Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns operate much differently than SEO campaigns.
While you expect SEO campaigns to take their time to bear fruit, PPC(Pay Per Click) campaigns are expected to produce almost immediate results.
SEO campaigns are easy to scale, depending on the type of effort you put in.
PPC campaigns can spiral out of control and take your PPC budget with it if you don’t properly manage them.
When the time comes when your campaign is successful, you’ll need to explore ways to scale it and make every dollar count.
However, scaling your PPC is a concentrated effort.
To accomplish this task, this guide will teach you all you need to know about growing your campaign to new heights.
Before you decide to scale your PPC (Pay per click )campaign, it’s important to make sure that everything is in working order.
Also, you need to be sure whether or not scaling your campaign is the best choice for your business moving forward.
Below are some essential questions you should ask and answer before growing your Pay per click campaign.
One of the most common causes of PPC(Pay Per Click) campaign failures is that the landing page or website hasn’t been built. It can be frustrating to spend hundreds and even thousands of dollars every month, achieve impressions and clicks on your ads, only for them to visit your website and leave.
PPC campaigns are only a means to an end. This means that your website or landing page needs to actually work properly before continuing with your campaign. To make sure your website is working and heighten your campaign’s conversion rate, here are the following steps you should take:
You wouldn’t believe how many PPC campaigns aren’t configured with Google Analytics. Some forget to install this feature, and others figure it’s not very important. Nonetheless, Google Analytics is instrumental in tracking conversions down your sales funnel.
With Google Analytics, you can find out the exact keywords customers are using to find an ad. You can also check on important SEO benchmarks such as dwell time (average session time), bounce rate, and more.
Google Analytics is most important in observing how leads react to your website when they’re away from your ads. This is the type of information you won’t find on Google or Facebook Ads.
When you run an eCommerce store, dealing with B2C clients, there’s no need for investing in a customer relationship management (CRM) platform. After all, people are going to click on your ad, visit your store, buy, and leave.
When you’re targeting B2B clients, you have to groom them before they’re ready to buy. Before you scale your campaign, you have to make sure that your business is ready to deal with a sudden influx of new prospects.
Thus, be sure to research and invest in a premium CRM platform that aligns with your business’ needs.
Once you’ve made the decision to begin scaling your PPC campaign, it’s time to put in the work to make your changes happen. By following these 10 convenient steps, you can begin the process of growing your PPC campaigns.
If you haven’t done so already, invest sufficient resources into creating a landing page that can visibly attract prospects delivered from your paid ads and convert them into paying customers.
Landing pages are the most important aspect of any PPC campaign, as they are responsible for improving conversions. Therefore, it’s in your best interest to hire a proficient copywriter and UX designer to ensure that your landing page design is a success.
When your landing page is complete, conduct regular A/B tests and perform tweaks to make sure that it will perform it’s best over time.
This may seem obvious, but increasing your ad budget is one of the most sure-fire ways of scaling your PPC campaign. The more you’re willing to spend on PPC ads, the more placements you can earn on the internet and social media.
Let’s say that your competitor is spending $1,000 a month on Google Ads. If you’re not prepared to match or exceed their investment, then you can’t expect to achieve similar results.
Granted, you can achieve remarkable results with any reasonable ad budget if you’re creative enough. But, if your competitors are allocating more money towards foundational keywords that are bringing in vast amounts of traffic, then you’re always going to be at a disadvantage.
As a result, make the decision to increase your budget at a rate that’s financially feasible for your business.
A lot of businesses spend a lot of time, effort, and money targeting new prospects. Depending on your industry, some people may not be interested in learning more about a product outright.
After all, paid ads aren’t really considered to be an inbound marketing strategy. You’re essentially paying for your ads to be placed in front of a person if they type in a familiar keyword.
This doesn’t mean that the person is automatically interested in buying a product or service. For this reason, you need a contingency plan to subliminally keep your business in the minds of prospects who aren’t yet ready to convert.
Remarketing in PPC campaigns helps you to achieve this. Google Ads allows you to structure existing campaigns to retarget people who have viewed your ads and are on different websites:
This allows advertisers to use an internet user’s cookies to send ads even when people are on completely different websites:
Remarketing adds a “moving ad” effect to a PPC campaign. No matter where a prospect goes online, your ads can follow. Be sure to create a cookie policy to stay GDPR compliant and respect your audience’s privacy.
