Maximize Profitability on Your Branded PPC

Today Google is earning billions of dollars every year from ads. This trend if proof that more and more advertisers firmly believe in using the AdWords platform for growing their reach on the internet.

Stats show that Google made 95.8 billion US dollars in 2017 alone from the ad revenues. We know that PPC and AdWords are putting billions of dollars into Google’s pocket.

However, if you look closely, a few smart advertisers who know how to use the platform in and out are making much more.

Getting PPC to work for your business is tricky, especially if you do not have the right help to do so. However, with the right kind of guidance, you can save a lot of money on your PPC campaigns both in the short as well as long terms.

You can maximize your profitability on the PPC campaigns by making wise decisions at the micro-level.

One micro-level decision that might sound counter-productive in the beginning but actually works in your favour is setting low bids for your branded PPC campaign.

There is a whole suite of tips and tricks that you can use to increase the profitability of your branded PPC campaign right away. Here, we shall discuss the top 5 actionable tips that work at the grass-root levels.

Tip 1: Setting Low Maximum CPC Bids

Conventional wisdom suggests that you should own all your brand and brand-related keywords to make sure that your competitors don’t steal your traffic.

If they get access to your keywords, everything that you do to increase the reach of your brand will directly impact their business positively as well.

To maintain the upper edge in the competitive cut-throat world, you must own your keywords.

Therefore, setting higher CPC bids for your keywords makes a lot of sense. AdWords allows you to set the bids for your clicks manually now.

However, this fact is true only for a large business that has a lot of competition. Ideally, when you own a brand name and all the related keywords, you should pay much less for it than the competition.

You should effectively save money in the long run. This fact holds true for businesses that involve a lot of competition. However, for the smaller businesses, you might actually lose money by bidding higher for a keyword.

The CPC value of your keyword is extremely low if it is not in demand. So, it is better to stick with the CPC price of the keywords to get excellent ROAS (Revenue on Ad Spend) till your brand name gets traction.

Tip 2: Balance the Use of Brand and Brand-Plus Keywords

Once your brand name has gotten enough traction, you will see that the competition will start targeting your keywords to steal business on the internet.

This may result in a loss worth millions of dollars every year if your business is constantly gaining popularity.

Under such circumstances, it is a better idea to set higher maximum CPC bids to own the keywords and the click prices. This way, anyone who wants to steal your customers will have to cough up a huge price to do so.

You need to protect your brand name on multiple platforms now. Studies show that Facebook is one of the most effective social networks for established franchises.

By protecting the brand and brand-plus keywords you can easily make sure that the business does not fall into the hands of your competitors.

Finding the inflexion point where you start protecting your keywords is extremely necessary to save money as well as make money in the long run.

Identifying the inflexion point is simple if you use the Google Analytics platform to your advantage to do so. If needed, you can also hire professional SEO specialists that can help you protect your keywords for the long run.

You must protect your brand keywords in both your SEM as well as SEO efforts. Use enough keywords on your native blog as well as guest posts and landing pages to diversify your reach, especially if you own a global business.

Tip 3: Increase Expenditure on Inexpensive Search Terms

You need to establish the right kind of balance between the volume and quality of keywords that you purchase for your brand.

high-quality keywords produce excellent conversions, they might not produce a good ROAS due to high capital investment.

On the other hand, the low-quality keywords do not produce excellent conversion ratio.

However, they can help you get a better ROAS due to the low capital investment. Some of the most expensive keywords on Google can easily go above 50 US dollars CPC.

In the initial stages of the business, you need to put equal weightage on accumulating high-quantity as well as high-quality keywords.

An exclusive focus on either will not produce desirable results. There is no fixed ratio in which you can invest between the two different types of keywords.

However, a short period of testing and dynamic adjustment will help you reach the sweet spot.

Even after you do reach the sweet spot, do not stop experimenting since a digital market is a dynamic place and the prices of keywords will go higher with increased demands.

Tip 4: Use the Analytics Platforms to Identify the Best Performing Keywords

You can always use analytical tools like Google Analytics, MOZ and SEMrush to identify the best performing keywords for your business.

Using these tools is pretty simple and straightforward. However, before paying for the premium version of these tools, make sure that you understand the technical nuances of the keywords that you have.

Studies show that over 51% of the Fortune 500 companies use Google Analytics as their primary data analytics tool.

Create a whole list of keywords that are relevant to your business and add all the different variations.

Use an excel sheet to break down the long-tail keywords into shorter components and to build more content on the shorter keywords.

The longer keywords will help you increase the conversion ratio and at a lower cost.

However, the chances of a good reach decrease with the long-tail keywords significantly.

Tip 5: Increase Relevancy of Keyword-Based Advertising at Multiple Locations

The thumb-rule for good SEO and SEM practices is that you should never compromise the overall structure of the article/blog to fit in some keywords.

Never give up on the readability and accessibility of the content to increase the number of keywords. Google has strict policies against keyword stuffing now. So, use keywords very judiciously in your content.

Here are a few tips specifically related to keyword identification that will help you get the best results from your PPC campaign.

• Identify Your Focus (Reach Vs. Targeting): If your primary focus lies on getting more and more customers to the business, focus on reach. For such keywords, the overall price is higher, and they produce a small conversion ratio. However, they can help you reach a wider audience. On the other hand, if you are focusing on condensed targeting, you need to focus on long-tail keywords that will help you save money but get less attention to the business. Ideally, you should strive for an active balance between the use of these keywords.
• Create a List of Negative Keywords: The negative keywords will help you funnel the more sales-ready leads for your business actively. They will help you make sure that the right type of leads come to your business.
• Calculate the Cost of Customer Acquisition: Calculating the overall cost of customer acquisition will help you set micro-goals and choose the right keywords. This calculation will also help you reinvest your money into a different campaign if the first one does not produce the desired results.
• Invest in SEO and Testing: Perform enough A/B testing of both the one-to-one marketing emails as well as landing pages before launching them at a massive scale. Good SEO will help you generate leads organically for your business.

Conclusion

Ideally, you should identify 5-10 core high-quality keywords that you must have for your business and invest in them. Once they start reaping results, branch out into short-tail inexpensive keywords that maintain relevancy to your business.

 A common sales line chart used by most organization consists of the following lines:

• Total Revenue
• Total Cost
• Total Profit

Most of the times, the graph looks something like the following:

This graph is proof that investing a lot of your time and money in keyword selection results in increased sales volumes only for a small period.

For more long-term effects, you need to focus on increasing the quality of content.

Instead of drilling down on the technical nuances of Google AdWords and keyword selection, focus on creating user-friendly content that provides true value to the customers.

This kind of content will help you will a long-term battle and create a sustainable as well as a reliable impression in the market.

Follow these 5 tips to increase the profitability of your branded PPC campaigns. However, don’t get swayed from the fact that customers will come to you only if you provide true value in the long run.