PPC Management Guide

Paid search is the third largest digital advertising channel, after organic search and direct.

It has snowballed over the last few years, with 74% of brands saying it is a huge growth driver for their businesses.

Paid advertisements also yield an average of 200% return on investment (ROI), making it the highest ROI provider of all advertising formats.

This is why pay-per-click, or PPC marketing, can effectively build interest in your brand and convert more customers.

If you're new to paid search, tapping PPC specialists is a quick and easy way to maximize your investment.

In this complete guide, learn about PPC management and how it can help your business.

What Is PPC Management?

PPC management entails a specialist handling your company's pay-per-click campaigns to achieve a target profit and ROI through optimal bid adjustments.

It is also called cost-per-click (CPC) management because it focuses on maximizing the number of clicks or impressions you receive for the amount you're willing to pay.

PPC campaigns are usually text ads that appear at the top of search engine results pages, although they can also appear above organic results when using a display network.

With PPC management, you’ll have access to a team dedicated to optimizing your campaigns and improving your ROI.

Does Your Business Need PPC Management?

When you're a business owner, there are many things to worry about: managing employees, ensuring your services are up to snuff, and so on.

But one of the most complex parts of running a business is not just creating something useful—it's keeping track of what is going on with your PPC campaigns.

Before you start looking for a PPC management company, you should have a clear picture of your needs and expectations.

Are you looking for a full-service PPC management company? Full-service PPC management companies offer everything, from ad creation to keyword research. If you’re not familiar with the ins and outs of paid search marketing, a full-service PPC management company can be a great way to get started.

Do you need PPC management for your digital marketing campaigns? PPC management is most effective when combined with other digital marketing channels like email marketing and social media.

If you want to take advantage of the full potential of PPC advertising and don't have time to do so, hiring a pay-per-click management company can be beneficial because:

PPC management helps you better understand your customers and how they interact with your brand. With PPC management, you can learn more about your customers and tailor your marketing strategy to fit their needs.

PPC management gives you access to a team of specialists who optimize your paid search campaigns and are dedicated to giving your business the best ROI.

A PPC management company can thoroughly understand and fix any problems that arise while optimizing your campaigns for better results.

With experts proactively managing your campaigns, you can make strategic decisions based on data-driven insights that propel your business forward.

Managing your paid search campaigns in-house can also be challenging due to the significant amount of time and attention required. If your team doesn’t have the expertise or time to dedicate to managing your campaigns, you can outsource this work to a PPC management company.

What Does Pay-Per-Click Management Include?

PPC management services vary, but they generally include the following:

• Ad Creation
• Channel Targeting
• Campaign Optimization
• Analytics and Reporting

Ad Creation

A PPC management company will create ads designed to maximize the number of clicks your ads receive.

This includes creating landing pages for each keyword, creating copy, and optimizing your ad copy. It also ensures that you always use the most relevant keywords to get the best results from each campaign.

Channel Targeting

Channel targeting is choosing which channels to use for your PPC campaign.

For example, you may want to target people who have recently registered for a website or are searching on Google.

You can choose different audiences and budgets by changing the channel and budget ranges.

The goal is to get them to click on the ad, which will lead them to your website or other online destination where they can learn more about what you offer.

Campaign Optimization

Campaign optimization is similar to channel targeting but refers to optimizing your campaigns across multiple channels.

You can optimize one campaign while running another campaign at the same time. Even if you don't know what channel will be better or worse, you can still use those insights to make informed decisions about how much money to spend on each channel and where it should go.

Analytics and Reporting

PPC management companies will provide data that helps you understand your campaign performance and see how your campaigns affect your business.

It involves monitoring campaigns to ensure they are performing as expected, optimizing them if necessary, and testing new ideas with small budgets before scaling up to larger ones.

7 Types of PPC Campaigns

PPC management agencies can help you with these common types of campaigns:

1. Paid Search Marketing
2. Display Advertising
3. Social Media Advertising
4. Retargeting PPC Advertising
5. Affiliate Marketing
6. Local PPC
7. E-Commerce PPC

1. Paid Search Marketing

Paid search marketing works by purchasing ad placement at the top of search engine results pages.

