30% profit margin on our most popular service organically.
      2. It took us spending $120 (ad spend) to acquire 1 customer. Thus, our CPA in our Google Ads example for this service = $120. 
      3. That means we’re losing money (when looking at CPA)…as we paid more money to get the customer through the door and now we’re out $50. We chewed up through our profit margin ($30) and paid an additional $20 on top of that. 
      4. Now if we look at ROAS and take the lifetime customer value into account:
         1. As a business, what is your new customer to recurring customer conversion percentage?
            1.  If the initial service is good and the quality of labor is high, chances are the recurring customer conversion percentage is solid. In this use case, let’s say it’s 75%. ¾ customers always come back. 
            2. The next service following the initial one  is usually a fence replacement or gate installation, which normally can start around $500. At a 75% recurring customer rate – we can roughly establish customer value as: $500*0.75=$375) 
      5. Therefore:
         1. CPA = $120
         2. LTV (lifetime customer value) = $375
         3. ROAS = $375/$120 = 3.12 (profitable)
   2. So which do you optimize on? The one you have clearer data on. ROAS would be ideal, especially in 2023, but the common business is just not there yet. For most medium-sized local businesses, CPA is easier to track, easier to use, and easier to understand. That said, if you can do some heavy lifting to really break apart the numbers, I would focus on ROAS, as it is TRUE return on investment.

Budget Allocation for Paid Ad Campaigns

Understanding the relationship between budget changes and campaign performance is fundamental to scaling effectively. 

• Incremental Changes: It’s often wise to increase budgets gradually, measuring the impact on campaign performance and ROI before making further adjustments.
• Cost-Benefit Analysis: As mentioned previously, analyzing past performance data helps in forecasting the potential returns on increased ad spend. This can involve looking at the incremental cost per acquisition (CPA) versus the incremental revenue.

By optimizing your budgets the right way, you can get the best performance from your PPC campaigns. It takes constant monitoring and an advanced knowledge of budgets, bid types, and ad performance metrics, but implemented correctly it can vastly improve PPC campaign performance.

Competitor Benchmarking

Keeping an eye on your competitors’ PPC campaign strategies can provide valuable insights.

• Ad Copy and Offers: Analyzing competitors’ messaging and promotions can inspire tests to your own campaigns to improve CTR and conversion rates.
• Keyword Expansion: By studying competitors’ keyword strategies, you can identify gaps in your own keyword list or discover new keyword opportunities for expansion.
• Market Position: Understanding your market position relative to your competitors can help you decide whether to be aggressive in your PPC strategy or focus on niche targeting.

 Maintaining awareness of your competitors campaigns will ensure that you are ready to adjust or optimize your campaigns to stay relevant, or take advantage of an opportunity.

Strategies for Improving Your PPC Campaigns

When it comes to elevating your PPC campaigns, there are several strategic approaches that you can undertake to ensure that your ads not only reach a wider audience but also convert at a higher rate. Here’s a more detailed look at each PPC strategy under this section:

Advanced Audience Targeting

To refine your PPC campaigns, advanced audience targeting is crucial. This involves segmenting your audience based on their behavior, demographics, and even psychographics to tailor your ads to those most likely to convert.

• Lookalike Audiences: Use your best-performing customer data to find new users who share similar characteristics with your existing customers.
• Remarketing Lists: Tailor campaigns to individuals who have interacted with your business but did not convert, encouraging them to complete the purchase or action.
• Life Events Targeting: If your product or service is relevant to certain life events like moving, marriage, or graduation, targeting users undergoing these changes can be highly effective.

By breaking apart your audience you can deliver the most engaging PPC ad groups or campaigns to the segments that are most likely to convert. You can also utilize negative audience targeting to remove audiences that are not relevant to your campaign or business.

For example, if you are a senior living home, you likely do not want to advertise to the youngest demographics, 18-24. These individuals are likely not the decision makers for your type of service and would be only wasting clicks. Removing this audience helps your budget go further, and makes sure that you are reaching more relevant audiences.

