10 Actions For Your PPC Campaigns During Turbulent Times

When periods of uncertainty hit your business, here's some actionable tips to keep your digital advertising campaigns running smoothly.

Stay visible, stay competitive, stay strong

Acaling back your online advertising budget with a slash and burn approach is easy to do, but to recover lost ground over the longer term will be much harder to do. It’s like debt, it's easy to fall into it, but much harder to recover from. Plus, as the seeds of recovery appear, your voice is more likely to be drowned out by everyone else who thinks about ramping up their marketing. Stay visible, and people won’t think you’ve gone out of business and you’ll be in a far stronger position when the market conditions change.

Monitor your website conversion rate

Keep an eye on any fluctuations to your website’s performance as this can have both positive and negative effects on the ROI of your advertising budget. Positive effects may mean there’s demand for specific products or services in which case you’ll want to ensure these are prioritised in your marketing campaigns so that you can fulfil enquiries or sales efficiently. Whereas the negative effects might mean you’re still generating traffic to your site, but there’s been a downturn in enquiries or sales, in which case you might want to consider updating your landing pages with an offer, or consider reducing your cost-per-clicks to offset the decrease in conversion rates.

Review your landing pages

You need your pages to maximise their conversion rates so remove any excess clutter that could confuse visitors and obscure the action you want them to take. This also has the added benefit of likely improving your ad quality score which can also reduce your cost per click.

Check your negative keywords

If you're using Google or Bing Ads you might find your self wasting money bidding on keywords that are driving irelevant traffic to your website. Imagine people looking for something, clicking through to your page and realising it’s completely the wrong match for what they wanted. That's another click on the back button that has depleted your budget. Dive into your Google Ads account, check your search terms report every couple of days and be sure to keep on top of your negative keywords list for any terms not connected with your business.

Encourage more reviews

Get your review strategy in full flow from those people buying your products or services. Utilise your Google my Business listing to collect reviews, as well generating reviews on Trustpilot, Feefo and Facebook.

Step up your quality content output

You can achieve this by cutting back on content that doesn’t drive tangible results. You need to retain your share of voice at a time when others scale back. Step up to stand out and stay visible, but think carefully about the channels you use, make sure your content is on brand, and directly supports your strategy.

Focus your ad spend on your awareness and build your profile

It might feel like swimming against the tide but staying engaged will keep you in the spotlight and allow you to better adapt to changing customer demands as the market changes.

Concentrate your marketing resource on the strongest aspects of your business

The things that you’re best known for rather than spreading resources thinly across a broad range of products and services.

Be prepared to change tactics

Things can change outside your business that can have an effect inside your business, and more often than usual. Be sure to review the data from your ads on a more regular basis. You’ll get more feedback from your actions and a better understanding of the market place you’re operating in.

Finally, don’t stop advertising

Marketing brings money into the business and you’ll need to keep that moving during a recession or downturn. You just need to be a bit more savvy with where and how you focus your effort.