If you love data, moving quickly, and seeing revenue rise, odds are you like PPC advertising. But any good digital marketer knows launching a successful, profitable PPC campaign isn’t just about the ads—it’s about everything after the initial click, too. Thoughtful PPC campaigns can drive highly qualified traffic, but that only gets you so far. You have to do a whole lot more to generate impactful revenue.
Ultimately, the success of your PPC campaigns will come down to three vital elements—ads and landing page experience, post-conversion follow up, and campaign optimization by way of data analysis. So let’s get down to it.
Your Ads Are Only As Good As Your Landing Pages
Click-throughs are great, but if you send a ton of traffic to a subpar landing page that doesn’t convert, all your work will be for nothing. The users will land on the page, bounce, and find a better offer somewhere else—perhaps one of your competitors. Not ideal.
So create an awesome landing page—it’s that simple, right? Not necessarily. You need your landing page and ads to work together. It’s about finding the best combination. Even if you have the best landing page in the world, if users expect a different offer based on the ads, no one will convert. This means that instead of focusing on each separately, begin to look at your ads and landing page as a package. When you make adjustments to one, think about how it will affect the other. And the best way to find a winning combo is to constantly test.
What to Test
If you’re not testing, you’re leaving money on the table. As I mentioned above, traffic doesn’t matter if everyone bounces from your landing page. Take a step back and ask why the traffic isn’t converting. Is it the landing page design? The messaging? Maybe the offer needs to be more compelling. Or less confusing. Collect the data and campaign elements—landing page conversion rate, how you’re targeting and bidding, asset design—and form a hypothesis. Then systematically test to figure out where the breakdowns may be.
In my experience, I’ve found value in testing both smaller elements (page elements, color, copy tweaks) with complete overhauls (different offers, redesigned landing pages).
Leads Need Follow-up
To ensure leads captured through PPC campaigns move down the funnel, you’re going to need a post-conversion strategy. What happens after the user submits their email address? Will you call or email? What is your desired next step? How are you going to communicate with them? There’s no point to driving hundreds of leads if you don’t follow up with them. Which means before you launch your campaign, make sure you understand how you’ll guide your potential customers towards your ultimate goal of becoming actual customers.
Be aware that lead nurturing looks vastly different depending on the campaign you’re running. It’s not enough to send a generic email or to call everyone who converts. Where the user is in the marketing funnel should determine how they’re given information and what kind of content you share with them. It doesn’t make sense to bombard a marketing qualified lead with calls from a salesperson—you’ll scare them away.
For every campaign, think about which part of the funnel you’re targeting and how to successfully move them towards buying. When is the appropriate time to call? How often should you send them emails? What kind of content should be included in the emails? Lead nurturing is important for driving revenue from PPC campaigns because small wins can lead to big results. Increase your lead-to-customer conversion rate, and you’ll see a good amount of revenue follow.
Use Your Data
As a digital marketer, PPC campaigns are great because of the ability to track everything, from clicks and traffic to cost and conversions. But first and foremost, ensure your data is clean and that you’ve properly named and set up your campaigns. Making data-informed decisions is obvious, but making calls based on inconsistent data can really screw you over.
Once you’ve gathered data from your PPC campaigns, report on it! If a campaign is absolutely crushing it, share the win with your team. Can you increase the budget or expand your reach? Which keywords or audiences are particularly successful? If a campaign is getting a lot of qualified and converting traffic, what can your team create in the future that might drive similar results? In short, use the data available to identify and prioritize successful campaign optimizations. Then lean into them even harder.
PPC Campaign Success is Not Independent
Launching a new PPC campaign is exciting. Unlike traditional advertising like billboards or print ads, search ads render realtime feedback—you can see how your work affects the organization’s bottom line. For this reason, it can be tempting to narrow your focus on the PPC ads, testing small copy tweaks without looking at the whole picture.
But what happens after the click is arguably the most important part.
So the key to turning your PPC campaigns into profit centers? Understanding the bigger picture. Knowing where the user is in the buyer’s journey. Finding the right ad-landing page combination. Nurturing leads. And then leaning into the opportunities based on good, clean data. Do these things and you’ll be happy with the results.