Paid search campaigns are generally short-term initiatives and have a more aggressive objective than other forms of PPC. Typically, you only want your ad to appear when people search for terms related to your niche.

2. Display Advertising

Display advertising is one of the most traditional forms of online advertising due to its ability to reach web surfers based on interests, demographics, or location.

One example would be banner ads at the top or sidebars of a website's homepage. Another could be remarketing ad banners within third-party sites like Facebook and YouTube.

3. Social Media Advertising

With social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter now hosting billions of active monthly users, it makes sense why so many businesses are turning towards this form of paid advertising.

For instance, if someone visits your business page on Facebook while logged into their account, they will see sponsored posts promoting specific deals in which they may be interested.

4. Retargeting PPC Advertising

Retargeting PPC ads allow advertisers to create custom audiences based on cookies that track browsing behavior across multiple sites over time.

This enables advertisers to reach potential customers in a uniquely personalized manner across desktop, mobile and tablets, all while avoiding costly fees associated with AdWords display network placements.

These retargeted ads can be created through both Google AdWords and Facebook Ads. The main benefit of this PPC strategy is that consumers are not bombarded with repetitive messaging. Each ad message contains content tailored specifically to them based on past actions.

5. Affiliate Marketing

To promote their products, affiliate marketers promote other companies' products on their websites by placing banner advertisements and text links on pages with relevant content.

When visitors follow these links and make purchases on the company's site, affiliates earn a commission and a referral fee for bringing in new customers.

6. Local PPC

Local PPC is paid advertising where businesses can target users in specific geographic areas.

By targeting ads geographically, businesses can increase their likelihood of reaching consumers near them who are in the market for what they offer.

Google's Keyword Tool or Google Earth's toolkit can provide specific local keywords for local PPC management.

7. E-Commerce PPC

PPC campaigns can be run on various e-commerce networks, including Amazon and eBay.

Amazon has taken this model to the next level through A/B testing, where ads are tested against each other to measure effectiveness.

One example is when a PPC manager runs an A/B test for two variants of a client's Amazon product listing and finds a statistically significant improvement in CTR for the ad with the shorter headline.

If you own an e-commerce site, e-commerce PPC management can help ensure you don't run out of inventory and that your customers have all the information they need to make informed purchases.

The Key Components of a Successful PPC Campaign

To measure the success of your PPC campaigns, these are the metrics paid search specialists to use:

• Expected Click-through Rate (CTR): This shows how often your ad is expected to be clicked compared to other ads on your search result page.
• Ad Cost: The fee you will pay for ad placement. It’s based on a bid you set for your desired keyword.
• Ad Position: This is your ad's location on your keyword search results page. The highest-ranking ads appear at the top of the page.
• Average Cost-per-Click (CPC): The average amount you’ll pay for each click on your ad.

How Much Does Pay-Per-Click Management Cost?

The average small-to-medium enterprise (SME) spends around $10,000 monthly on PPC campaigns. The average ROI is $2 for every $1 spent.

The right PPC management company can help businesses hit their ROIs with suitable campaigns.

Top 5 PPC Management Tools 

Let us now look into the top 5 PPC management tools and review them for businesses to choose the most suited one. 

1. WordStream PPC Advisor 

Cost: $264/month for 12-month plans, $299/month for 3-month plans, or $2,928 for an annual pre-paid subscription. 

Integrations: Google Ads, Bing Ads, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter 

The PPC advisor by WordStream is ideal for small business owners willing to leverage the benefits of PPC but need more finances to staff experts or hire advisors. This software can easily integrate with Bing Ads, Google Ads, and most other major ad platforms. 

The WordStream Advisor enables activating the 20-minute work week, which takes a short time to analyze PPC campaigns. It also allows sending recommendations on how the campaigns can be improved. You can make the changes through the Wordstream software. 

The best part of this tool is that it helps in building campaigns and identifying positive and negative keywords while adjusting the budget. You can also create optimized landing pages and track and prepare reports on conversion and call data. 

If you fill out a contact information form, you also enjoy a seven-day trial. 

2. Optmyzr 

Cost: $499/month (Pro), $799/month (Pro+). The Enterprise version's price is unspecified. 

