Are you running any pay-per-click (PPC) ads on Google or Bing? Should you be? If you are, the odds are good that you’re spending more than you should and not getting the ROI you deserve. If you’re not, should you be?
Find out how to figure that out by reading the comprehensive answers our AMA guest Lior Krolewicz offered. Read them in our BizSugar Mastermind Community Town Hall anytime.
.Members can go to this particular Town Hall Event here.
Not a member? No problem. You can join for free. Join the BizSugar Mastermind Community by clicking the button below.
Once you’re a member, click the button below to go directly to this event in our Mastermind Community Forum.
Learn to Optimize PPC from Lior Krolewicz
Every business needs to seriously consider whether they should be running PPC ads or not. And before you start spending money to drive traffic, you better make sure you know how to get those ads (and your site) to convert. Otherwise, you’re just throwing your money away.
If you’ve let Google run your ads for you, it is every more likely that your ROI isn’t what it could be. Their goal is to increase your ad spend; Your goal should be to generate the most profit for the least ad spend possible.
No matter how well your ads were originally set up, it is always a good idea to watch them like an eagle and tweak them to increase conversions and lower costs.
PPC ads are not a “set it and forget it” advertising plan. Between the changes Google has made over time and the higher cost of PPC during key buying periods, take advantage of this opportunity to find out how to get the most for your money.
Who is Lior Krolewicz?
Lior Krolewicz is the founder and CEO of Yael Consulting. He has been specializing in paid ads since 2009. His clients range from SMBs to Fortune 500 companies.
Lior is a popular PPC expert on Quora where he has answered 198 questions to date. But the most important information I can share with you about Lior is to recommend you read his testimonials.
Some may remember that for 5.5 years I specialized in PPC. That was in the early days when it was much easier to be profitable. I am very cautious about who I recommend when it comes to spending someone else’s money.
Always start with the reviews. Then read what they’ve written on their own blog, other sites, and in Q&As. It is easy for me to tell who is the real deal and who isn’t when it comes to PPC.
In the PPC world, there is one easy way to know. The sharpest ads managers guarantee their results (as Lior does), betting on their own capabilities. And importantly, they focus on profitability, or as Lior’s site says:
“Increased conversion rates, better leads, higher profits”.
PPC Optimization Topics We Will Discuss
You are welcome to ask our guest any question you feel he can answer. Lior is a Google Ads (previously named Google AdWords) and Bing Ads specialist. Here are some topics we will be discussing:
- How Google Ads is changing
- Exact match is no longer exact!
- Why you need to add negative keywords to avoid wasting money
- How automated bidding affects your ad campaigns
- How to build a sales funnel
- Why you should beware of Google Ads Specialists
- How to quickly evaluate an existing account
- How to get the most out of Google Ads
- Why you should be running Bing Ads
Read answers from Liam to 24+ questions in our BizSugar Mastermind Community Town Hall anytime.
.Members can go to this particular Town Hall Event here.
Not a member? No problem. You can join for free. Join the BizSugar Mastermind Community by clicking the button below.
Once you’re a member, click the button below to go directly to this event in our Mastermind Community Forum.
If I have a very important keyword, and the suggested bid that Google Ads showed is 25$ per click! In this case, what should I do?
Hi Basim,
Our guest will be taking questions in the Town Hall inside our Mastermind Community. I sent you an invitation to join so that you can ask there. Note that personally, I do not ever use the suggested bids.
They are set extremely high and most of the time you do NOT need to pay them to get clicks. At least that was true back when I used to manage PPC accounts. It is similar to a live auction where the auctioneer first tries to get the bid really high to psychologically encourage bidders to think it needs to go that high.
Hi Gail
As I am unable to use laptop I cannot post the following question. This I am posting it here fort this AMA
My question is;
If we go for PPC ad will that only fetch a temporary benefit?
The ad time period completes we’ll be back to square one?
Of course if we make some benefits in the time frame it’s ok otherwise again we have to run another ad, instead of that if we try to get organic traffic will that be good? Or PPC? What’s your suggestion?
Hi Philip,
I’ve copied and pasted your comment into the Town Hall for you.
How much profit does a product or service need to have at a minimum built in to make it viable to advertise using PPC?
Hi Rahis,
It depends on the cost per click. Take the cost per click and multiply it by the number of clicks required to make a sale. That gives you the cost of advertising.
Your profit margin needs to be higher than the cost of advertising to make it worthwhile on individual products.
But some businesses will spend more than their profit to land long-term clients or if they believe they can upsell a product.
With either long-term or upsell, if you get someone to buy more than just that one product you can be profitable.
Here’s a good PPC strategy:
Block ads on products that you cannot profitably advertise. For example, if you’re a plumbing business, never advertise washers or “how to fix a faucet”. Block those with negative keywords.
Focus on 2 types of products: 1) popular sellers that are profitable 2) very high-dollar / high-markup products with huge profit margins. Split your time and budget between these two.
If you sell on shopping sites, bid higher and/or lower your price on your priciest products to get featured and get the sale.
But increase your prices on inexpensive products. You don’t want to be featured and paying a lot of clicks for products you make no profit on. Let someone else be featured on those products.
I am going to be running ads in Google and Facebook for the Income Tax season. I am looking for ideas for my ads.
Chris Owner CEL Financial Services
Hi Chris,
Create very targeted ads and only use exact match (or as exact as Google has now). Never put unrelated keywords into the same ad group.
As for Facebook, look carefully at what you can target. Once you find an audience that converts well, use lookalike audiences.
It is very important to test ads and targeting with small amounts of money. Test titles, text, and images. When you find winning ads that convert best, then you can spend more money on those.
On Google ads, search ads typically convert much higher than display ads. So I always recommend never buying display ads until you’ve bought all the higher-converting search traffic that is available.
There are rare exceptions, but don’t spend money on display ads through Google until you’ve tested and know that they actually convert.
Use negative keywords to prevent your ads from being displayed where they don’t convert. And opt out of specific sites that don’t covert.
It gets complicated, as you can probably tell by this comment.
My question is;
If we go for running PPC ads, will that only fetch a temporary benefit?
When the ad time period completes, will we be back to square one?
Hi Rahul,
While PPC ads can provide some branding and visibility, basically, yes, you have to keep paying or when they’re done running you probably won’t see a lot of residual benefit. What many businesses do is focus on PPC until they get some traction with organic listings.
Others continue to run PPC ads because they generate enough profit for that to make sense. Your products or services need to be priced high enough that sales more than covers advertising costs.
Finding hard to compete with rivals, who are spending a lot of money in PPC.
Hi Ramjumar,
I remembered your comment and came across a very interesting video that might show you a way to do it. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdSKxMM9y8o
At the beginning of this video the presenter talks about a way to automatically have which campaigns are profitable calculated for you.
If you only spent on the campaigns that were making money, you could reduce spend and increase profits.
It is key to only have very specific, related keywords in any particular ad group. And depending on how much that solution allows you to drill down, you may even want to use separate campaigns for each product category or even specific products.