A PPC expert oversees a company’s entire pay-per-click ad strategy and budget. Usually, they take care of the following tasks: keyword research, funnel website traffic, monitor ads (each campaign and how effective it is), competitor analysis, campaign optimization, and split test.
PPC activities are built on a clear road map. If you know the metrics you’re trying to achieve, a web or desktop-based tool can help you get to your goals faster. Some metrics a great PPC management tool can help you with are customer lifetime value, customer acquisition costs, return on ad spend, return on investment, average deal size, product margins, and more.
Top 14 Best PPC Management Tools
- Semrush – Best PPC Management Tool for Overall Performance
- SE Ranking – Best PPC Management Tool for Entrepreneurs
- SpyFu – Best PPC Management Tool for Independent Marketers
- AgencyAnalytics – Best PPC Management Tool for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises
- ReportGarden – Best PPC Management Tool for Reporting
- ahrefs – Best PPC Management Tool for The Whole Package
- WordStream – Best PPC Management Tool for Small Business
- Optmyzr – Best PPC Management Tool for Optimization
- Moz – Best PPC Management Tool for Content Research
- NinjaCat – Best PPC Management Tool for Ad Agencies
- Madgicx – Best PPC Management Tool for Managing Ads
- Adalysis – Best PPC Management Tool for Campaign Automation
- AdScale – Best PPC Management Tool for Hands-off Ad Management
- Outbrain – Best PPC Management Tool for Retargeting
#1. Semrush – Best PPC Management Tool for Overall Performance
Pricing: Starts at $119.95USD/month, offers free trial
Semrush is one of the more popular PPC tools out there. Its platform is completely online and is used by all types of business owners, big and small. Semrush is used by companies such as Tesla, Apple, and Wal-Mart—just to name a few heavyweight examples. They have more than 50 tools and reports that you can use in SEO, content & market research, advertising, competitor analysis and other fields.
| Pros | Cons |
| Popular service in this space, their platform is constantly growing and adding new features | Will hound you to sign up after you complete the free trial |
| User friendly UI | Can’t view competitor’s ad copy |
| Expensive |
#2. SE Ranking – Best PPC Management Tool for Entrepreneurs
Pricing: Starts at $31USD/month
Whether you’re a beginner or seasoned SEO pro, SE Ranking meets you at your skill level. You can track how your website is doing on their mobile app or use their state-of-the-art cloud-based platform. Another great thing about SE Ranking is the app allows you to track your website’s ranking over time giving you insights into your data and how you rank amongst competitors.
| Pros | Cons |
| Access to a DEMO account can be used to test software for free | Backlinks have been known to work incorrectly for smaller sites |
| Has an app | You need to pay extra for certain reports if you’d like to run them more than once a month |
#3. SpyFu – Best PPC Management Tool for Independent Marketers
Pricing: $33USD/month annually or $39USD/month
SpyFu is a great option for looking at your competitors’ keywords and metrics. Their value proposition is to find the most valuable competitor’s keyword ranking. With a 30-000 foot view of your entire business in one dashboard, it’s easy to navigate through SpyFu’s intuitive UI.
| Pros | Cons |
| Cheap for low-volume users | Always adding new features (keep up with their updates on their blog) |
| Offers a free trial | Some keywords need formal requests to be added. Some aren’t added automatically |
#4. AgencyAnalytics – Best PPC Management Tool for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises
Pricing: Starts at $10USD/month
Whether you’re a team of one or ten, this platform gives you the flexibility to create multiple dashboards for your clients. This platform gives you the best of both worlds. Built-in templates that provide proven PPC metrics, and the ability to create your own dashboards to meet your needs.
| Pros | Cons |
| Cheap | Timeframe for pulling different reports can vary |
| Very good for small businesses | Since this platform can be customized a lot, it takes a long time to set up |
| Offers 14-day free trial |
#5. ReportGarden – Best PPC Management Tool for Reporting
Pricing: Comes with a 14-day free trial, then starts at $89USD/ month
Create performance reports, track SEO rankings, and analyze your data with ReportGarden’s platform that can integrate with almost every social media platform. Comes with a budget management tool which helps you manage and track your ads on their digital marketing platform.
| Pros | Cons |
| Comes with SEO, budgeting, reporting, and reporting consoles | Can be expensive for small businesses |
| Built-in integration lets you plug and play software to start faster |
#6. ahrefs – Best PPC Management Tool for The Whole Package
Pricing: 7-day trial for $7, then starts at $99USD/ month
Import all of your data from Google Search Console and organize that data in the form of ahrefs’ beautiful dashboard. This PPC software is a powerhouse when it comes to performing keyword research, SEO audits, keyword tracking, and building backlinks—in fact, it’s one of the best tools to help discover missing link opportunities.
| Pros | Cons |
| Youtube channel dedicated to helping users understand SEO better as well as ahrefs’ platform | Can become expensive depending on how often it’s used |
| Backlink data is solid |
#7. WordStream – Best PPC Management Tool for Small Business
Pricing: Requires quote
WordStream provides free tools on its website, including Google Ads Grader, Facebook Ads Grader, and Free Keyword Tool. In addition to free tools, WordStream also provides quality services to marketers who want to take their business to a new level.
