How to Get Your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Account Ready for 2017

The end of the year is typically a time to reevaluate your marketing efforts, review your return on investment and set goals for the next 12 months. By following these three steps, you can have your AdWords campaigns ready to stay competitive in 2017.

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Set of flat design vector illustration concepts for pay per click and mobile marketing.

Extended Text Ads

Ads will have room for 2x the text standard ads currently have. This is a huge opportunity for advertisers to tell their story in more characters plus have their ad take up more real estate on the Google Search Engine Results Page (SERPs). As of January 31, 2017 the standard text ad format will be phased out so all ads will have to be updated to extended text ads by then.

Text Message Ad Extensions

Giving your visitors another option to communicate with you is key. A new feature Google is testing, allows people seeing your PPC ad the ability to click on a text messaging icon to instantly connect to you from their mobile device. Visitors seeing your PPC ad will still have the option to go to your website or call you but now with the third option of texting, you’re sure to appeal to all ages and demographics. Keep in mind, you’ll have to have an answering service or dedicated person lined up to be available to quickly respond to text message leads. The good news is ad scheduling can be set up for text ad extensions so this feature can only run on days/times most convenient for your business.

Reevaluate Your Budget

It’s critical to look at your monthly spend, cost per lead and overall return on investment (ROI) to best determine how efficient your ads are. Are your campaigns limited by budget? Are you spending money on keywords that never convert? Are your ads showing in areas where you’re bringing in clients? Go through your campaigns and spend in detail. Make sure you invest in campaigns that bring in the most leads but more importantly, make sure this matches up with the practice area of your highest case value.