Did you know that small to medium-sized businesses invest seven times more in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising than search engine optimization (SEO)?
It’s likely because PPC offers faster results, more control, and targeted advertising. In addition, PPC tends to generate twice the number of site visitors compared to SEO.
However, PPC can be more expensive because you pay every time someone clicks on your ad.
So, how do you attract customers to your business without losing tons of money?
Enter advanced paid search advertising strategies. These techniques allow you to target the right audience in the right places at the right time.
Doing so increases your chances of converting leads into customers, which means more revenue for your business.
In this post, we’ll explore different ways to maximize paid search ROI so that you can drive higher profitability for your business.
6 Advanced Paid Search Advertising Strategies to Maximize ROI
65% of people click on PPC ads when making purchases.
That’s the power of an effective PPC campaign. But how much do companies have to spend to get these results?
Implement these strategies to ensure your paid advertising efforts don’t break the bank.
1. Use Audience Segmentation and Targeting
The key to any successful advertising campaign is knowing your audience and delivering ads to them at the most optimal time.
Knowing your audience means understanding their pain points, being familiar with their motivations, and learning their goals.
For example, say your business is in the hospitality industry. Maybe you own a hotel. A common strategy hoteliers use is hotel revenue management.
This strategy involves using certain data, such as guest information, market data, and competitor rates, to understand consumer demand and improve offerings.
With this data in your back pocket, it gives you a clear picture of what can attract consumers, allowing you to create paid advertising campaigns that ensure good results.
Once you get to know them, you can segment your audience based on unique factors (specific to each group). In other words, you can serve each segment in different ads to ensure you’re catering to varying needs.
Factors that determine audience segmentation include:
- Psychographics (i.e., goals, motivations, pain points)
- Demographics (i.e., age, race, gender)
- Firmographics (i.e., industry, job title)
- Online behavior
- Past purchases
You can use a customer relationship management (CRM) platform to keep track of this customer data. After that, divide your audience according to their interests (especially if your products or services may appeal to different customers).
Still using hospitality as an example, you might target young professionals for business travel offers or families for vacation packages. For each product offering, your ads will look different.
Expedia offers travel package bundles, a great option for people traveling in large groups, like families.
Booking.com’s ad differs from Expedia’s. It helps professionals save on flights through exclusive discounts.
2. Leverage Dynamic Remarketing
Remarketing involves serving ads to leads who have gone cold.
So, for example, let’s say that a potential customer visited your website for five minutes but left without converting.
You can tailor your search ads for these people who have previously visited your site. These are considered high-intent users. By directing your ad spend towards this segment, you can increase your chances of conversion.
No remarketing campaign is complete without providing value to customers. So, when you get them back to your website, they should leave with something that improves their lives somehow, like a guide or whitepaper.
This builds trust, making it more likely for leads to convert.
Henry Meds is an example of a brand that does this well. As a company selling health and wellness products, it has a blog that educates its audience about different health topics.
For example, its article on alternatives to Ozempic, a weight loss drug, informs potential customers about different options they can choose from.
This helps maximize its advertising ROI in a few ways:
- Optimization: Henry Meds can gain insights from user interactions with the article. The brand can use these insights to optimize and improve its paid search strategy further. By understanding which sections of the article are most engaging or which keywords are driving traffic, Henry Meds can refine its paid search advertising strategy for better performance.
- Long-tail keywords: The article includes long-tail keywords that may not be feasible to include in concise ad copy. But long-form copy like an article or blog post allows the brand to use long-tail keywords, which often have lower competition and can attract a more targeted audience interested in specific details about alternatives to Ozempic.
- Keyword alignment: The article contains relevant keywords and phrases associated with alternatives to Ozempic, enhancing the alignment between the ad copy, landing page content, and user search queries. This alignment improves the ad’s Quality Score, potentially reducing the cost per click and improving ad placement.
- Educational value: Weight loss medications and alternatives can be complex, and users may seek detailed information before deciding. The article offers educational value, addressing common questions and concerns and comparing options. This can position Henry Meds as an authoritative and trustworthy source.
