Over the past several months, more and more prospective clients are coming to me with a specific complaint: their PPC program is no longer working as well as it once did.
In some cases, their program worked great for years and now it’s suddenly not.
In other cases, the program worked great for years but is slowly generating more and more unqualified leads.
What’s up with these and similar concerns?
Has something shifted in the world of PPC and now all these accounts are struggling?
I believe the answer lies in a fundamental misunderstanding of what it takes to successfully manage a PPC account in the year 2020.
PPC Strategies That Worked in the Past May No Longer Work
Once upon a time, companies could lean heavily on their main keywords to do most of the heavy lifting in their PPC programs.
And some companies did perfectly well with this kind of approach, sometimes for years.
But today, a bare bones Google Ads account — with no development or top of funnel campaigns to keep brand awareness active — just won’t cut it.
Merely bidding on your top converting keywords will eventually fail you — and could eventually backfire.
Newer advertisers seem to arrive with an understanding that they’ll need to put some resources into developing their brand and go well beyond a mere keyword strategy.
But for advertisers who’ve been around for a while — and tasted PPC success in a simpler time — it’s a harder lesson to (un)learn.
You Need a Comprehensive Approach
Today, a comprehensive advertising approach is the key to PPC success.
Which is why we take the time to:
- Examine and thoroughly understand your customers’ journey
- Select campaign types (including GDN) that align with your business, goals and processes
- Remarket to gently touch customers and prospective customers again
- Have search campaigns at the ready for customers who are actively looking for your product or service
- Create branded campaigns for customers who are looking for you specifically
- Optimize like crazy as we test and accumulate data.
Not one of these strategies can carry the load of a successful PPC program alone.
And no keyword strategy can do it either.
Not having all these pieces in place makes you vulnerable to new competitors, a more crowded marketplace generally, higher CPCs, unexpected industry changes, and even dirty tricks.
They can even help you weather internal challenges, as your company grows and adapts over time.
So if your PPC program isn’t working, doubling down on your current keyword strategy probably won’t fix it.
It will take something more fundamental to get you back on track.
And that means bringing together all the pieces of a comprehensive PPC program.
