At Goose Digital, we’ve spoken with companies that feel they’re not getting enough out of paid campaigns. In fact, many organizations are considering stopping with PPC altogether.

So why do some companies do so well with paid campaigns while others view them as a complete waste of resources?

The answer lies in whether your company has taken the correct steps to optimize your paid campaigns. Consider these two statistics that show plenty of businesses are excelling with paid campaigns:

  • Paid advertisements generate a return on investment of 200%
  • Pay-per-click (PPC) leads to twice the amount of site visitors as SEO.

If you are not seeing the results you are looking for, below are some recommendations for improving campaign performance.

What Should You Do Before Starting a Campaign?

Define Success and how to measure it

You can’t know if your paid campaigns are successful without defining your version of success. Plus, you need to make your version of success measurable and concrete.

Success metrics are tricky to set in stone which is where benchmarks come into play. Beyond that, more than one metric or KPI will define success (such as ideal cost per acquisition and ideal cost per lead to name a couple).

Figure Out Who’s in Charge

Often, paid initiatives can fall through the cracks because nobody knows who’s supposed to be doing what. Establish who is leading the charge of these campaigns.

What Are Your Expectations?

Provided all your team members execute their role, what do you expect it to look like? 

Monitoring, Managing, and Improving Campaigns

Don’t “set and forget” your campaigns. They need daily supervision and laser focus.

Failing to be actively involved in your campaigns means you’re not doing anything to fine-tune them, leading to diminishing returns. 

So, ask yourself, who is providing ongoing support and continually monitoring your PPC initiatives? Creating the campaign, then checking back in 3 months later expecting positive results will leave you disappointed.

When Should You Adjust Your Campaigns?

For the first 3 or 4 weeks of a campaign, you want to monitor clickthroughs, bounce rates, conversions, and other similar metrics. However, you don’t want to do much tinkering. First, assess if you’re attracting relevant traffic and if your content is effective. 

Even though you aren’t fine-tuning, monitoring the performance during your paid campaign’s infancy will reward you long term. 

Right away, you might find that there’s something you need to change immediately, like incorrect geo-targeting. Secondly, but still equally as important, you’re getting to know your audience.

Furthermore, the platform (and its audience) can get to know you during this initial assessment time before you make continual changes to appease the algorithm. 

You’ll then have a good idea of what you must do to reach your benchmarks, how long you’ll need, and how much budget is required.

Need some assistance with your own campaign optimizations? Contact us today to learn more about how we can help.