1. Run Search Queries

One of the PPC basics – but an absolute must! Run your search query reports regularly to ensure you’re not spending money on any irrelevant keywords. Be proactive in adding negative keywords, and make sure when you’re breaking out new ad groups that you cross-negative where necessary. This helps to keep your campaign structure granular and prevents an overlap of keywords.2. Review Search PartnersIf you’ve opted in to ‘include search partners’, run a network report by campaign to identify any areas of the account where search partners may not be cost effective. Label up your campaigns into brand & non-brand to see if there is a difference here too. If you find that Search Partners has a particularly low ROI on certain campaigns/campaign types, you can opt out of Search Partners and focus your budget on the Google Search Network.3. Own Brand BiddingConsider if you really need to bid on brand terms – if you’re the only advertiser bidding on your name then you can likely save money by pausing your brand PPC campaigns & letting your organic listing be top.However if your brand is competitive you can use RLSA to break out your brand campaign into new vs. returning visitors – how you use this will depend on your business:For a lead generation site, consider using RLSA to block people who have converted in the last x days from seeing your brand ads, they’re likely returning to find out more information such as customer service details, parking or a map – you don’t need to pay for this trafficFor ecommerce, users will likely convert better on their return visit. Break out your ad groups into new and returning and monitor the difference, you can then adjust bids based on the performance of each audience4. Boost Quality ScoreAchieve a better ad rank on terms you can’t afford to increase your bids on by improving your quality score. Try to increase the relevancy of your ad texts and landing pages to help here – a higher quality score can result in a lower CPC. Run ad copy tests to try to improve your CTR, A/B test your landing pages to find the most relevant page for your ads to land on and use conversion rate optimisation to maximise your conversions.5. Expand to BingIf you’re not running ads on Bing, why not? There are typically fewer advertisers on Bing; lower levels of competition leads to a lower CPC. If people are searching for your products/services on Bing you need to be showing them your ad. Last year worldwide spend on Bing rose 39% compared to the same time period in 2013, Google ad spend increased only 13% YoY and Bing is growing, make sure you’re taking advantage of this.For more advice or information on implementing these changes, get in touch.