| Pros | Cons |
| Comes with free training for their tools | Can be expensive when investing their premium plans |
| Great for small business |
#8. Optmyzr – Best PPC Management Tool for Optimization
Pricing: Depends on ad spend, starts at $208USD/ month
With its many applications, Optmyzr is a leader in the advertising department. They provide insights on tracking, monitoring, and optimizing your ads on every media platform, including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Coupled with their PPC software, which provides everything a PPC manager needs for reporting and monitoring, Optmyzr provides data on every meaningful customer interaction.
| Pros | Cons |
| Great support | Because of automation, can be hard to fix things once software has done them |
| Great script templates | A complicated product with a lot of tools |
| Great training manuals available | Performance speed may be slow |
#9. Moz – Best PPC Management Tool for Content Research
Pricing: Offers 30-day free trial, then starts at $99USD/ month
Understand your visits by using Moz’s advanced platform to dive into keyword research. This platform allows you to better understand your sales channels by figuring out where visitors are coming from. Moz’s platform lets you consolidate complex information into a simplified view that organizes your data and makes reporting seem easy.
| Pros | Cons |
| Can handle a lot of data | Expensive for small companies and startups |
| Provides extensive training to its users |
#10. NinjaCat – Best PPC Management Tool for Ad Agencies
Pricing: Requires demo
This platform is particularly suitable for advertising agencies. As a leader in the advertising agency field, this company was founded by three friends who integrated the best of all PPC tools into one platform. You will find that everything is integrated into a centralized database, including activity data, reports, dashboards, activity monitoring, and call tracking.
| Cons | Pros |
| Great customer support | Has been known to be slow |
| Beautiful customer reports built-in | Complicated set up |
#11. Madgicx – Best PPC Management Tool for Managing Ads
Pricing: Starts at $49USD/ month
Madgicx uses the power of artificial intelligence to create and optimize advertising campaigns across major social media networks, Facebook, Instagram, and Google. They offer different pricing tiers depending on the needs of your business, whether that is creative insights, Madgicx Mobile, ad copy insights, AI audiences, big optimization, and more.
| Pros | Cons |
| 7-day free trial | No Pinterest or TikTok integration |
| Lots of features, and customer service team is very knowledgeable about their comprehensive toolkit |
#12. Adalysis – Best PPC Management Tool for Campaign Automation
Pricing: Requires quote
Get real-time analysis of your ads using Adalysis’ cloud platform. Comes with a to-do list, which contains alerts about the effectiveness of your ads. Adalysis provides you with all the functions of PPC software by providing SEO reports and dashboards, as well as advertising management and campaigns.
| Pros | Cons |
| Offers a 14-day free trial | New product that doesn’t offer many integrations quite yet |
| Great for ad testing | Certain features must be added and are not included in the price |
#13. AdScale – Best PPC Management Tool for Hands-off Ad Management
Pricing: Free version available, then starts at $149USD/ month
Advertise like a pro on Google, Facebook, and Instagram. This advertising platform uses the power of artificial intelligence to create ads on major social media platforms based on ad copy and images directly from your online store. Using data from your website based on customers, product, past sales, and order history, AdScale helps you create branding and ads to increase your revenue, all while staying ahead of the competition.
| Pros | Cons |
| The system optimizes the autopilot mode after advertising based on your PPC account | No stories capability |
| Easy to use and set up | Integration with Twitter suboptimal |
#14. Outbrain – Best PPC Management Tool for Retargeting
Pricing: Requires quote
A content recommendation platform that supports recommendations on many websites. Outbrain is a way to discover new and interesting content. Get readers or customers to engage in your website and other affiliate businesses. Picture a magazine. You’re reading the magazine and when you flip to the next page, you never know what the content is going to be. That’s what Outbrain tries to accomplish. The thrill of figuring what the next piece of content your reader will be experiencing.
| Pros | Cons |
| Traffic generation for different company websites | Minimum investment required |
| Big learning curve | |
| Specifically catered towards traffic generation to affiliate websites |
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I choose the right PPC management tool to help me stand out from the competition?
They’re a few key metrics you should look for when shopping for PPC software. Look for companies that focus on paid search. This will help increase your awareness of customers looking for your website. Other key metrics to consider are ad extensions including ad analysis, keyword research and data collection. As well, consider integrations with your current social media platforms and any R.O.I success measurements.
When should I start using PPC software?
When using ads or developing content for your website, it can be difficult to track the constant change of the market. Logging into your Google Ads platform is one way to track what is happening. But when running a small business or scaling, it can become time consuming to always do this. PPC software will solve the trouble of managing tasks on one platform. Taking advantage of a platform that does everything under one roof saves you time and money in the long run. Not to mention storing the massive amounts of data you’ll be collecting.
Do I need a PPC tools that help create and manage my ads?
Although it can cost a little extra to find a platform that helps manages your ads, it can mean the difference between your competitors and you. It will pay off in the long run when you’re ahead of the competitors, but it might not be necessary at the early stages of your business. When purchasing PPC software, it is best to consider whether the platform provides advertising as an additional function for future use.
How does PPC software help in strategic advertising?
Most search engine algorithms are a mystery to advertisers. Big sites like Amazon or Google don’t reveal how they rank websites or shows their ads to their users. By using PPC software, computer analysis, and artificial intelligence, you can utilize extensive database collection to generate more calculated results to help you stay ahead. It’s better than having to guess with trial and error to create content and ads. PPC software eliminates a lot of the guesswork to improve your overall performance.