3 PPC Account Resolutions for 2016

With all the talk about New Year’s resolutions around January 1, it’s worth making a resolution to take another look at the parts of your PPC accounts that may not be a main focus, but can still have a huge impact on your advertising efforts. Because…we’re all getting healthier in 2016, right? Shouldn’t our PPC accounts get healthier, too?

With the celebration over, it’s time to get to work. Photo via Pexels.

Mobile

Everyone knows that mobile search traffic continues to grow and that, in 2015, mobile searches surpassed desktop searches on Google. With the growing number of searches on mobile devices, particularly during the pre-purchase research process, having a mobile presence becomes more and more important.

The Resolution: Get More from Mobile

Do an analysis of mobile performance in your account. Are there areas in which mobile is performing above goal? If so, decrease your mobile bid modifier in those areas to get more aggressive.

Also consider relaxing your account goal for mobile. Since only one or two ads appear at a time on mobile devices, you can attain almost total share of voice when your ad appears. And since mobile searches are often a first touch-point that leads to later conversions on desktop, accepting a higher CPA or lower ROI on mobile should help increase your branded, organic, and direct website traffic.

You should also test mobile-centric language for your mobile ads. Write ad copy to let searchers know how easy it is to purchase or download on a phone. Mobile-specific search ads also allow you to more clearly segment and analyze your paid search performance on mobile devices.

And, if you’re marketing a mobile app, make sure to test Google’s new campaigns for mobile app downloads, which can increase app downloads and engagement at an affordable cost-per-download.

Shopping

You know how important Shopping campaigns are for ecommerce accounts, but when was the last time you made optimizations beyond the basics? Now that the holiday rush is over, there is plenty to do and way more time to do it.

The Resolution: Supercharge Shopping

If you haven’t already, you should add remarketing list overlays to your Shopping campaigns. This allows you to adjust bids for searchers who have already been to your site. And we’ve seen some pretty amazing results from Shopping remarketing lists.

Another way to improve Shopping performance is to take a look at the competitive benchmark metrics in your Shopping campaigns. The benchmark CTR and CPC show you how your CTR and CPC compare to those of your competitors. Bid up to increase your impression share if you are surpassing your goals and your CPCs and CTRs are lower than the benchmarks. You should bid down if you are performing below goal and your CPCs are higher than the benchmark. If your Shopping campaign is broken out by product type, brand, item ID, etc., you can make these adjustments down to the most granular level to drive increased efficiency in your Shopping campaign.

Remarketing

Remarketing is a powerful tool that allows you to remain top of mind for consumers who are already familiar with your brand, but are still in the research process.

The Resolution: Make Remarketing Work for You

Are you using time-decay remarketing? By specifically targeting website visitors based on how recently they have visited your site (and taking into account your average days to conversion), you can adjust bids based on a targeted user’s likelihood of converting.

You can also involve Google Analytics Remarketing to retarget visitors based on cross-channel audience data that’s not accessible in AdWords, like time spent on site, total conversion revenue, on-site engagement, and more.

Additionally, you can and should use your remarketing audience lists to make bid adjustments on your search campaigns. Most digital advertisers know this, but few are diligent about adding audiences every time they launch new search ad groups. Take some time to add remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) to all your search ad groups, and evaluate their performance against non-RLSA search. Once you’ve aggregated enough data, run an analysis and make bid adjustments for each ad group based on this analysis.

These suggestions shouldn’t take more than a few hours to complete in total, and will drive incremental increases in value. So make a resolution now to focus on mobile, Shopping, and remarketing this January, and enjoy the benefits for the rest of the year.