Pay Per Click (PPC), like espionage, is a dangerous business. I wouldn’t be surprised if our local AdWords Guru admitted she was a Russian agent. It would explain why there is a silenced Smith & Wesson taped to the underside of her office swivel chair. Perhaps it would also shed some light on the framed picture of Stalin on her desk and the obscure family references to “Uncle Josef”.
 
But, I digress.

PPC can sometimes be tricky because one wrong move can make you overspend a media budget by £500. Making small tweaks can become a game of Russian roulette if your attention is diverted by account administration for more than a couple of days. This is why it is worthwhile, nay, essential to know time-saving techniques and easy-to-implement tactics that make big differences in a short amount of time. So here are a few while I hide the Count Pushkin to avoid another distraction:

• Foreign language campaigns can be augmented by using the Campaign Optimizer Tool. So if you don’t speak French, but are looking after a PPC campaign targeted in that language, the Campaign Optimizer tool can help research long-tail keywords (KW) in that language.
 
• It is accepted that roughly 60% of your Quality Score is determined by user interaction (i.e. historical click-through rates). This leads many PPC campaign managers to think that starting out with high initial Cost Per Click (CPC) bids will give their keywords a good starting quality score and the opportunity to lower bids until an affordable cost level is reached. This doesn’t work. Check out this post to see how Google normalises CTRs with respect to benchmarked ad ranks. That being said, experience tells us it is better than nothing on difficult accounts. 
 
• Set finite limits on keyword statistics. In other words, set your keywords performance targets which need to be attained in order  for them to stay active. This is a contextual practice, since selling yachts and promoting a Social Media site have vastly different mechanics. So get to know the patterns of your account and put a system in place. For example, if you are selling yachts, pause keywords that get more than 100 clicks but don’t convert (these clicks are probably being used to do research), or lower their CPC bids by 50% so they don’t incur this type of wasteful click volume. The resulting lower ad position will most likely not affect the conversion rate for something as pricey as a yacht.
 
• Some AdWords Users make use of Dynamic Keyword Insertion for larger adgroups. This is known to increase Click-Through rates. Even though the Quality Score algorithm isn’t fully known, it is generally believed that landing page relevancy forms about 10% of this formula, so why not try and align with that and create some Dynamic Landing Page Insertion? Having the keyword related to the clicked-on advert appearing on your landing page could help relevancy. See this post on it.  
 
• If you are managing larger campaigns, download AdWords Editor. This can save you many hours when uploading campaigns. It enables you to duplicate campaigns and adgroups, making targeting multiple countries very easy.
 
• Use spreadsheets with AdWords Editor to help you save time when uploading KW’s and uploading adverts. For example:
  • Use Excel to make a list of keywords with the desired match types in the column next to them. 
    • Copy the entire selection, switch to the AdWords Editor, select the appropriate adgroup and press Ctrl+Shift+K
    • Paste all these keywords (Press Ctrl+V) into the adgroup and then click OK
  • The same process can be applied to uploading adverts. Make sure you write your adverts in Excel, and write them horizontally across one row. So when making ads, write them like this:
    • Headline will be in A1
    • Description line 1 in A2
    • Description line 2 in A3
    • Display URL in A4 and Destination URL in A5
    • Then, select the row, copy it, switch to AdWords Editor, select the appropriate adgroup, press Ctrl+Shift+T and paste
 
• While your campaign is maturing you should search for new keywords on a regular basis. This needs to be done until you have refined your campaign and achieved a very fine balance between cost and conversion efficiency after looking at mounds of historical data. To get new keywords you can:
  • Run a Search Query Report
  • Look at Organic Traffic in Analytics and filter out your existing keywords using the “Unique Records only” option in Excel
  • Use the Keyword Tool to extrapolate from competitor keyword themes

The key to successfully managing a PPC campaign is making sure the time spent on administration and monthly monitoring activities is kept to a minimum in relation to time spent on implementing real changes that are designed to increase ROI. Hopefully these tips will go some way to achieving that.