If you’re going to scale your PPC campaigns, chances are that you plan to advertise several more products and services your business offers. The problem is that you can’t group all of these potential ads together.
This makes it very difficult to track results and measure your campaign’s ROI.
When scaling your PPC campaign, you’ll need to create distinct ad groups for different products and services.
For example, let’s say that you sell home security equipment. If you’re planning on advertising both home security cameras and alarm systems, then it’s best to place these products in different groups.
Why? Both of these products are very similar.
The reason is because when you separate different products and services into distinct ad groups, you make it easier to target hyper-specific keywords. This way, you can not only create keyword-rich ad copy, but you can develop ads that are just what your audience is looking for.
When designing a PPC campaign, it can be tempting to just target the low-hanging fruit. After all, there’s no harm in bidding for low-cost keywords that can net minimal traffic for your website or landing page.
The problem is that all traffic isn’t good traffic. Just because your ads are gaining impressions online doesn’t mean that they are successful. Even if you’re targeting keywords that total hundreds of thousands of traffic, your ads will never be completely efficient.
As a result, make sure that you analyze the demand of your targeted keywords before moving forward. This goes beyond determining how much traffic a standard keyword receives.
You can analyze the demand of a keyword by using external solutions, such as WordStream, SpyFu, SEMRush, and Ubersuggest.
Do you know how many keywords you’re targeting? Are they organized accordingly so you can monitor their performance? If not, then you better get busy in establishing a keyword list.
Google Ads already shows you a complete list of the keywords you’re bidding for. Though, if you plan to use any of the external keyword research tools mentioned before, you’ll need to explore these keywords into a list.
A major part of building a keyword list is deciding which keywords you don’t want to target. This may not seem important right now, but you could possibly be wasting money on irrelevant keywords that won’t net any bang for your buck.
If you’re attempting to scale your PPC campaign, the first step is analyzing areas where your ad budget is being wasted. Here are some effective ways to optimize your ad spend by creating a list of negative keywords:
If you’re going to be successful in scaling your PPC campaigns, then you’ll first have to spy on your fiercest competitors and understand how they’re structuring their campaigns.
In fact, this is one of the most important steps of building a PPC(Pay Per Click) campaign in the first place. Competitor analysis is the crux of both SEO and paid search. The good news is that there are several tools available to get a sneak peak into the campaigns of your competition.
Auction Insights via Google Ads, SpyFu, SEMRush, are all great tools to utilize in this regard.
Don’t fall into the trap of spamming keywords into your ad copy and headlines just to improve its quality score. While your ads will appear for relevant searches, it will fail to compel potential customers to click.
Remember, ad copy is for people, not Google or other. Make sure you are communicating clear and concise information to your target audience, such as your offer, contact information, and buzz words (such as buy now).
The important thing when writing ad copy is to always write for the end user.
Like the ad copy, the call-to-action (CTA) is also one of the most important structural components of any campaign. Therefore, pay close attention to the verbiage and contact information you use in your CTAs.
If you’re selling products, you should strive towards attracting your audience to “buy now”. On the other hand, if you’re selling services, it would be best to convince your audience to “learn more”.
These are clear differences, as most online products are geared toward consumers who have natural impulses to splurge in comparison to key decision makers who are interested in a service.
Since your CTAs will impact your entire campaign, place them in rigorous A/B tests to ensure they are effectively converting your target audience.
Scaling your PPC (Pay Per Click) campaign will ultimately require a great deal of experimentation, time, effort, and money.
When you choose to do all of the work yourself, you can run the risk of wasting your valuable investment and ruining your campaign.
In such cases, it’s time to fire your PPC agency.
Nonetheless, if you’re still interested in growing your Pay per click campaign, then you’ve come to the right place. Contact us today to receive a free proposal to begin scaling your campaign.
%201.svg){kind=logo}
Pay-per-click (PPC) remains one of the fastest paths to pipeline, but the economics vary widely by industry and are shifting as AI reshapes the SERP. CPCs are up versus prior years, conversion rates have improved in many categories, and lead quality is increasingly a function of how well advertisers feed first-party data into bidding models.
The table below summarizes 2025 search-PPC benchmarks by sector—CPC, conversion rate (CVR), and cost per lead (CPL)—so you can compare what “good” looks like in your niche and calibrate ROI assumptions.
