17 PPC Tools for Productivity, Research, and More (+ Costs)

PPC tools offer functionalities like keyword research, bid management, competitor analysis, and performance tracking to ensure your ads reach the right audience at the right time. Read on for our essential list of the best PPC tools in the game.

A PPC tool is a specialized software or platform designed to enhance pay-per-click advertising efforts as part of a digital marketing plan.

These tools assist you in creating, managing, and optimizing your online ad campaigns.

Each PPC advertising platform has its own range of powerhouse tools that can help you optimize your PPC campaigns through automation, research, reporting, and more.

Let’s dive in and explore these incredible resources, as well as insights from esteemed HawkSEM Lead Strategist Dave LaBrie.

Google’s ad transparency tool lets you peek behind the curtain of your competitors’ strategies. (Image: Adobe Stock)

PPC tools for productivity

1. Google Ads Editor

Google Ads Editor is a free PPC management tool that the search engine offers to enable PPC managers to do efficient offline editing and make bulk changes.

It’s a game-changer if you juggle multiple campaigns or large PPC accounts, as it significantly streamlines campaign adjustments and updates.

“Google Ads has plenty of features baked in for conducting tests and optimization, and Google Ads Editor for desktop makes it easy to implement bulk edits,” LaBrie explains.

“However, I use a few third-party tools to review and optimize more efficiently.” (More on those later.)

With Google Ads Editor, you can:

• Quickly manage account structures
• Tweak your ad copy
• Make bid adjustments
• Align your campaigns with your marketing goals
• Change ad budgets
• Add negative keywords
• Add new ad groups
• Change bidding strategies

This free tool is the most vital in making bulk edits on your Google Ads campaigns and allowing bulk campaign management. You can even import whole campaigns through a spreadsheet.

Pricing: Free

2. Google Ads Transparency Center

Launched in 2023, Google’s ad transparency center lets you peek behind the curtain of your competitors’ strategies.

It provides:

• A panoramic view of other advertisers’ campaigns
• Insights that can help refine your approach
• Data that will help you maintain a competitive edge

Understanding what others in your industry are doing can inspire new ad ideas and help you discover gaps in your strategy.

This tool can be particularly useful for benchmarking your ad performance against industry standards.

Pricing: Free

3. AdEspresso

AdEspresso simplifies social media advertising on platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook by providing a user-friendly interface for creating, managing, and optimizing ad campaigns.

The platform has excellent tools for A/B testing, which allow you to experiment with different ad elements and see what resonates best with your audience.

AdEspresso offers a detailed analytics dashboard that gives you a comprehensive view of your campaign’s performance, helping you make data-driven decisions.

It also integrates with Google Analytics and offers downloadable reports, making it easier to track your ROI.

Pricing: Starter – $49 per month; Plus – $99 per month; Enterprise – starting from $259 per month (14-day free trial)

4. Statusbrew

Statusbrew is a versatile tool that not only manages social media platforms but also provides detailed insights into your ad campaigns.

This tool stands out with its comprehensive social media management features, including scheduling, engagement tracking, and team collaboration.

The analytics aspect of Statusbrew offers in-depth reports on ad campaign performance, helping you understand audience behavior.

It’s a one-stop solution if you are looking to streamline your social media and social advertising efforts.

Pricing: Lite – $69 per month; Standard – $129 per month; Premium – $229 per month; Enterprise – Custom (14-day free trial)

Over 70% of all search queries are for long-tail terms. (Image: Adobe Stock)

PPC tools for research

5. Google Keyword Planner

Keyword Planner is one of the top tools for keyword discovery, which will help shape your PPC strategy. You can find it right in your Google Ads account.

“For keyword research, I like to use Google’s Keyword Planner tool, along with Semrush and SpyFu,” LaBrie says.

Google’s Keyword Planner offers deep insights into:

• Keyword trends
• Search volumes
• Competition levels
• Estimated costs

These insights will help you identify the most profitable keywords for your campaigns.

This tool is particularly useful in uncovering long-tail keywords, which can be gold mines for Google Ads, as over 70% of all search queries are for long-tail terms.

It also provides historical metrics data and future forecast trends, which enable you to make more informed decisions about your keyword strategies.

Pricing: Free with Google Ads

Pro tip: LaBrie says the Keywords Everywhere Chrome extension is also quite useful: “It lets you highlight a word nearly anywhere and instantly get estimated search volume and CPCs.” The extension offers free and paid tiers.

6. Google Search Trends

Understanding public interest and trending topics is crucial in PPC, and Google Search Trends is an awesome go-to resource.

This tool offers real-time insights into popular search terms and seasonal trends, allowing you to align your campaigns with current consumer interests.

By tapping into emerging trends, you can optimize your content for relevance and timeliness, enhancing campaign performance.

The data for this tool is extensive. You can view trends as far back as 2004 and up to 1.5-3 days before your search. A real-time data option also gives you a sample covering the last seven days.

Pricing: Free

7. Semrush

Semrush is known for its SEO tools, but it can also help you with your PPC campaigns.

