Since 2006, online advertising spending has risen from 6% to 13.3% of the total global media expense. That’s comparable to a growth of $16.9 to $42 billion. That is a figure that any serious advertiser cannot afford to ignore.
Compared to traditional channels of advertising, online advertising is not only faster to market, less expensive but also easier to measure. There is, however, a hitch: unless you have the right tools, you could find yourself going way over your budget.
Here are several tools that are deemed by many experts as a must-have if you want a successful online advertising PPC campaign.
1. Google Analytics
Google Analytics will point you to which among your keywords are converting, which of your campaigns is bringing in the most traffic as well as how that traffic performed on landing your page. This is in terms of where the traffic is coming from and what time of day when the traffic is highest, among many other priceless statistics.
You can use Google Analytics to identify pages visited, to gauge bounce rate, and lots of other analytical gems that can help you in optimizing your marketing efforts.
2. Google AdWords Keyword Planner
This tool that provides you with options for validating your keywords by showing you search volume trends and data, cost per click, as well as competitive data. This tool also provides you keyword suggestions so you can expand on the most effective keywords picked from your own seed list.
3. A/B Test Significance Calculator
You should be testing new approaches perpetually. The safest way of exploring new ads or extensions is to simultaneously run two variations and see which one comes out on top.
How will you know when to declare a winner and end these split tests? That’s where the A/B Statistical Significance Calculator steps in. It dictates whether sufficient information is present to enable declare the test results as statistically significant
4. SplitTester
A/B tests could take too long, especially when your account has low volume. Matters can get worse if after all that waiting you discover that really you have no frontrunner! For impatient marketers, SplitTester is a godsend tool. All you need is simply click count and your click-through rate data for the two variations being tested.
5. AdWords Wrapper
When building your keyword list, it can get pretty confusing. The list could become too long for easy sorting, duplicates may be made, and if your store has many products, it may become tricky to sort out the keywords. AdWords Wrapper is a handy tool that helps in splitting your keywords into phrase matches or exact matches. It also gets rid of all those annoying pesky duplicates.
6. AdWords Editor
You can download this free Google application to your AdWords account and then update your campaigns, edit and subsequently upload the changes. The AdWords Editor helps in terms of saving time and making it easier for you to make bulk changes. The basic process of using this tool is quite simple and you can download it on one or more AdWords accounts. You can even work offline for updating later.
7. Analytics Content Experiments
When it comes to AdWords campaigns optimization, you will need to not only assess but test your website and the content on your landing page. This ensures that your site gets the conversions to match the traffic being brought in by your AdWords campaigns. For that, you will need Analytics Content Experiments, a free tool on your Google Analytics dashboard.
Final Word
Google is ranked top among search engine today. It receives 3.5 billion search queries daily. According to Google data, advertisers are making $8 for every $1 spent on Google Ads. So, there are valid reasons why Google Ads should be part of your PPC campaign — and with the above tools which are provided free by Google, you have no excuse for being left behind.
