Pay Per Click advertising can be challenging for several reasons. You may have a competitor who is tough to beat, or a small budget that restricts what you can do.

In this article, Adzooma, the online advertising platform for small business, offers tips and look at some tactics you can use depending on which common PPC challenge you are facing.

Challenge – A Small Budget

Tactic – Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSAs)

If you have a small PPC budget, getting meaningful results can seem impossible but using RLSAs can help your money go further.

RLSAs allow you to target customers who have previously visited your website but not converted. When these customers subsequently make searches using your target keywords your ad will be served up.

This is a great way of saving money because you’ll specifically target customers you already know have an interest in your product or service. On average, 69% of shopping baskets are abandoned – so why not try to entice such customers back? RLSAs can help you do this by making sure you stay on your customers’ minds and hopefully win them over from your competitors.

You can also avoid wasting money by using RSLAs to prevent ads from being shown to customers who have already converted. Alternatively, you could choose to upsell to such customers. It is often easier to sell more to existing customers than win over new ones.

Challenge – Poor Landing Page Conversion Rates

Tactic – Call Extensions

If you’re consistently getting poor conversion rates from a landing page, you can test different designs to find out which ones yield the best results. Alternatively, you can try bypassing the landing page all together by adding a call to action to your ad. This means there’s one less step customers have to take to convert.

Adding features like click to call extensions to your mobile ads is a great example of this. Mobile phones play an important role in the customer journey and research by BIA/Kelsey predicted that 162 billion calls will be made to businesses from smartphones by 2019.

Challenge – Irrelevant Traffic

The tactic – Negative Keyword Lists

When every click is going to cost you, the last thing you want is to waste money on customers that aren’t interested in your product. One way to do this is to make sure your ads are highly targeted. You can use negative keyword lists to prevent your ad from showing up for irrelevant searches. For example, if you only sell laptop computers, you could add desktop computers to your negative keyword list. This is particularly helpful when you are using broad match, or modified broad match.

Challenge – Beating a Competitor

Tactic – Target Outranking Share

Every PPC professional should keep a close eye on their competitors but if you have one you particularly want to beat, then using target outranking share can come in handy.

Google describes target outranking share as “a type of portfolio bid strategy that automates bidding across multiple campaigns, ad groups and keywords to help your ads outrank ads from another domain.”

It is a useful technique if you are after greater brand recognition. For instance, if you are new to a market it can help you rank above a more established brand. However, you need to set a realistic bid limit and consider how long you can afford to use the technique for.

Although it is easy to get obsessed with a particular competitor, don’t let it derail your focus. Always have an eye on your ROAS and CPA. And if budget is a big concern for you, steer clear of this technique!

Conclusion

Finding a solution to the PPC challenges you are facing can take time. You may have to try out several techniques before you find what works for you. Hopefully the tips in this article will give you some options to explore.