According to LaBrie, nothing will take the place of a thorough manual review of Google Ads and Analytics data. However, Semrush can be a helpful tool for simplifying the audit process and gaining valuable insights.

“Its advertising dashboard has a lot of useful widgets to review things like an account’s top paid keywords, along with their current position, estimated volume, traffic, and CPCs,” LaBrie says.

Pricing: Pro – $139.95 per month; Guru – $249.95 per month; Business – $499.95 per month (7-day free trial)

8. SpyFu

SpyFu is a marketing tool that allows you to do in-depth competitor analysis. You’ll be able to examine competitor ad copy and keywords on search engines, including Google and Bing.

You can also gain insights into valuable KPIs like CPCs, competitor ad spend, and PPC keyword search volume (not to mention a wealth of knowledge for SEO optimization).

“For competitive research, I sometimes use SpyFu,” says LaBrie. “It can populate competitors’ ad copy history, the keywords they bid on, and how much overlap they have with an account over time.”

Pricing: Basic Plan – $39 per month; Pro Plan – $79 per month (check site for special offers)

9. SocialPilot

SocialPilot is a comprehensive tool for managing and optimizing social advertising campaigns.

This tool is ideal for small businesses and digital marketing agencies because of its user-friendly interface and cost-effectiveness.

It offers advanced scheduling capabilities, allowing you to seamlessly plan and automate your Facebook ad postings. The tool also provides detailed analytics, giving insights into ad performance, audience engagement, and campaign ROI.

One of its standout features is managing multiple client accounts from a single dashboard, making it a preferred choice for agencies handling various social media ad campaigns.

Pricing: Essentials – $25.50 per month; Standard – $42.50 per month; Premium– $85 per month; Ultimate – $170 per month (14-day free trial)

10. Jungle Scout

Jungle Scout is specifically designed for Amazon sellers in particular. It offers powerful features for product research, competitor tracking, and sales analytics.

Its product database allows you to filter through millions of Amazon products to find the most profitable opportunities.

Jungle Scout also offers a keyword scout for in-depth keyword research and an inventory manager to optimize your stock levels.

Its sales analytics tool helps you track your finances and make data-driven decisions for your shopping-based business.

Pricing: Starter – $29 per month; Growth Accelerator – $49 per month; Brand Owner – $129 per month; Enterprise – inquire for pricing

If you are doing organic and paid social, Hootsuite is a great tool to get on board with. (Image: Adobe Stock)

PPC Tools for Optimization & Automation

11. PromoNavi

PromoNavi is a revolutionary PPC management software for Google Ads with its robust automation, reducing the need to waste hours on repetitive and time-consuming tasks.

Designed for advertisers managing large or complex paid search campaigns, it’s a wonder tool for efficient ad management.

The platform’s automated features include:

• Keyword list expansion with relevant suggestions
• Duplicate term removal for streamlined management
• Competitor analysis tools to identify relevant keywords you’re missing out on
• PPC report templates (both PDF and Looker Studio) for easy performance reporting

With PromoNavi, you also get ongoing optimization recommendations based on performance data, helping you refine your campaigns for maximum efficiency.

The platform’s intuitive workflow lets you build and push campaigns to Google effortlessly, making PPC advertising a streamlined and data-driven process.

Pricing: Business Plan – $49 per month; Agency Plan – $79 per month (14-day free trial)

12. Hootsuite Ads

If you are doing organic and paid social, Hootsuite is a great tool to get on board with.

Hootsuite Ads extends the capabilities of Hootsuite’s social media management platform to Meta advertising (aka Facebook and Instagram).

It simplifies ad creation and management, enabling you to design and deploy ads directly from the Hootsuite dashboard.

The tool also provides detailed analytics and reporting features, which will help you understand the performance of your ads so you can then make necessary adjustments.

Additionally, Hootsuite Ads offers suggestions for improving ad performance based on your campaign goals, making it a valuable tool for beginners and pro advertisers.

Pricing: Standard – $99 per month; Advanced – $249 per month; Enterprise – Inquire for pricing (free 30-day trial)

13. Driftrock

Driftrock offers a unique approach to social media advertising that focuses on creating more personalized ad campaigns.

It excels in audience targeting, leveraging advanced segmentation and retargeting techniques to reach the right people with the right message.

It has a tool to create lead-gen landing pages that increase conversion rates from your marketing channels and boasts that its landing pages can see a 30% reduction in cost per lead versus standard website landing pages.

The platform’s integration capabilities with CRM and marketing automation tools enable seamless data synchronization, enhancing the relevance of your ad campaigns.

Driftrock’s ability to track user interactions across multiple touchpoints is also invaluable, as it helps you understand the customer journey and attribution.

Pricing: Inquire for pricing

14. Perpetua

Perpetua (previously Sellics) is a multi-use Amazon ecommerce PPC tool that offers everything from keyword research to profitability analytics.

Its features include automated bid management, which optimizes your bids for the best possible performance, and keyword harvesting, which identifies high-performing keyword ideas for your campaigns.

