How to Get Ready to Bounce Back with PPC
While things may have slowed down during the COVID-19 lockdown for most industries, there’s no doubt that the market demand will return soon enough and it’s important to ensure that you’re ready to bounce back and make an impact with your paid search marketing.
We’ve collated our top tips for making a come back with PPC, so that your campaigns are in the best shape to go after a new wave of leads in a way that’s cost-effective and sustainable.
1) Prioritise campaigns and budgets
Prioritising your campaigns and media budget is key when ramping up your campaigns, especially as some of your services might not be as relevant at the moment. Therefore, if you were to turn on all campaigns again, you could be wasting money on searches that can’t or won’t amount to anything right now.
Use this time to figure out which of your campaigns have the most potential or are most relevant to people in the current situation so that you can funnel your spend in areas that will generate the most results.
This is important if you’re considering running your paid media campaigns on a reduced budget, as you’ll want to ensure you’re using your limited budget on the campaigns that target a higher intent audience and those who are further down the conversion funnel so that you can ensure you’re getting high-quality leads while keeping control of the budget.
2) Consider the best strategy based on demand
It’s worth considering your organic traffic or other channels that have been picking up traffic in the last few weeks to figure out how your audience is interacting with your business now and how this might have been different before.
For example, figuring out if your target audience is taking longer to move down the conversion funnel, from the researching phase to actually becoming a customer, or if there is pent up demand from previous weeks where people have already done their research and are now looking to commit and take action.
Depending on how people are reacting right now, you should adjust your paid strategy. This might be focusing on brand awareness if your customers are taking longer to convert, as they’re most likely in the researching phase and so your aim should be to get a high impression share and click share, and ensuring you’re outranking your competitors with compelling ad copy.
On the other hand, if you’re noticing a pent up demand from people who have already been through the researching phase, then you want to be focusing on converting these people to leads. This is where remarketing and automated bidding strategies will come in handy, as your remarketing ads will find those users who have already researched your service or product and can help prompt them back to the site to convert.
While automated bidding strategies orientated around getting conversions, such as Target CPA and Maximise Conversions, will help you find users who are most qualified for converting, like those who are in-market for similar services or are a similar demographic to those who have already converted through your paid ads in the past.
3) Recognise & respond to changes through your ad copy
It’s important to be sensitive to the situation and the best thing we can do is make potential customers feel safe and reassured by choosing your business.
Respond to what your customers need during this period of uncertainty and make this clear in your ad copy.
If your services are mostly face to face, you might want to consider offering virtual appointments or services. There’s little use in offering a service or product that people either can’t use or won’t use during a pandemic.
Therefore, before you switch on your campaigns and start ramping up your PPC budgets, make sure you’ve adjusted your ad copy to show customers that you’re doing everything you can to put them first.
Things to watch out for…
While focusing on the above to get your ads in the best position to ramp back up, there’s a couple of things to watch out for to ensure that your cost per acquisition doesn’t start ramping up too.
Firstly, if the market demand is returning and you’re thinking now’s the time to make a PPC come back, then your competitors are most likely thinking the same. To prevent an unpleasant rise in your average cost per click from having to outbid other advertisers, it’s worth keeping a close eye on your quality scores to make sure they’re as high as possible. Keeping your quality scores high will give you the edge of keeping your cost per click low and your ad position/impression share high.
Also, if your market demand is still fairly volatile then fully automated bidding strategies that do not have a max CPC might not be the best strategy for you right now. Some conversion based bidding strategies aren’t always so good at dealing with rapid changes in volume and market demand, and so might try to combat this with high CPCs. If you’re switching back on but you’re finding your conversion rates are fluctuating considerably from week to week then this kind of strategy might not benefit you until the volume returns.
There’s a lot to take in and plan for at the moment, but ensuring that you’re responding to the changes in the market demand in a way that’s going to give you an advantage against your competitors will put you in the best position to make the most of the demand in a cost-effective way.
If you have any further questions about ramping up your paid media campaigns or need any help getting your ads ready, then please do not hesitate to get in touch.