Many PPC tips help you create your pay-per-click account, write effective ads, or analyze campaign performance. Creating a brand new PPC campaign for yourself or a client can feel a little overwhelming whether you use Google AdWords, Bing Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Facebook Ads, or any of the myriad of choices for PPC. A lot of decisions are required for effective PPC accounts such as budgets, keywords, campaigns, ad copy…the list could go on and on.
PPC Tips to Get Started Right
There are a ton of opportunities to make your campaign a success. But, as with many things, the hardest part can be getting started. What should you do first? In my experience as a pay-per click specialist, I have found that the following 5 things get campaigns on the road to success from the get-go. Use these PPC tips before you setup your new PPC account or campaign and you’ll find success as well. Good luck!
1. Understand Your Brand and Business
This will be pretty easy if you happen to be the business owner or have worked in the industry. But regardless of whether you’re internal or external, you must understand the brand!
- Who is the business or brand?
- What services does it offer?
- What is it all about?
- What is it known for (good or bad)?
- What sets it apart from competition?
Once you have a clear picture of the business, get to know the marketing history and strategy.
- What marketing has been tried in the past?
- What’s worked?
- What messages have been successful?
- Which haven’t?
It’s important to get this information in the beginning so that you don’t duplicate mistakes made in the past. Take advantage of any marketing history they have. Use it to your advantage as you build the campaign. (This will come in especially handy as you write ad copy.)
2. Determine a Budget and Commit
Right from the beginning, it’s important to establish a monthly and daily budgets. How much is the business willing to invest in this? It can be helpful to get a budget recommendation from a PPC company or someone who is very familiar with pay-per click. Click costs vary greatly in the PPC world depending on which industry you’re in. For example, a custom pencil carver may only pay 7 cents when someone clicks an ad. A greeting card company may pays an average of 20 dollars per click. The difference is competition for the keywords. Many factors determine the cost of the ads and will affect your budget. Some of the most important considerations are sales margins and average conversion rates. If you are in a low margin business, you will need a low average PPC cost and higher conversion rate. Is your industry very competitive online? If so, make sure you’re willing and able to make the financial commitment it’s going to take to make pay-per-click successful.
If you’re unsure whether PPC will work for you and maybe you’re the first in your industry to try it, don’t be afraid to start small. It’s okay to begin with a small budget as long as you build the campaign with that in mind. Don’t overwhelm and stunt a campaign’s success by building it out too big in the beginning. If you’re going to start small budget-wise, start small campaign-wise and put the money where it’ll count.
3. Define Goals and Develop a Strategy
Before even creating a pay-per-click account, establish clear goals.
- What do you want to achieve?
- By when?
- How will you measure success?
- Are your goals realistic?
Once you have a list of goals and have ruled out any that really are not attainable, brainstorm all the ways you can accomplish these goals. Decide on the best way and adopt this as your strategy. You can adjust the strategy to maximize your return on investment as you analyze the progress of the campaign.
4. Know the Target Market
In order to run any successful marketing you must understand your market.
- Who are they?
- Where are they geographically?
- What matters to them?
- Are they one gender in particular?
- Are they a definite age group?
Knowing these things will allow you relate to your target market and create appealing, compelling, successful campaigns.
5. Create a Keyword List
Now you are ready to put together keyword lists! One of the best places to start is on the company’s website. Look at how it is structured. Is it by service? Product? Gender? If it were by service, I would recommend making separate keyword lists for each service.
Next make a list of all the variations of the trade name. General, specific, misspellings, everything. Take time to think like your customers. What would they type in looking for your brand? Once all that’s been done, it is useful to do a little keyword research. Use resources like the Keyword Planner tool in Google AdWords, Google Trends, and even the suggestions in the Google search bar that are displayed as you type in a search term.
What are your PPC Tips?
That wraps it up for the top 5 PPC tips before starting your campaign! You’re now well-equipped to assign keywords to appropriate campaigns and ad groups, write ads, and build your campaign based on what you know about the brand, budget, target market and the strategy you have implemented to achieve your goals.
What is your experience with PPC? Have you had great successes? Failures? What are your tips for success? Comment below!
Author bio: Rachel Anderson is a Pay-Per-Click Advertising Strategist at Netmark.com. She loves helping companies be successful online by defining target markets and creating relevant, appealing ads. Off the job she enjoys photography, good food, the outdoors, and family time.