Perpetua also provides in-depth profitability analysis, helping you understand the financial impact of your PPC ads.

If you are an Amazon seller looking to maximize your PPC results, Perpetua offers a comprehensive suite of tools to manage and optimize campaigns.

Pricing: Essentials – $695 per month; Growth – $695 per month + a percentage of ad spend; Premium – inquire for pricing

15. Helium 10

Helium 10 offers over 20 tools designed for Amazon sellers, including new TikTok features. It covers every aspect of Amazon selling, from product and keyword research to listing optimization and fraud protection.

Its keyword research tool, Cerebro, provides deep insights into competitors’ keywords, while its product research tool, Black Box, helps you uncover profitable product opportunities.

Helium 10 also offers listing optimization tools and a refund genie to recover lost profits from Amazon errors.

Pricing: Starter – $29 per month; Platinum – $79 per month; Diamond – $229 per month

16. Feedvisor

Feedvisor is an AI-driven optimization platform for Amazon sellers.

It stands out with its machine learning algorithms that provide real-time insights and actionable recommendations to enhance PPC campaign performance.

Feedvisor’s platform analyzes numerous data points, including competitor pricing, inventory levels, and market demand, to optimize your bids and ad placements effectively.

Additionally, it offers strategic advertising solutions that focus on maximizing ROI, improving product visibility, and driving sales.

The platform’s comprehensive analytics dashboard provides a clear view of your campaign performance, allowing for quick adjustments and data-driven decision-making.

If you’re looking for an advanced, AI-powered tool to refine your Amazon PPC strategy, look no further than Feedvisor.

Pricing: Inquire for pricing (14-day free trial)

17. Viral Launch

Viral Launch helps you optimize your PPC campaigns with tools for keyword research, competitor tracking, and market analysis.

Its Market Intelligence tool provides in-depth data on market trends and product performance, which can guide you in decision-making.

The keyword research tool offers insights into high-traffic keywords, while the competitor intelligence feature allows you to track and analyze competitor strategies.

Pricing: Essentials – $56 per month; Pro – $83 per month; Pro Plus Ads – $199 per month

Other useful PPC tools (and when to use them)

Some PPC tools can assist you in improving user experience, A/B testing, and optimizing ad campaigns on multiple platforms — talk about handy!

Check out some honorable mentions and expert tips on how (and when) to use them.

Landing pages

Landing pages are an essential part of PPC campaigns, but some tools are more useful than others.

You can use tools like Unbounce, ClickFunnels, Mailchimp, and many others to A/B test, gate content, build funnels, and build pages specifically for your campaigns.

“For landing page experiments, Instapage is very user-friendly, and it has built-in tools for A/B testing,” LaBrie tells us.

“VWO is another good option for A/B testing different landing pages or user experiences.”

Heatmapping

Heatmapping is a fabulous way to see how users interact with your pages.

If your ads aren’t converting, it might be your user experience. Using tools that allow you to peel back the curtain and see a site through your users’ eyes can be incredibly enlightening.

“Microsoft Clarity is great for reviewing how users interact with a website. It helps to identify problems with UX and areas that could use more attention to improve conversion rates,” says LaBrie.

Further reading: What is Heatmapping?

Ad copy and data analysis

It’s pretty impossible to avoid artificial intelligence (AI) tools as a modern-day marketer.

Using ChatGPT or one of the many tools built on ChatGPT can assist with generating several variations of ad copy quickly. It can also provide data insights and identify patterns that you might not see at first glance.

“ChatGPT is also useful for ongoing optimization,” LaBrie explains. “I’ve used it to provide ideas for potential in-market audiences, generate alternative headlines for testing in ad copy, and even analyze data in spreadsheets to review the outcomes of experiments.”

Reporting

Reporting across various platforms can be tedious and time-consuming. Bringing call data into the mix can add another layer of complexity.

There are many tools out there, but LaBrie gives us a few that he finds useful with campaign and client management.

“For reporting, it’s always nice to have access to a client’s CRM like HubSpot or Salesforce — that way, we can go beyond top-of-funnel conversions for more granular insights on campaign and keyword performance,” he says.

Dashboards are an important part of the client interaction. They love to see the data in one easy-to-use place. However, they often don’t have the time to open two or more programs to see the information they need to make decisions.

“Google Looker Studio is useful for creating reports and dashboards,” says LaBrie.

“For clients that get a lot of calls, CallRail is a great platform for tracking and analyzing those types of conversions.”

He also gives a shout-out to HawkSEM’s very own reporting tool. “I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Hawk’s reporting platform, ConversionIQ,” he says.

“It’s customized for our clients so we can review data from many different platforms in one place.”

The takeaway

Equipping yourself with the right PPC tools can make a significant difference in the effectiveness of your campaigns on Google, Meta, Amazon, and more.

These tools can help you optimize your campaigns, reduce cost-per-click, and find new keywords to explore.

Experiment with these tools to find the perfect combination for your PPC marketing strategy and watch your campaigns reach new heights of success.

And if you need a helping hand? The Hawks are here to lead the way.

This article has been updated and was originally published in February 2024.