6 Google Ads Tactics to Maximise Your PPC ROI

In today's digital advertising landscape, achieving a strong return on investment (ROI) from your Google Ads campaigns isn't just about spending more – it's about spending smarter. While Google Ads is our everyday tool, sometimes we want to go beyond for campaign results. In this piece, I will share my 6 practical tips to maximise your PPC efforts according to fundamentals rather than the skyrocket ideas 🙂

These strategies will help you:

• Stay ahead of your competition
• Reduce wasted ad spend
• Accurately measure campaign performance
• Drive sustainable growth and profitability

1. Utilising Remarketing Lists for Display Ads

Sometimes we miss out on our more valuable customers in pursuit of new visitors. One of the best audiences to target is those who have purchased from your site once or more for effectiveness. When it comes to display ads, it is always beneficial to include our remarketing audience list as targeting. Even if paid ads are generally used for top-of-funnel activities, our behaviours are constantly changing. Recent studies show that 26% of users click on ads because they recognize the brand, making familiarity a crucial factor in our increasingly distraction-filled digital world.

Think about your customer experience:

While browsing the internet, some banners can be disturbing. However, if the brand is familiar, it's more likely to get our attention. That's why it's important to show our display ads to remarketing audiences who have already interacted with your brand. In Google Ads, you can easily upload your CRM data as customer lists and target them in your display ads. Consider segmenting these lists based on purchase frequency, average order value, and product category interest for even better results.

Tip: You can also target your retargeting list for search ads who visited your website but have not purchased it yet. Because SERP is less distracting rather than any page that we intentionally browse.

2. Effective Measurement Metrics for Search Ads

Effective measurement results in effective ROIs. You're likely familiar with "limited by budget" warnings on your campaigns, but is it really a budget limitation? Understanding competitive metrics can help you determine whether your search campaign is truly falling behind competitors due to rank or budget constraints.

Through Search lost top impression share (rank) and (budget) metrics, you can detect the real reason for performance gaps. If your ads lose the top impression share because of rank, you don't need to increase and waste your budget. Instead, focus on improving your ad strength by updating ad copies to improve your ranking and prevent lower ROI. Regular monitoring of auction insights reports alongside these competitive metrics provides a comprehensive view of your campaign's performance in the marketplace.

I highly recommend looking at all these competitive metrics and auction insights reports when you’re analysing your search ads campaigns.

Tip: In your Performance Max (PMAX) campaigns, you can monitor competitive metrics as well.

3. Incorporate YouTube Shorts Ads

I really love the brand new YouTube Shorts Ads for reducing my CPVs (Cost Per View). When using video marketing ads for your PPC campaigns, don't forget to incorporate YouTube Shorts ads in your strategy. From my experience with a client, we've seen dramatic decreases in CPVs after incorporating Shorts Ads in our video marketing strategy. For example, in our video campaigns where weeks 4, 5, and 6 had equal budgets, we saw a 60% reduction in CPV after introducing Shorts Ads in week 4.

The key to success with Shorts ads lies in proper creative execution. Keep your videos between 6-15 seconds, use vertical format (9:16), and front-load your key messages. Remember that 85% of Shorts are watched without sound, so adding captions is crucial. YouTube Shorts Ads may be new, but they're definitely worth trying!

Tip: You can use Video Efficient Reach and Video View campaign types for creating YouTube Shorts ads to target different funnel stages in your digital marketing strategy.

4. Leveraging Customer Data with ML for Precise Targeting

It is always beneficial to rely on machine learning when you have a large customer dataset. While this might not be one of the fundamentals, it's an important topic to address. There are many ways to implement machine learning algorithms in our dataset easily, particularly when it comes to customer segmentation.

Clustering techniques are powerful algorithms for revealing distinct segments in your customer base. For effective implementation, ensure you have at least 800 - 1,000 customer records, three months of behavioural data, and five or more interaction points. Start with simple RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) segmentation before moving to more complex clustering models. The results can help you segment your audience data for effective targeting with lower costs.  You can explore details from this blog that I talked about key machine learning algorithms for digital marketing with examples.

Tip: In real-world applications, such as analysing lead data for B2B targeting, the x-means clustering algorithm can be a powerful tool for clustering companies based on various features like industry, size, number of employees, and interaction rates. With x-means, you don't have to guess the number of clusters beforehand, allowing for a more data-driven approach to segmentation.

5. Broad Match Keywords and All Things Wasting Your Investment

Google strongly recommends using broad-match keywords, which can lead to a wasted budget. While broad match can be useful for very specific keywords or niches, most of the time it's challenging to track every keyword effectively.

Here are all the things that you should consider in broad match cases:

• Use broad match with smart bidding strategy instead of manual bid strategy.
• Apply broad match mainly for your brand campaigns rather than your non-brand campaigns.
• Don't accept the broad match type for your campaigns just because Google recommends it.
• If you’re using broad match, you should have a longer list of negative keywords rather than any other campaigns. Monitor your search term report diligently.

Tip: In the search term report, if you add potential keywords to your campaign, they automatically default to broad match (a subtle trick from Google). Make sure to monitor your keywords and check their match types in your ad groups regularly.

6. Targeting Setting

While setting up your campaigns, after selecting the region or country, the default targeting option is set to 'presence or interest'. This means your ad could be shown to someone merely interested in that region or country, potentially wasting your budget on unqualified traffic. To avoid this wide targeting, choose the 'presence' option to ensure your ads reach the intended audience.

Consider implementing location-specific adjustments based on performance data, and monitor cross-border traffic regularly. Export location reports monthly to identify new opportunities for geographic expansion or optimization. Also, pay attention to device-specific performance differences and adjust your targeting accordingly.

Key Takeaways and Best Practices:

• Maintain a healthy account structure by regularly auditing campaigns, ad groups, and keywords
• Avoid landing pages that don't convert by ensuring proper alignment with ad messaging and user intent
• Leverage remarketing lists effectively across both search and display campaigns
• Keep a close eye on competitive metrics to make data-driven budget and bidding decisions
• Test new features like YouTube short ads strategically to potentially reduce costs
• Implement proper targeting settings to avoid wasting budget on unqualified traffic
• Use broad match keywords cautiously and always pair them with comprehensive negative keyword lists
• Consider machine learning for customer segmentation when working with large customer datasets
• Regularly review and question Google's automated recommendations rather than accepting them blindly

Remember, while Google's platform offers powerful advertising tools, it's designed to encourage spending. Success in PPC requires a balanced approach between utilizing automation and maintaining manual oversight to ensure your budget is invested wisely for maximum ROI. For more PPC insights and digital marketing strategies, connect with me on LinkedIn.