PPC campaigns can be a huge boon to a business. They can also be a huge drain on the marketing resources. There are ways to improve your PPC campaigns that not only make them more effective, thus increasing your return on investment. These methods can also help you save money in the long run.

Quality score is a measure of the relevance and effectiveness of a PPC campaign. At its core, it is the idea that a well focused campaign will quickly and effectively allow a searcher to find and click on an ad that takes them right to the product or service that they need. It answers their needs efficiently, it makes them happy and their trust in the advertising platform grows. This is good for the platform, and so they reward advertisers with good quality scores with more prominent ads at a reduced price. It is a win-win situation for everyone -- the user, the platform, and you, the advertiser.

Study quality score and ways to increase it. Implement what you learn wherever you can. Not only will it save you money up front, it will probably generate better quality clicks that lead to conversions that add to your bottom line.

Another budget drainer is to overpay for very popular keywords. This is actually a two-edged sword, because a lot of these very competitive keywords also are very broad, so they don't qualify the prospects very well. This leads to a lot of low quality clicks that don't lead to conversions. The return on investment is actually fairly horrible and can totally drain your budget to know purpose.

Instead, focus on specific keywords that exactly match the product or service you are offering. There are two immediate benefits to this. First, the competition is probably less, so the cost per click will probably be less, too. Second, you end up with prequalified visitors looking specifically for your type of business. Your ROI will probably skyrocket, because you will get more conversions.

Don't pay to advertise to people who aren't your target audience. Local businesses shouldn't advertise outside of their service areas. If you only work in Florida, clicks that come from California don't do you any good. They just cost you money. The same holds true on any scale. Don't advertise in other countries unless you actually service those countries.

Another way to target is based on time. Some products have a continuous demand 24 hours per day. But many are more reasonably advertised closer to business hours. If you have a business that is open from 9 to 5, clicks at 3 in the morning probably aren't going to be very productive. Known as day parting, this requires that you pay close attention to the shopping habits of your clientele.

This actually works both ways. You want to bid well for keywords that produce, but you also want to avoid those that don't do anything productive for you.

Carefully choosing keywords is vital. Focus on words that bring you legitimate business. There are a variety of tools to help you measure which ones perform best, so use them. Get rid of keywords that don't garner any interest. Not only does it help you focus your attention, it will also increase your quality score, and lower your costs.

On the flip side, use negative keywords to disallow any words that bring nonproductive clicks that never lead to conversions. Some keywords might bring visitors to your site, only to find out that you are in a completely different business. In addition to being a major frustration, you also still have to pay for these clicks. If there are words that trigger your ads that you don't want to let function, add them to the negative keyword list.