Use these numbers as directional guardrails, then layer in your own close rates and LTV to get to the only metric that matters: profitable growth.
| Sector | CPC (2025) | CVR (2025) | CPL (2025) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Attorneys & Legal | $8.58 | 5.09% | $131.63 | High LTV offsets cost; intake speed drives ROI. |
| Home Services | $7.85 | 7.33% | $90.92 | Strong local intent; geotargeting and call flows matter. |
| Healthcare (Physicians & Surgeons) | $5.00 | 11.62% | $56.83 | Wide variation by specialty; appointment UX boosts CVR. |
| Real Estate (Agents/Brokerages) | $2.53 | 3.28% | ~$100.48 | Lower CVR keeps CPL high; lean on LSAs/retargeting. |
| B2B / Business Services | $5.58 | 5.14% | $103.54 | Longer funnels—optimize to qualified pipeline value. |
| Restaurants & Food | $2.05 | 7.09% | $30.27 | Efficient lead costs; fast payback with online ordering. |
| Automotive – Repair/Service | $3.90 | 14.67% | $28.50 | Top-tier CVR; excellent for local lead generation. |
In short, AI is changing the way PPC campaign management is occurring, and it's happening FAST.
ROI ≈ (Close-Rate × Avg Customer LTV ÷ CPL) − 1
Example (legal): if close-rate 12% and LTV $6,000 on CPL $132 → ROI ≈ (0.12×6000 / 132) −1 ≈ 4.45x (345% net). Improve any one input (faster intake bumps close-rate; better routing lowers CPL) and ROI jumps. Benchmarks for CPL/CVR above provide solid starting points. LocaliQ
PPC will keep paying when two things are true:
(1) you can convert and qualify leads quickly, and
(2) your bidding models are trained on the outcomes that actually make you money.
As AI compresses differences in targeting, the edge shifts to first-party data, creative velocity, and value-based bidding.
Treat the benchmarks above as starting points, then rebuild your ROI math from the ground up: ROI ≈ (Close Rate × LTV ÷ CPL).
Contact us today for your customized PPC audit to see how we can improve your search engine marketing ad spend.
When you’re running pay-per-click (PPC) ads, it’s easy to assume clicks mean genuine interest, but most car shoppers are just kicking tires online. Seeing your inventory once doesn’t mean they’re ready to buy anytime soon or even at all. If you want to reach the portion of clicks that come from serious buyers, you need to use retargeting.
The reality is that even prospects who intend to buy a car will bounce before contacting you or visiting your lot in person. And if you don’t have a way to keep them aware of your business, when they’re ready to buy, they’ll buy from a competitor. Running retargeted ads will keep your dealership in their awareness even after they bounce.
According to a 2022 Cox Automotive Car Buyer Journey Study, the average person spends more than 14 hours searching for a new car, which includes visiting around 5 websites before making a purchase decision. The sites they visit include automakers, dealers, third-party sites, and pre-owned car lots with online inventory. Your prospects aren’t going to buy right away, so to get the sale you need to reel them back in. If you’re not using retargeting – also called remarketing – in your PPC campaign, you’re missing out on hot leads.
Buying a car isn’t a small decision. People compare makes, models, and deals and look for dealerships with great reputations. Getting a single click from a potential car buyer isn’t enough to make the sale. And when they bounce, there’s no guarantee they’ll remember you exist. You’re paying for all those initial clicks, and if potential leads never come back you’ve wasted your ad spend. When you use retargeting, you’ll have another chance to turn their curiosity into a conversation, and that’s why remarketing is an essential component in every PPC ad campaign.
PPC ad retargeting for car dealerships shows your ads to people who have already clicked on an ad or visited your website. When implemented strategically, it keeps your dealership visible across multiple platforms and follows those people across the web. For example, when you run retargeted ads on the Google Display Network, your display ads will show up on the blogs, news sites, and apps your prospects frequent.
You can also run retargeting campaigns on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. As long as your prospects scroll through their daily feed, your ads will show up for them if they’ve already interacted with you. YouTube also offers retargeting options with video ads that play right before the content. In fact, don’t underestimate the power of YouTube video advertising. According to data from Wyzowl, video ads convince 84% of people to buy a product or service.