Integrations: Google, Bing, and Yahoo ads programs 

Optmyzer offers more advanced tools for creating and managing PPC campaigns in bulk. It is suitable for agencies with a larger budget and interested in running multiple PPC campaigns using automated features. 

This paid PPC management tool enables launching, tracking, and managing PPC campaigns on various platforms. The software's website promises that all the software versions allow users to automate scripts, reports, and alerts. The membership also comes with biannual product training sessions with the Optmyzer reps. 

Optmyzer also comes with a tool called Automyzr, enabling users to upload and generate campaigns in volume from data sources like integrations or spreadsheets. 

Once you have uploaded the data, you can use criteria such as 'product' or 'brand' to automatically generate names and other elements of the ads automatically. 

Joe Martinez, one of PPC Hero's top 25 PPC experts in 2017 and 2018, highly recommends the Optmyzer and says that it's helpful to both e-commerce accounts and lead-gen. 

3. Google Ads Editor 

Cost: Free to Google Ads advertisers 

Integrations: Google Ads 

The Google Ads Editor is a downloadable desktop application used to create, track, and edit Google ads. It was formerly named AdWords Editor. 

The app allows performance monitoring and considerable changes to multiple ads, preview edits in draft mode, and revising and building offline ads. 

The Google Ads Editor works alongside Google Ads, which enables users to create and assign a bid strategy to specific campaigns. Users must create a Google Ads campaign to manage it through the Ads editor. 

For those willing to focus on Google first and trying to master one PPC strategy at a time, the Google Ads Editor is a simple and affordable option. 

On the other hand, the downside is that it offers different automation or improvement options than WordStream or other paid PPC managers. That is why; the tool needs more manual adjustments and monitoring. 

4. Bing Ads Editor 

Cost: Free to Bing advertisers 

Integrations: Bing Ads 

The Bing PPC is also becoming popular, with the search engine having more than 5 billion daily inquiries. The Bing Ads Editor offers similar features to the Google Ads Editor. With it, you can make offline revisions to your ads and then upload them to the online platform. 

The Bing Ads Editor also enables researching keywords, managing bids, and monitoring ad performance. Like Google's PPC management software, it does not offer any automation tools and is only accessible to users with a Bing Ads account or campaign. 

5. SEMRush PPC ToolKit 

Cost: $99 (Pro), $199 (Guru), $399 (Business); Enterprise edition varies by company 

Integrations: Google Ads, Bing Ads 

The PPC management software of SEMRush emphasizes competitive research, keyword research, and campaign planning. 

While researching competitors on SEMrush, users can get a list of domains they are competing with organically and a list of paid search competitors. You can also find out the keyword competitors with bids in the past to analyze if you should adopt a similar bidding strategy. 

An excellent feature of this PPC management software is the Keyword Magic Tool, which enables typing in a keyword or phrase and accessing a list of more robust keywords along with their search volume and related data. This information can be exported to a shareable document with the entire team. 

SEMRush has four pricing plans. The lowest cost plan is for freelancers, startups, and small businesses. It includes SEMRush's PPC, search engine optimization, and marketing tools. 

The more extensive plans are targeted toward the bigger companies and agencies, offering advanced reporting features, such as white-labeled reports and more advanced API integrations. 

PPC Management FAQs 

Here are the common questions about PPC management answered in brief: 

What is the purpose of PPC management? 

The purpose of PPC management is to track an organization's PPC marketing campaigns and measure its advertisement expenses. 

What is the PPC process? 

The PPC process encompasses overseeing and managing a business or company's PPC ad spend. It involves using strategies to increase ad buys and minimizing the overall expenditure. 

What are the 4 Cs of PPC? 

The 4 C's of PPC are Customer, Channel, Content, and Change expected. 

Who should hire a PPC manager or agency? 

Businesses looking for genuine engagement and willing to track clicks need the expert guidance and services of a PPC agency or manager. 

PPC Management: Takeaway

If you want to grow your businesses with an online marketing strategy, PPC management can be a worthy investment.

A well-managed PPC campaign can be a great source of targeted traffic to your site.

PPC management services that provide results will improve your marketing game and help you run a more competent business.

Ad-buying experts will be well-placed to learn what works and doesn't, handling the tedious data analysis task while you can focus on the most critical aspects.