6 Essential PPC tools for campaign management
As well as having a comprehensive knowledge of PPC (pay-per-click), if you want to successfully manage your ad campaigns in order to achieve the highest conversion rates, you also need to know which PPC software and management tools are essential for making the most of digital marketing strategy. By learning which tools are available for your campaign, and how to use them to your business’s advantage, you’ll be in a far better position to not only build effective ad campaigns, but to assess and manage existing ones in order to maximise their potential.
Built-in PPC tools
If you’re using Google Ads, and chances are that you are because it’s the world’s largest and most popular PPC advertising platform, you may already be aware that there are several PPC tools already built into this platform, such as Keyword planner and Manager accounts. In different ways, each of these tools can be used to enhance your experience of PPC creation – using methods such as automation, AI optimisation and streamlining tedious PPC processes – in order to improve user experience on the other side of the ads.
1. Google Keyword Planner – Keyword Research
Kicking off our tool recommendations with the giant of PPC, Google Keyword Planner allows you to discover new keywords related to your products and services and provides monthly estimates for search volumes and costs to target priority terms. Free to use, you can analyse bid range and competition level and filter your keyword research to focus on the most beneficial local demographics for your business.
2. Google Ads Editor – Ad Creation and Management
Great for time efficiency, this built-in tool enables you to make bulk edits across ads, ad groups and campaigns. Better yet, the changes aren’t permanent, so you can easily edit your ads to make sure they’re perfect before uploading the final product. Google Ads Editor is also really useful for offline working as it’s downloadable so you can work on your PPC campaign and business growth from anywhere.
Third-party PPC tools
Typically though, PPC tools – many of the ones which we recommend making use of in order to enhance your search engine marketing – are created by third party tool suites or software developers and can be employed to improve your management of PPC methods.
3. SEMRush Keyword Magic – Keyword Research
If you’re familiar with SEO, you’ve probably heard of the digital marketing tool SEMRush. As well as being one of the most renowned SEO companies, they also boast a range of excellent PPC tools. In particular, the Keyword Magic research tool lets you explore niche subtopics and groups through semantically related long-tail keywords. This means that you can compile a master list of the most advantageous keywords for your digital marketing efforts. The metrics in this tool also provide useful insights for your marketing strategy such as search volume, competition on Google Ads, and CPC.
4. Shape – PPC Bid Management
Shape is a software for budget management, allowing you to take control of your PPC spend and performance so that you can make the most out of your PPC budget. It does this by automating time-consuming workflows such as budget changes and ad creation, surface performance optimisations or exporting PPC costs to an invoicing system. Some of its most useful features include AutoPilot, which stops ad campaigns once a pre-defined budget has been met, and Cruise Control, which uses AI to adjust your daily budgets and bidding in line with your overall spending limitations.
5. Marin Software – Analysis and Reporting
Marin Software carries out data reports and analysis on your PPC campaigns through unified optimisation in order to maximise the return on your digital marketing investment. By identifying potential areas of growth in your marketing strategy, you can create profit forecasts to predict revenue from your ads.
6. Dashthis – Analytics and Reporting
As well as having an excellent name, Dashthis is one of the best PPC tools for assembling all of your ad campaign data into one custom performance report so that you can see only the data necessary to enhance your site’s performance and customer engagement. By measuring certain KPIs (key performance indicators) such as CPC, conversion rates, search impression share, and CTR, Dashthis can help you gauge the overall long-term performance of your ad campaigns in a matter of minutes.
The four pillars of PPC tools
Generally speaking, PPC tools can be broken down into four categories, each of which focuses on an important element of any successful ad campaign.
| Keyword Research | Tools that can speed up your keyword research will have an immense impact on your efficiency when constructing an effective PPC strategy. By identifying which terms and keywords are drumming up the most search results, you can create ad content that more closely matches or represents users’ search queries so that you can spend less time trawling through terms and more time focusing on your client relationships. |
| Ad creation and optimisation | You’ll be more likely to achieve your business targets if your ads are targeting the right customers and optimising the online visibility of your products and services. Optimisation tactics might include automated content creation, ad testing to gauge engagement, and budgeting options in order to produce the highest ROI from your PPC campaigns. |
| Bid management | Likewise, knowing how, when and on what to spend your PPC budget is an important aspect of digital marketing if you want to see a return on your investments. Using a PPC tool to strategically set maximum ad spending during optimum conversion periods can help determine the most advantageous placement of your ads. |
| Analytics | Perhaps one of the most important elements of an effective PPC strategy is drawing from data analytics and reports in order to understand how your current campaigns are performing so that you can improve them for future customer engagement. By carrying out reports and measuring your progress, analytic tools can help you develop the most advantageous PPC campaign. |
Don’t be a fool, make use of PPC tools
I asked PPC Lead, George, what his current favourite tool is:
“Its tough to pick one favourite tool but my current favourite is Shoptimised, our feed management and CSS tool. This allows us to optimised feeds at scale for our e-commerce clients and is faster and sleeker than Google merchant center.”
As the world of digital marketing continues to grow and become even more competitive, particularly in relation to PPC campaigns, finding ways of maximising your investment and input into your visibility and customer engagement has become essential to ensure your company’s success. While some of these tools may seem daunting at first, they’ll be incredibly useful both for your ROI and your time-management in the long run.
FAQs
Answered by Callum Leonard
Are there any extensions for Google ads which are useful?
Yes, here at Embryo we utilise Optmyzr. This tool improves the speed and accuracy of tasks, especially for large-scale changes. we also use Shoptimised as one of our key feed management tools.
What important metrics do Google ads not provide which an extension does?
Most extensions provide the same or similar metrics. Extensions can be useful for large-scale tasks where time efficiency is key.
Is there one key PPC tool which does it all?
No, there is not one tool which does it all. Optmyzr is most encompassing for day-to-day optimisations.
Can PPC tools be used throughout the campaign creation process?
Yes, you can use Google Ads Editor (off-platform software). You can build campaigns in scale offline during the creation process.