Not everyone searching for a new car will respond to the same bland, boilerplate message. For example, someone browsing luxury SUVs isn’t going to click on an ad that says, “Low APR on all models!” That’s where remarketing shines. It lets you tailor your message to what each user actually wants, which increases response rates.
With retargeting, you can segment your audience based on their interests and behavior. For example, someone comparing financing terms won’t be swayed by flashy sports car imagery. With retargeting, you can show truck shoppers truck ads and sports car shoppers sports car ads. It sounds simple, but it’s one of the most powerful marketing methods of all time. People are far more responsive to messages that feel personal. You may have caught their attention with a general ad at first, but once they start browsing those SUVs on your website, you can retarget them with SUV ads.
When you use retargeting, you can provide different calls to action (CTAs) to users based on how they’ve engaged with your web pages. A visitor who spent a lot of time on your truck inventory pages can be served ads for your latest truck deals. Someone who checked out your lease specials can be hit with ads that talk about financing offers. It’s deceptively simple and brutally effective. Relevance is everything. When your ads reflect what the prospect was already thinking about, it feels personal and resonates.
A next-level tactic is using engagement depth to determine how strong your call to action should be. For instance:
· Multi-page viewers and long dwell times. These are warm leads and can be retargeted with stronger CTAs like “Book a test drive” and “Get a quote today.” They’re close to converting and just need a little push.
· Single-page bouncers. These are people who just peeked at your site. They can be re-engaged with lighter touchpoints like a general promotion or model comparison guide to reel them back in.
· Abandoned lead forms. If someone started filling out a form but didn’t finish, retarget them with a reminder and a stronger offer to sweeten the deal (e.g., “Complete your form for $500 off!”).
This level of nuance turns retargeting into a conversion machine and allows you to show the customer exactly what they want to see.
People don’t buy cars from whatever dealer they find first. That’s too risky. They buy from dealerships they trust and that feel familiar. You can build that sense of familiarity and trust through retargeting. For example:
· Consistent branding across ads. Using consistent branding, design, and messaging throughout your ads reinforces your dealership’s identity.
· Frequency builds familiarity. People need to see a brand between 5-7 times before they’ll remember it. Retargeting puts your dealership in front of people over and over again. Even if they don’t click right away, it’s helping to establish your credibility.
· Social proof works. When you use social proof like customer testimonials or awards in your ads it builds trust with your prospects.
Trust is earned over time, and retargeting will help you get it.
If you’re not using retargeting, your competitors definitely are. Car dealerships operate in one of the most brutally competitive markets out there, with national chains and franchise giants dominating search results and flooding ad channels with endless budgets. If you’re not showing up again and again, your competitors will, and they’ll scoop up all your leads.
The good news is you don’t need a massive marketing budget to get results. Retargeting allows smaller, local dealerships to play smart rather than trying to play big. When you focus on local PPC with hyper-targeted remarketing, you can reach a smaller, more qualified audience – people who are actually in your area, browsing your inventory, and likely to buy soon.
And unlike those cookie-cutter campaigns from national dealers, you can make your messaging feel personal and specific to your local community. That’s an edge big budgets don’t have.
Every visitor who leaves your website without converting is a potential sale but not necessarily lost. With smart retargeting, you can bring them back into your funnel and stay top-of-mind while your competitors waste money shouting into the void. Persistence wins the sale and retargeting is how you stay on the map.
To be blunt, search ads can get expensive fast, especially when clicks can cost a couple dollars per click. Pouring money into cold traffic is gambling on people who may not be ready to engage. Retargeting changes everything.
Display retargeting clicks typically cost a fraction of what you’d pay for search ads using competitive keywords. You’re no longer paying top dollar to get someone’s attention from scratch – you’re nudging people who already know who you are, and those people are more likely to respond. This makes retargeting one of the most cost-effective ways to use your advertising budget.
· Lower CPC, higher intent. Retargeting costs less per click, but you’re targeting people who already visited your site and showed interest.
· Better conversion rates. Familiarity breeds trust. Retargeted visitors are statistically more likely to convert than new users who just clicked an ad out of curiosity.
· Higher ROI. Since retargeting reaches warm leads, the cost of acquiring a lead is usually lower, which means your overall cost per lead is lower and you get better ROI.