Using Smart Bidding

There are several types of bidding strategies when it comes to Google Ads. One of the most popular types is Smart Bidding. The Smart bidding strategies employ machine learning to optimize for conversions or conversion value in each and every auction — a feature known as “auction-time bidding”.

• Target CPA: Set bids to help get as many conversions as possible at the target cost-per-acquisition (CPA) you set.
• Target ROAS: Aim for a return on ad spend (ROAS) that aligns with your marketing goals.
• Maximize Conversions: Automatically sets bids to help get the most conversions for your campaign while spending your budget.

These bidding types can help you reach your PPC campaign goals. However, sometimes these strategies do not work for your specific campaign and can increase your costs. In these specific scenarios you would likely want to leverage manual bidding strategies instead. 

Manual bidding strategies are much more involved and require more knowledge of Google Ads bidding strategies. If you are not a Google Ads master you might want to consider working with the team of Google Ads experts at our Dallas PPC agency.

Using A/B Testing for Google Ads

A/B testing is a key element of any successful PPC campaign. This paid ad strategy allows you to test specific variables within your campaign and measure performance to find the most optimized content for your target audience. Continuously testing and optimizing ad copy, landing pages, and call-to-actions (CTAs) is critical for not just improving, but maximizing PPC campaign performance.

• • Ad Copy Variations: Test different headlines, descriptions, and display paths to see which combinations perform best. You can also try dynamic locations if relevant to see if these types of ads better engage your audience.

• Keyword Testing: While you may know what keywords are valuable for SEO, user search behavior might favor different keywords or variations. This is why it is important to test keyword variations and similar keywords to see which engage with your audience the most.

• • Landing Page Optimization: Your ads landing page is a key factor in your conversion rates. Experiment with different layouts, content, and conversion elements on your landing pages to find what works best..

• Ad Assets Testing (For Google Ads): Using Google Ad Extensions (Ad Assets) are a great way to provide more information and increase your click through rate. Create a few versions of each ad extension and test which ones perform the best. Keep the assets with the highest click through rates. 

• CTA Experimentation: Different CTAs can resonate differently with your audience; testing variations can lead to increased click-through and conversion rates.

Each of these elements should be part of your PPC campaign A/B testing. Finding the best performers will optimize your campaign and help you achieve the highest return on ad spend (ROAS). While it does take time, the results will be well worth the effort.

Comprehensive Keyword Management

Managing your PPC ads keywords effectively is more than just finding the right words; it’s about continually refining and optimizing your bids and match types.

• Long-Tail Keywords: They are less competitive and more specific, which can often lead to higher conversion rates. 
• Negative Keywords: Regularly update your negative keyword list to exclude irrelevant traffic and reduce wasted spend. Creating a robust negative keyword list will help keep your campaigns targeting the right phrases and minimize any unwanted ad spend. 
• Keyword Match Types: Adjust match types for your keywords to balance reach and relevance. If your keywords are too broad you will spend the majority of your time adding negative keywords and will waste more budget. If your keywords are too narrow you might not be reaching the full target audience and see minimal ad campaign results. The key is to find the balance between the two for your PPC campaigns’ keywords.

Keyword research is something that you need to do before launching your PPC campaigns. As the campaigns run you’ll need to continue to monitor and research to ensure that you are leveraging the best keywords possible.

How to Grow Your PPC Campaigns

Mastering the scale-up execution in PPC is an essential component of growing your campaigns effectively. Here’s a deeper insight into how to grow your PPC campaigns like an expert.

Budget Allocation

Intelligent budget allocation is vital to ensure that increased spending translates into proportionate returns.

• Incremental Scaling: Rather than a massive budget increase, scale up incrementally to observe performance changes and maintain control.
• Allocate Based on Performance: Redirect budgets towards campaigns, ad groups, or keywords that have proven to yield the best results.

It’s important to keep in mind that if you are not willing to spend on your PPC campaigns, then you are not going to achieve significant results. Minimum budgets = minimum results. However, with the right budget allocation strategy you can minimize wasted spend and maximize your PPC campaigns’ performance. 