- Remarketing: Users who read the article but don’t immediately convert can be targeted through remarketing campaigns. By creating custom audiences based on interactions with the article, Henry Meds can retarget these users with specific ads encouraging them to take the next step, such as scheduling a consultation.
- Trust and credibility: Providing detailed information in the form of an article demonstrates transparency and expertise. Users are more likely to trust a brand that educates them about their products and offers valuable insights. Trust is crucial in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries.
- Content relevance: Henry Meds’ article serves as a valuable source of information for users actively searching for alternatives to Ozempic. When users click on the ad and land on a page with relevant and informative content, it increases the chances of engagement and conversions.
- Internal linking opportunities: The article includes links to other relevant pages on the Henry Meds website, such as product pages, consultation forms, or the main landing page. Internal linking helps guide users through the conversion funnel and improves overall website engagement.
- Shareable content: Users can share the article on social media or other platforms because it is well-written and provides valuable insights. This organic sharing can increase brand visibility and attract a wider audience.
3. Implement Smart Bidding
Smart bidding is an automated bidding strategy in Google Ads where machine learning algorithms optimize the bids during the auction time.
It does this by leveraging data and historical performance. Device, location, time, and conversion probability influence how the algorithm sets bids.
Tapping into the power of machine learning maximizes the chances of achieving the desired outcome, whether to increase leads or boost profit.
Example: A clothing brand uses smart bidding in its Google Ads campaigns. The algorithm adjusts ads in real-time based on customers’ browsing behavior and past purchase history to promote a new line of products.
The four smart bidding strategies are:
- Target return on ad spend (ROAS): This helps ensure your campaigns generate revenue at your desired return rate. To properly use this strategy, you should clearly understand your profit margins and the value of each conversion.
- Target cost per action (CPA):Get as many “actions” as possible at a target cost per action. Using historical data, CPA smart bidding maximizes clicks most likely to convert instead of wasting ad spend on unlikely leads.
- Maximize conversion value: Aim to get as many conversions possible at a fixed return on ad spend (ROAS).
- Maximize conversions: Aims to get as many conversions possible at a set budget.
4. Focus on Quality Score
Your quality score influences the ROI of your PPC campaign.
Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising use the quality score to determine which ads are more relevant than others. Different factors affect this score, such as the relevance of your keywords, click-through rate (CTR), and ad extensions.
To improve your quality score:
- Use A/B testing to test different ad copy variations.
- Organize your keywords into groups.
- Streamline keyword research.
- Optimize landing pages.
5. Utilize Ad Extensions
Google Ads and other advertising platforms provide ad extensions that allow you to add more information to your ad copy.
This might include images, phone numbers, and location information. Ad extensions enhance your ads’ visibility and improve CTRs. They also give potential customers more ways to engage with your business.
6. Continuously Optimize and Monitor Your Ad Campaigns
Track your campaign’s performance with automated marketing reports to improve efficiency and campaign performance.
Tools like Redbird.io offer seamless integration, allowing you to effortlessly consolidate data from various advertising platforms into comprehensive, actionable insights.
Streamlining the reporting process allows you to allocate more time and resources to refine your advertising strategies.
Just using one Google Ads? You can also track your ad performance right in your Google Ads account.
You’ll be able to see the status of your ads (i.e., whether they’re active), track CTR (i.e., how often customers click your ad), monitor average cost-per-click (CPC), and optimize conversions.
Maximize ROI in Paid Search, One Click at a Time
Advertising is expensive enough. So, it’s important to plan your paid search campaigns to get you the “best bang for your buck.”
Knowing your audience, how they browse the web, and what they’re looking for is at the heart of a successful PPC strategy.
Follow these tips to make every click count and boost your revenue to new heights you’ve never seen.
Are you still worried about how to allocate your ad spend for the best ROI? Marin’s automated budget management feature can help. Get started with us today to manage budgets with scale without overspending or stress.