If you’re skipping remarketing because you think it’s just something “extra” that doesn’t make a difference, you’re not saving money – you’re losing easy wins. Instead of perpetually chasing new, cold traffic, invest in converting the traffic you’re already getting. That’s exactly what remarketing does.
Generic ads are fine for first impressions, but once someone has browsed your inventory it’s time to get specific with dynamic retargeting. Here’s how it works:
When a prospect views a specific vehicle on your site, you can use retargeting ads to show them the exact vehicles they viewed and others like it down to the year, color, trim, and mileage. For example, if they looked at a black 2005 BMW 535i, that’s exactly what they’ll see in the ad – the same photos, same specs, all across sites like YouTube, Facebook, news platforms, and more. This reminds your prospects of exactly what they want.
Dynamic retargeting works by integrating your live inventory feed with your ad platform, like Google Ads or Meta. This means the vehicles displayed in your ads will always be up to date and won’t feature cars you sold last week.
Beyond personalization, dynamic ads are an incredible tool for creating a sense of urgency:
· Leverage scarcity. With these ads, you can leverage the power of scarcity by stating that your inventory won’t last. Using messages like “Only 1 left” or “Recently reduced” signals that the opportunity won’t last.
· Show what’s popular. If a particular model is getting a lot of views, let your prosects know. People don’t want to miss out on a good deal.
· Trigger action with FOMO. Fear of missing out is real, and when people see the car they want again – with a reminder that it might sell soon – they’re more likely to come in for a test drive.
By using retargeted ads, you can increase conversion rates by up to 200% compared to standard display ads. These ads feel more like a helpful reminder than an outright advertisement.
If you’ve never run paid ads before, it’s easy to assume your only options are basic keyword targeting and generic follow-up ads. But today’s ad platforms give you a buffet of hyper-specific targeting capabilities to fine-tune exactly who sees your ads, where, when, and how.
One of the most effective PPC retargeting tactics for car dealerships is location-based targeting. With radius targeting, you can serve ads to people within a specified distance from your dealership, like within 10-15 miles. These will be prospects who are not only likely to visit your site but could realistically walk into your showroom today. Don’t waste ad spend on clicks from people three states away.
Then there are device-specific campaigns. If your analytics show that 75% or your traffic comes from mobile (this is common), you can launch a mobile-only retargeting campaign with click-to-call buttons, mobile-optimized landing pages, and a map and directions built right into your ads. This will improve the user experience and increase conversion rates.
Timing also matters. When you schedule your ads you can control when they appear. Run them during lunch breaks, in the evenings, or on weekends when people have more time to browse car listings and are more likely to make big purchase decisions.
Other strategic targeting elements include:
· Demographic targeting. You can tailor your messages based on age, income level, and household status. A 25-year-old college grad and a 45-year-old parent are not shopping for the same reasons even though they might buy the same car.
· Behavioral triggers. You can create audiences for your retargeted ads based on repeat visits, clicks, video views, or interaction with a specific feature like a trade-in calculator.
· Lookalike audiences. Build new audiences that resemble your best customers. Platforms like Meta and Google are really good at identifying similar users based on their behavior online.
The bottom line is that retargeting doesn’t have to be broad. With the right strategy, it becomes a smart, cost-effective system for reaching the right prospects at the right time.
Have a sale, lease offer, or year-end clearance? Retargeting can amplify the urgency to act now. By offering short-term discounts and financing deals, you can tap into the urgency people feel when presented with time-sensitive offers. Emphasize the end date using a countdown timer or final deadline to create FOMO (fear of missing out).
With this type of retargeting, you can align your ads with your email messaging to increase conversions even more. For example, if you sent out a promotion to your email list, they’re likely to see your retargeted ads and be reminded of the deal you’re offering.
Retargeting is the PPC secret weapon most car dealerships don’t take advantage of. Using this strategy can make the difference between a one-time curious visitor and a buyer ready to schedule a test drive. If you’re spending money on clicks without retargeting your visitors, you’re wasting your ad spend.
At PPC.co, we specialize in high-performance white label PPC campaigns that include smart retargeting from day one. Whether you’re launching your first campaign or looking to tighten up your existing ad strategy, we can help you capture more leads, drive more traffic, and move cars off your lot. Let’s turn those clicks into closed deals – contact us now to get started.
