After a considerable amount of work, your PPC campaign seems to be bringing in some revenue.  While this is cause for satisfaction, you should avoid settling for the goal of simply bringing in revenue.  Don’t fall into the trap of saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” when it comes to your PPC campaign, because there is always room for improvement.

As the market changes and shifts, the needs of consumers mirror those changes, resulting in different searches and different ways of searching.  Constantly re-evaluating and updating your PPC campaign is imperative to its continued success.  If you don’t change with the market, the market will leave you behind.

One of ways you can examine your PPC campaign is by the type and format of your keywords.  Are they broad matching, phrase matching or exact matching?  A strong PPC campaign will contain all of those three types.

A broad matching keyword or set of keywords allows searchers to find your website so long as they include your keyword(s) in their search, somehow.  If you’re company is selling tickets to a Broadway play in New York City, and your keywords are Play Tickets, anyone searching for those keywords can be lead to your site, even they are searching for Baseball Tickets Yankees play Mets, because your keywords are within the searcher’s keyword string, regardless of order or logic.

What this means is that you might experience many impressions or even many clicks, but they may be clicks from searchers looking for Yankee tickets, Mets tickets or even just baseball tickets, but not for Broadway plays.

If you PPC campaign does not include broad matching keywords, you could be missing out on potential business.  Maybe that baseball fan is also an avid Broadway play-goer.  On the other hand, if your PPC campaign contains only broad matching keywords, you might find yourself paying for useless clicks, thereby wasting money.

On the other end of the spectrum are exact matching keywords, the most specific keywords available.  If your keyword is [New York Broadway Tickets], brackets included, then your searchers will have to type in New York Broadway Tickets, in that exact order, without any other words in the search.

The positive side of exact keyword matching is that those who find your site and visit it likely want to purchase the services you offer.  Your chances of sales per clicks are heightened, but exact keyword matching won’t lead anyone to your site unless it’s exactly what they’re looking for, based on the keywords you’ve chosen.

Holding the middle ground between broad and exact keyword matching is phrase keyword matching.  If your keyword phrase is “New York Tickets” and a searcher enters New York Tickets Broadway, or Metro-north New York Tickets, your site can still be included in their results because it contains the keyword phrase that you specified.  Because phrase matching keywords are the middle-of-the-road type of keywords, selecting only this type might cost you visitors searching on broad or exact terms.

Simply receiving clicks that generate revenue is not enough to expect of your PPC campaign because chances are, you could be receiving more clicks generating more revenue.  Make sure your PPC campaign covers all the ground, instead of just some of it, and don’t be afraid to change your PPC campaign.

Instead, think of it as an organic thing, constantly changing to adapt to its environment (the market), and you won’t find yourself left in the dust, remembering and regretting that brief moment when you settled, because waiting until the dust settles will leave you with a heap of work that might negate the revenue your PPC campaign did generate.