Optimizing Google Ads campaigns are a constant, tedious, and time consuming thing. But, do they always have to be? There are many tools readily available when it comes to optimization and improvement of ad performance on all levels. Especially for paid ads, many tools promise stellar results and lead generation just by using their services. To say the market is saturated would be a pretty big understatement.
However, in reality, not many can live up to their promises and most of the time, the expectations we have of them are not met.
If you are a business owner or you don’t have enough experience with digital marketing, third party tools will save your paid campaigns from failure. You could even say it’s an essential need to your business.
According to Statista, in 2020, search advertising spending amounted to $58 billion in the U.S. alone. Expenditure was forecast to reach close to $185 billion in 2021. The future will be predominately dominated by paid advertising, especially PPC Ads on Google.
It’s a no brainer that business owners will invest more in PPC Ads year-after-year. Google’s Search Ads provide an intent driven advertising format. And, Google having the highest marketshare of any search engine, with YouTube coming in second, there is obviously scale to the advertising efforts.
Having this in mind, knowing the tools that can help you improve your PPC ads are critical. We’ve compiled a list of PPC Tools you can use to enhance day-to-day optimization.
1. AdWords Built In Recommendations
Let’s start with Google Ads first. Personal Google Ads recommendations can be useful for boosting your campaign. If you are a beginner, you can start with these recommendations so that you can get a general overview of the new environment and how to amend your ads by yourself.
They started offering recommendations at the beginning of 2018. There were some significant changes since then and what they offer has improved quite impressively over time. Google invested in machine learning, and Google Brain that has especially boosted the accuracy and relevancy of the recommendations. You will find the recommendations under the recommendations tab in the AdWords interface.
In the recommendations section, you will find the following improvements:
- Repairs
- Ads and Extensions
- Bids and Budgets
- Keywords and targeting
Each section will provide you with a suggestion that you can apply to your campaigns so you can improve the performance of the ads. The changes are easily applicable; you need to click on the suggestion, and you can have the improvement right away on your campaign. AdWords inbuild recommendations are useful for improving your cost/benefit ratio and keyword research but don’t offer enough functionalities for keyword research. Of course, the most significant advantage is that it is free of charge.
2. SEMrush
SEMrush is a leader when it comes to competitor research. It’s not the only tool on the market with this focus, however in my opinion, it is the best. SEMrush offers keyword research and domain research. With both solutions, you will be able to find valuable information about your competitors and you can analyze their organic and paid traffic.
It’s easy to begin the process you need to plug in a competitor and then examine what the tool has to offer. With the tool, you can analyze competitors by:
- The keywords they bid on;
- Advertising copy in rotation;
- CPC statistics;
You can get an idea fast about your competitors’ key traffic sources and their investment in paid ads. The real benefit is that over time you can adjust your actions by the results you will be getting by the tool and be ahead of your competitors on the market.
SEMrush is terrific for:
- Competitor analysis and insights;
- It will save you time and improve your efficiency;
- Improving your keyword research and optimizing it;
3. Tenscores
Tenscores is a unique PPC management tool that provides Quality Score optimization and focuses on detailed improvement on the account as a whole. User-friendly interface and visual stats are features that are admired by the users the most. It’s easy to find the problem areas and work on improvement immediately.
Tenscores is useful because:
– It has a low price;
– Offers amazing user experience;
– Offers improvements on the overall AdWords account
The problem with the tool is that it doesn’t provide a solution that will satisfy all your needs. You still need to use another service to find more details about your competitors.
4. Wordstream
I’ve used Wordstream on-and-off for many years and I’ve found it to be extremely helpful for getting things started. I’ve also heard from other Small Business owners that they really enjoy using the tool because of their recommendations and process.
They have a quick and free Google Ads grader up front to give you score on your campaigns. This allows you to find areas of opportunity and the gaps that should be addressed right away.
Some of the best features they have:
- Recommendations for cost savings
- Ad Optimization Suggestions
- Automation for Reporting
One of the added benefits of using Wordstream is that they have tools to help with Facebook Ads Management and cross platform ad optimization tools that will help you bring efficiencies to all media buying.
Final words
If you are starting with Google Ads, we recommend using the native personal recommendations by Google in the beginning. The suggestions will help you with optimization, and you will learn about how AdWords work and what are your needs. Based on the acquired knowledge later, you will be able to discover your pain points and then choose between the above-suggested tools what you should use. Just as anything in digital marketing, is all about A/B testing and learning. The more you use PPC ads, the more you will know what you need and how to overcome daily challenges.
