{"id":11447,"date":"2013-07-25T08:30:03","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T13:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crazyeggblog.wpengine.com\/?p=11447"},"modified":"2026-02-13T14:24:43","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T22:24:43","slug":"9-ppc-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crazyegg.com\/blog\/9-ppc-tools\/","title":{"rendered":"9 PPC Tools That’ll Give You a Leg Up on the Competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the cutthroat world of PPC advertising, you need every advantage you can get to stay ahead of the competition.<\/p>\n

Below are 9 tools that will help give you an edge in the set up, management and optimization of PPC campaigns\u2026 either by saving you time, making your job easier and\/or providing revealing data most of your competition don\u2019t have access to.<\/p>\n

[powerpress url=https:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/crazyegg\/cep009_9ppc_tools.mp3]<\/p>\n

Splittester.com<\/h2>\n

Split testing is one of the most important actions involved in optimizing an AdWords campaign<\/a>. It basically involves taking two ads and having them battle it out to see which one performs the best over time.<\/p>\n

When you have a clear winner, you delete the losing ad, replace it with new ad variation and start a new split test.<\/p>\n

But how do you know when a test has run its course and you have a clear winner and loser? Well, you can either do the math or you can make things easy on yourself by using the free tool at splittester.com.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a very simple tool to use. All you do is enter how many clicks each ad has received, along with its clickthough rate. Then you click the \u201cCalculate\u201d button and you instantly get results that tells you, in percentage terms, how confident you should be that the ads will have different response rates over the long haul.<\/p>\n

\"SplitTestercom\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Optimizely<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s great to send highly qualified traffic from your PPC campaigns to your website. However, success ultimately comes down to your website and how efficient it is at converting that traffic into leads and sales.<\/p>\n

So as important as it is to split test ads, it\u2019s also extremely important to split test your landing pages.<\/p>\n

And Optimizely<\/a> is a fantastic tool to help you easily split test landing pages\u2026 with no programming necessary!<\/p>\n

The way it works is you enter the URL of your landing page and Optimizely will upload the page into their system.<\/p>\n

Then you can edit text (even on call-to-action buttons), resize\/rearrange\/remove page elements, change colors, etc. And it\u2019s all done in a WYSIWYG editor.<\/p>\n

Once you make changes to your page, you put a single line of code on your landing page and Optimizely runs a split test of your landing page for you to see whether the changes improved conversions or not.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve not come across an easier way to split test landing pages than this.<\/p>\n

Google Keyword Planner<\/h2>\n

This is a relatively new tool offered (free) by Google. This tool (which can be accessed from within your AdWords account) essentially combines Google\u2019s Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator into one.<\/p>\n

There are a few ways to use it to build your AdWords campaign.<\/p>\n

First, you can type in \u201cseed\u201d keyword ideas or a website URL and the Planner will give you a bunch of ideas for related keywords. It even creates sample ad groups you could add to your campaign. This is particularly useful for brainstorming keyword and ad group ideas.<\/p>\n

When you find ad group\/keyword ideas you like, you can add them to your \u201cPlan\u201d and, based on your bid range, the tool will give you estimates of what the clicks, costs, etc., will be if you added those keywords\/ad groups to your campaign.<\/p>\n

\"Google<\/a><\/p>\n

Another great feature of the Planner is you can get traffic estimates for specific cities, metro areas, etc.\u00a0(In the Google Keyword Tool, you could only get traffic estimates for the entire U.S. or worldwide.)<\/p>\n

This could be a very nice enhancement for those of you running local campaigns (though I have not tested it out enough to say how accurate the data is).<\/p>\n

Already have a list of keywords? Great\u2026 simply upload them to the Planner and get estimates of how those keywords would perform BEFORE you add them to the campaign (understanding that estimates are just that, estimates, and should be taken with a big grain of salt).<\/p>\n

AdWords Editor<\/h2>\n

AdWords Editor<\/a> is a free desktop software application that allows you to build and edit campaigns offline. This tool will easily save you hours if you manage large and\/or a lot of AdWords campaigns (Microsoft has an equivalent application called Bing Ad Editor<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Things that would take hours to do in the online AdWords interface can take you minutes in AdWords Editor because you can quickly copy\/paste\/drag keywords, ads, ad groups, campaigns, etc. You can also import and export data so you can massage it in Excel and\/or share it with others who are helping to manage the accounts.<\/p>\n

I use AdWords Editor more than any of the other tools mentioned in this article. If you spend any amount of time working in AdWords, using AdWords Editor is a must!<\/p>\n

AdWords Wrapper<\/b><\/h2>\n

Let\u2019s say you have a long list of keywords you want to add to your campaign. And you want to add them as both Exact Match and Modified Broad Match keywords. It could take a while to do this manually.<\/p>\n

But with this handy AdWords Wrapper<\/a>\u00a0tool, it\u2019ll take seconds. All you do is paste a list of keywords and then select what Match Type variations you want the list converted into. You can instantly build lists that include Exact, Phrase, Broad and\/or Modified Broad Match keywords.<\/p>\n

This screenshot from Mike’s Marketing Tools, gives you an idea of how it works:<\/p>\n

\"AdWords<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve used other \u201cwrapper\u201d tools before, but this is the first one I\u2019ve come across that makes creating the Modified Broad Match keywords a snap.<\/p>\n

Microsoft Excel<\/h2>\n

Yes, Excel<\/a>! There\u2019s no shortage of ways to use Excel to help with AdWords\u2026 from planning and organizing your campaigns to quickly creating\/editing large numbers of ads and keywords to calculating key metrics, like Profit Per Impression, that you can\u2019t get directly from AdWords or Analytics.<\/p>\n

But my favorite use of Excel is using pivot tables to analyze data. Some of the ways to use pivot tables include\u2026<\/p>\n