Can Complex PPC Campaigns Harm Your ROI?

(Pay-Per-Click) PPC campaigns are one of the most popular ways a business or brand can advertise. PPC campaigns carry the added benefit of having a high and measurable ROI.

This ROI comes from Google Ads alone. Imagine the kind of ROI a business can have when investing in retargeting ads on Facebook, as well as Amazon ads – that is the newest trend. No wonder Pay-Per-Click’s ROI is one of the most important marketing metrics.

But what is it that “kills” a PPC campaign’s ROI? That would be the complexity of a campaign. But let’s get into a little more detail.

What Is Complexity?

Let’s assume that you’ve created a PPC campaign. PPC campaigns – and all kinds of customer interactions, for that matter – carry data that can be very useful to marketers, especially when it comes down to determining how a prospect converts.

Data First

The first thing you will need to do as a marketer would be to study the data. Your data contains information about your customers, information that will prove to be essential while planning your next PPC campaign.

For example, a prospect’s geographical location can change the way they perceive your PPC campaign. Imagine showing a PPC campaign for swimsuits to someone that lives in Australia during the southern hemisphere’s winter months. This PPC campaign wouldn’t even match your Australian prospects’ keywords at that specific point in time.

The above example may sound oddly specific, but this is precisely how specific your targets need to be.

Set The Targets

The keywords will give you an idea of what your prospects are looking to find. They will also give you an idea of the goals that are actionable and measurable.

Make sure to set the goals that your brand needs at that specific point in time and avoid rookie mistakes such as:

• Not focusing on the right metrics.
• Not choosing attainable goals.
• Not using time and date variables to analyze your data.
• Not pinpointing the specific trends that will help your PPC campaign reach its goal.

Invest in a big data analytics tool and an AI tool to make sure you get all the little bits and pieces you need to create segments that will provide you with specific information. AI technology can distinguish even the smallest of patterns, creating segments that will respond to customers on an almost one-on-one basis.

Since data analysis is no simple task, your metrics will show you the way. Don’t risk not pre-determining the metrics you’d like to focus on; otherwise, you risk analyzing the wrong data.

Track Competitors

When using PPC campaigns, it’s fairly easy to think that your competitors have nothing to do with your campaign. Since it’s paid to advertise, it’s meant to rank, yes?

No. As with anything digital marketing – read this post by Diggity Marketing to get a thorough explanation of all digital marketing types – the competition is fierce. This means that tracking your competitors is the best decision you can make while creating your PPC campaign.

Do your research, be thorough, and keep your eyes and ears open. You can learn a lot from your competitors’ success and past failures. That doesn’t mean, of course, that what worked for your competitor will work for you as well. So, the best thing would be to connect with your audience.

Finding new ways to make them interact is one of the best ways to get information while building engagement and authority. You can create a questionnaire that will keep them on their toes and give you more insight into your prospects’ interests, likes, and dislikes. Use the information you’ll gather on your PPC campaign’s copy and eliminate the competition.

The Complexity Factor

For your PPC campaign to have meaning, you need to create it in a way that will resonate with a large part of your potential customers. This fact increases its complexity.

A small campaign isn’t as elaborate, making it easier to give back a good ROI. But as you gather more information, you can create more combinations. While more combinations can reach a more significant chunk of your audience, it lowers your chances of achieving the best ROI.

The reason behind this is that, while your combinations increase, the timeframe in which you can analyze them remains the same. This makes your campaigns a lot more complicated.

Let’s imagine that you want to create a PPC campaign for Christmas sweaters. This campaign needs to run globally – so, more locations to consider – and you want your prospects to purchase, so this will be your primary metric.

Another piece of information you need to consider is the device used by each age group, on each location, and during specific points in time. All those bits and pieces create a complex campaign, and analyzing this won’t be a walk in the park.

As all marketers know, the more the parameters, the more difficult it is to figure out what went right or wrong, the factor that killed conversion, and the one that made it fly.

Not being able to figure out the definitive factor behind your success or failure can negatively impact your ROI, as you won’t be able to tell what your audience loves and what it loves to hate.

How To Use Complexity To Your Advantage?

Numbers shouldn’t scare an experienced marketer, especially numbers that have to do with a PPC campaign’s combinations.

As mentioned above, the more combinations, the more complex the campaign. So, why not break it down into smaller, more digestible, and manageable pieces?

Break down the combinations and use tools that will allow you to dig deep into your data and scale your campaigns effectively. Realizing just how much information your PPC campaign contains and how complex it is will allow you to boost its effectiveness.

Think of it that way: The devil is in the details. Not taking these details into account and favoring the bigger picture alone can make you lose conversion and, ultimately, harm your ROI. And when there’s more information, there are more chances of making a mistake. So, don’t underestimate the complexity of your PPC campaigns and always dive deep into your data.

This, of course, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t see the bigger picture first. The issue lies in favoring this over the small details that can make or break your campaign. Try to understand your campaign on a deeper level and create the one-on-one segment mentioned before. That way, you’ll appeal to more of your prospects, and you’ll reach your goals quickly.

Now, when I say quickly, I do mean it. Your PPC campaign’s complexity is a definitive factor in how time-consuming managing, analyzing, and optimizing it can be. It would be best if you had the right tools to tackle that problem. After all, why lose even the slightest bit of ROI just because you didn’t have enough time to analyze all the parameters and possible combinations in your PPC campaign?

What Could Go Wrong?

Let’s assume that you’ve used your AI tools and analyzed your data. You’ve used automation tools to scale and track your conversion. You’ve even timed everything down to a tee. And still, something seems to just not add up.

Your campaign may have the best, most accurate, and relatable ad copy, and your landing pages may be designed in a way that converts like crazy, but still not work. Why is that?

Because your targeting is off, and your targeting may very well be off because you haven’t taken all of the intricate details that hide in your data into account.

Not taking all of the complex details into account can lead to the creation of PPC campaigns that will correlate with the keywords you want them to, but will also connect with keywords that don’t describe your product.

This can lead prospects to click on your ad, be redirected to a page that’s irrelevant to their intent as users, and make them click on the “back” button. And clicking the “back” button without a care in the world can very well be harmful to your campaign.

Using the right tools, investing in PPC advertising services, and considering the entire sales process before creating your PPC campaigns – that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t focus on your goal, of course – can remedy that, help you spend your PPC budget wisely, and make sure your PPC campaign’s targeting is on point.

The Takeaway

The more complex the PPC campaign, the more the factors that can keep you away from success and the ultimate goal, which is a great ROI.

PPC campaigns with many factors to be taken into account can be confusing, as a marketer can never be sure about the factors that need to be optimized at that specific point in time.

Analyzing a campaign as complex as that can be frustrating. However, if you’re clear on the aspects of the campaign that simply have to work, use all the right tools, test continuously, and optimize those aspects first, you will succeed.