Top 10 Paid Search Tips for High-Performing Campaigns

Now more than ever, businesses need to rethink strategic digital advertising. Compared to other methods, Google Ads and other types of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising provide better customer acquisition results.

More important than increasing advertising spending is making sure you are optimizing your budget. For most business owners, that means trying to reach potential customers through new methods and approaches to convince and convert your target market.

1. Double-Down on YouTube Video Advertising

Video ads are nothing new, but there are now more advanced tools to help businesses reach their target market. Impressions are great, but conversions are what your business needs to grow.

YouTube In-Feed Ads

Creating content on your own YouTube channel was never the most cost-effective way to dive into video advertising. Now there is the option of creating In-Feed Ads that allows you to place your video beside popular YouTube content.

Your ads can be displayed in YouTube search results, YouTube app Home feeds, and YouTube Watch Next (video previews). When the viewer clicks on the thumbnail, they are instantly taken to a YouTube watch page where your video will autoplay.

YouTube Bumper Machine

Using artificial intelligence (AI), Google launched the Bumper Machine tool. If you have a video shorter than 90 seconds, it can generate a series of shorter (bumper) ads optimized for the YouTube network.

2. Third and Fourth Touch Remarketing

With conventional sales methods, you would inform the customer, then conduct a series of follow-up communications. In digital advertising, remarketing emulates that process.

One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is sending one communication expecting conversions. The problem is advertising saturation—some experts estimate that the average American is exposed to over 5,000 advertisements every day.

Remarketing means developing a campaign using multiple or omnichannel communications:

• Drip marketing email campaigns
• Text messaging
• Social media ads
• Display retargeting

3. Programmatic Marketing More Accessible

Have you ever clicked on an advertisement and now see that business everywhere? Programmatic advertising sends your content for digital out-of-home (DOOH) placement—online, streaming apps, display ads, television, and even voice advertisements.

Currently, programmatic campaigns make up more than 80% of advertising in the United States, both for B2B and B2C businesses.

4. Customizing Advertising for Mobile Devices

Advertisements seen on a desktop or laptop are easy to design, but what appeals on a larger screen doesn't work as well when your prospective customer is using their smartphone.

Optimizing advertising for mobile devices is a two-part strategy:

• Website scaling: Implement CSS media queries to allow your website to scale according to the viewer's device
• Video optimization: Display video content that is compatible with mobile devices and auto-mute
• Image optimization: Eliminate large images from the mobile display, remove overlap, and adjust to low resolution for fast loading
• Native ads: Tailor native ads specifically for mobile viewing

5. Moving Away from Third-Party to First-Party Cookies

Google has phased out third-party cookies, fundamentally changing how advertisers track and target users. Privacy Sandbox is the initiative that helps protect user privacy—good for consumers, but advertisers need new strategies.

First-party cookies will still be permitted. When someone visits your business website, you can still collect analytics data from each visit. But you cannot use third-party cookies to track consumer activities on other websites they visit.

This means it's time to adopt new tools and strategies that will replace the advantage that third-party cookie analytics provided.

6. Protect Your Budget from Click Fraud

You pay for your ads to be delivered to real customers. What if you found out that as much as 50% or more of your advertising budget is being wasted on click fraud?

Click fraud surpassed online credit card fraud when it reached $41 billion in lost global advertising value. Click fraud includes:

• Depleting the advertiser's budget
• Damaging the performance or reach of an advertisement
• Stealing the cost of that click (ad fraud)

The process is highly automated—bots are scripted software that can click on advertisements the same way a human can. No business should be advertising online without having a click fraud solution implemented.

7. Experiment with Competitor Audience Targeting

Unlike click fraud (which is illegal), targeting your competitors' audience is permitted. You can allocate some of your budget to target consumers that have engaged with your competitor(s) online.

Inside the Google Analytics dashboard are tools that allow you to find those prospective customers and create custom audiences for them. You can enter competitor business names into the detailed targeting search bar.

8. Artificial Intelligence (AI) Assisted Campaigns

AI tools like ChatGPT were trained with access to over 570 GB of data from websites, research articles, and other online content. Now advertisers are looking at optimizing ad content with AI assistance.

Since artificial intelligence has analyzed an infinite number of conversations online, it excels at generating advertising copy tailored to specific audiences. When designing remarketing campaigns, AI software can also assist with predictive analytics.

9. Increasing Social Media PPC to Counteract Ad Blocking

How do you reach consumers who have ad-blocking tools enabled on their browsers? By diversifying where you place your advertisements.

Consider platforms beyond Google:

• Microsoft/Bing Ads: Serves over 700 million people on the Microsoft Search Network
• Syndicated content: Platforms like Outbrain and Taboola feature your blog as "suggested reading" on major websites
• Amazon PPC: Offers pay-per-click services for e-commerce

With less competition from other advertisers on alternate platforms, you could see better results and conversions.

10. Create a Voice Search Friendly Catalog

When searching for a product or service, do you head to Google and type in a search query? Or do you conduct a voice search on your smartphone instead?

Voice search is faster, easier, and more accurate. If you have an e-commerce site, voice search keywords should be optimized for every product description. For service-focused businesses, each landing page should have them too—because the majority of your customers are using voice search to find products.