Futuristic PPC Automation: Creating Efficient Processes and Better Results

Published on: 22nd December 2016

Johnathan Dane Futuristic PPC Automation: Creating Efficient Processes and Better Results Johnathan Dane

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Have you ever tried to automate something and it just backfired on you?

Automation gone wrong!

Programming an automated process can be mechanically challenging and can sometimes feel like it’s a task only the expert engineers can handle.

Fret no more…

When it comes to PPC automation, there are several tactics that you can conquer yourself. There are achievable and actionable steps you can take to create a successful PPC automation process.

That’s why KlientBoost and SEMrush have partnered up to bring you these six PPC automation ideas, so you can start to see better results using less time and energy. #win

Automated Research – Finding New Opportunities to Expand Your Account

Most people do their PPC research all wrong.

Why? They focus on averages and metrics that don’t necessarily impact growth.

What to do instead? Rather than focus on average metrics like average costs per clicks (CPCs), scope out what your competitors are doing with the purpose of identifying expansion opportunities.

Here are some examples of expansion opportunities:

Identify new keywords that you’re not currently getting impressions for
Identify new display placements that you’re currently not targeting
Identify new social audiences that you’re currently not targeting
Identify new landing pages ideas to test based on what your competitors are or aren’t doing

How to automate this?

You can use a Google AdWords script to automate the process.

We recommend creating new Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAGs – this is a PPC strategy we pride ourselves on) and automating the keyword search and SKAGs creation process.

You can set up your AdWords script to:

Search for keywords that have a specified impression threshold
Create new SKAGs with associated keyword match types
Create new ad copy

Another recommendation is to set up your AdWords script to automatically research, identify and create new display network placements.

Automated Bidding – Lower Your CPA and Increase Your Margins

Automating your bidding process can help you reach your CPA goals quicker, faster and better… and who doesn’t want that?

With tools like Acquisio or Marin Software, you can not only automate your bidding process, but you can achieve lower cost per clicks and lower CPAs.

Here’s what a Marin dashboard can show you:

You can maximize margin outcomes through automated bidding.

For ecommee-commerce, automated bidding can be especially useful since costs and margins are what make or break your generated profits.

For lead gen and SaaS sites, automated bidding can be useful too, so long as you tie the bid costing and stats back to how they affect your bottom line.

Automated PPC Rules/Scripts – Do More with Less Effort

You have more options than you may think when it comes to creating automated rules and scripts within your PPC campaigns.

You don’t necessarily need to hire a development team to program your scripts using fancy expensive SaaS solutions (unless you wanna get fancy, of course).

In Google AdWords you can set up automated rules, which allow you to make changes in your account automatically based on set conditions of your choice, like ad status, budget and bids.

Here’s what an AdWords automated rules dashboard looks like when all set up:

You can set up various rules, frequency and email notifications.

Automated Ad Testing – Finding Ad Testing Combinations for You

With so many combinations and options of what to test in your ads, it can be quite the daunting task to work out which pieces to mix and match in your ad variants.

Between ad copy, images, locations, devices and days of the week, automating the setup process for your various ad combinations can make your life that much easier and your testing results that much more accurate.

With a tool like AdBasis, automated ad testing can be done for you.

Here’s what a results page might look like in an AdBasis dashboard:

You can segment your performance and check out siloed key metrics – image source

Automated Reporting – Uncovering Insights to Make Better Decisions

With automated rules reporting in Google AdWords and other PPC platform dashboards, you can analyze metrics that can give you meaningful and actionable insight.

Take the automated reporting a step further and deep dive into your metrics with a tool like Optmyzr.

In the Optmyzr dashboard you can uncover insights that AdWords and other PPC platforms otherwise wouldn’t give you, like heat maps, word clouds and cause trees.

Here’s an example of a bid adjustment report in Optmyzr where you can set bid adjustments for different times and hours of the week:

You have the ability to imitate metrics.

You can also track metrics related to your quality score with reports like account quality score, improve quality score and monitor quality score.

Automated Time Saving – So You Can Focus on More Important Things

What’s the point of all this automation?

Relieving your schedule so you can focus on more important things… like building and scaling your business, of course.

When set up and executed just the way you want, PPC automation save you time, money, energy and actually provide you with more accurate results.

Not much to this section, other than once you invest your efforts into setting up a proper PPC automation process, you can focus on more important goals and big picture growth items.

Closing Thoughts

Now it’s your turn to automate your PPC campaign process! With these savvy tips on how to automate each piece of your PPC process, you can sit back, relax and watch your results come in.

With all your PPC automation taken care of for you, you can compartmentalize that whole discipline into a neat little automated process… and focus on other more important things.