Utilizing Technology and Tools

PPC platforms offer a plethora of tools that can help you scale your campaigns effectively.

• Automated Rules: Set rules to automatically adjust bids, pause low-performing ads, or scale up budgets on high-performing keywords.
• Bid Management Software: Consider investing in software that uses AI to manage bids in real time, allowing for more efficient spending.
• Analytics and Reporting Tools: Leverage advanced analytics tools to gain deeper insights and make data-driven decisions.

Each of these tools and reports should be reviewed monthly to determine if your PPC campaigns are on the right track, or if they are in need of some adjustments. By closely monitoring and controlling your campaigns you can prevent or catch any issues that would waste your budget. 

Keeping Your PPC Campaigns’ Content Engaging  

As you scale up your PPC campaigns, it’s important to keep your creative materials fresh and engaging to avoid ad fatigue.

• Update Ad Creatives: Regularly refresh your images and ad copy to maintain user engagement and relevance.
• Seasonal Campaigns: Capitalize on seasonal trends and events with tailored campaigns that align with user interests during specific times.

Campaign Structure and Targeting

Scaling up requires a solid foundation in your PPC campaign structure to ensure you maintain effectiveness.

• • Segmentation: Create separate campaigns or ad groups for different products, services, or audience segments to tailor your messaging and bids effectively.
  • Geotargeting: Expand your reach by targeting new geographic areas that have the potential for high conversion rates.

• Explore New Ad Platforms: As you begin to grow your PPC campaigns you might want to expand to new PPC ad platforms. For example, if you were running Google Ads, you might want to start Facebook or Instagram ads, or try Bing Ads. 

By keeping your campaigns well structured and focused it will be easy for you to create similar campaigns that target new audiences, locations, products, or platforms. You can leverage the data you have to start achieving better results right away.

Performance Monitoring and Optimization: 

Continuous monitoring is essential to ensure that scaling up is improving, not hurting, your campaign performance. Your PPC campaigns can only be as good as your PPC ad management.

• KPI Tracking: Keep a close eye on key performance indicators like CPC, CTR, conversion rate, and ROI. Each of these help determine whether your ads are cost effective.
• A/B Testing: As you scale, continue to test different aspects of your campaigns to find the best performing strategies at a larger scale.
• Regular Audits: Conduct regular PPC audits to identify areas of waste, opportunities for improvement, and strategies that can be scaled further.

Continuous monitoring will ensure that your campaigns continue to run at peak performance, and will allow you to flag any issues before they become serious enough to derail your campaigns. Ideally you should be checking new PPC campaigns twice a week to optimize any underperforming elements. Once campaigns mature and performance is consistent, you should still be checking them twice a month and making adjustments as needed. 

Grow Your PPC Campaigns With the Best Dallas PPC Agency 

To truly master PPC campaign growth, one must harmonize strategic planning with attentive execution. Your PPC marketing must be nurtured with data-driven decisions, informed by in-depth market analysis, and continuously optimized for peak performance, and choosing the right partner to develop and implement your PPC marketing strategy is crucial. 

It takes a lot of skill and experience to fully optimize your PPC campaigns. If you are not a PPC ads expert and do not have experience with PPC ads management, your business could end up wasting a lot of time and budget trying to improve your PPC ads performance. Instead of wasting resources (and opportunities) consider partnering with the best Dallas PPC agency, Cloudmellow. 

CloudMellow is a dedicated Dallas digital marketing agency that is equipped to help you make this transition seamlessly. With our PPC campaigns expertise, your ads will not only adapt but also excel, ensuring that your message reaches its audience with precision and impact. With our PPC management you can be sure that your PPC campaigns will be fully optimized and reach maximum performance, lowering your costs and increasing your ROI.

Take the step towards a future-proof advertising strategy. Contact CloudMellow to explore how our partnership can bring your PPC campaigns into a new era of digital excellence.