Last week we started our deep dive into the world of pay per click (PPC advertising). We started by sharing what PPC is, common terminology you’ll need to know, the best platforms to advertise on, and the benefits of PPC.
Today we’ll be teaching you how to set up your first advertising campaign and best practices. With this additional information, you’ll be able to approach your first PPC advertising campaign with confidence.
Creating Your First Campaign
Creating your first PPC campaign can feel overwhelming. There are several steps to take that will take you some time and effort. If done correctly though they will lead to more users on your site and ultimately more conversions. Below are a list of the steps. We will be breaking down each one in-depth to help you in your PPC journey.
-Set Parameters
-Create Goals & Goal Metrics
-Choose Your Campaign Type
-Perform Keyword Research
-Set Up Google Analytics & Tracking
Set Parameters
While these steps don’t necessarily need to be done in a specific order, we do recommend starting by setting your parameters. By setting parameters you can ensure your ad is both targeted and effective.
You want to start your campaign by thinking about your ultimate goal. If your business is looking to build brand awareness, up your sales numbers, or get more people to subscribe to your email list this needs to inform your ads. Consider how your PPC campaigns will contribute to those goals. How much are you willing to spend to achieve these goals?
You should have a few things in mind for your ad:
- Who do you want to target?
- What is the theme of your campaign?
- How you will measure success?
- What type of campaign you will run?
Create Goals & Goal Metrics
The type of campaign your launch needs to be informed by your goals. Before you can measure them you need to know what types of goals you can set.
Brand Awareness- this is the extent to which a customer is familiar with your brand. If you’re looking to get your brand in front of people this is a great goal. The more you work to build brand awareness, the more you’ll be able to build trust with potential customers. By building trust you’ll be able to sell to them easier down the line. A few ways you can measure brand awareness are through user engagement, surveys, and direct traffic to your website.
Site Traffic- Wanting to boost your SEO and get people to see the high-quality content on your website? Site traffic goals are a great way to achieve this. With this goal, it’s important to be able to able to engage users with solid content. If your website isn’t up to snuff, people won’t want to stay on your website and this goal will be pointless. You can track your metrics for this one through Google Analytics.
Sales Promotion- A PPC ad is a great way to get the word out about an upcoming promotion you’re offering! You can measure this by creating a unique landing page or providing a special code just for PPC ads.
Actual Sales- This can be measured by how much your product or services are sold based on your PPC ads. You can track this through your CMS software or with attribution reporting.
Lead Generation- This one really comes down to having a well-done and engaging landing page. You’ll be creating a unique landing page for each ad you do, so make sure you take the time to do it right. Having separate landing pages will enable you to track your progress through Google Analytics or through UTM parameters if you’re using a tool like HubSpot.
Choose Your Campaign Type
It’s important that you know who you will be advertising to and which platform you’ll use, but also how you will do it. Pay-per-click advertising offers several different types of campaigns. You’ll want to choose which type by thinking about where you can find your ideal audience. Below are the different types:
- Search Ads
- Display Ads
- Google Shopping
- Retargeting
- Social
Search Ads- These are the most popular type of PPC ads. They refer to the text ads that show up when users do a search on a search engine.
Display Ads- These allow you to place image ads on various websites including on social media platforms. There are various platforms you can use to create these types of ads including Google network Display.
Google Shopping- This is hands down the best option for eCommerce sites offering tangible products. Ads including an image, the price, and a brief product description will show up in search results in a carousel that fits your keywords.
Retargeting- Here you can use a list of contacts you’ve compiled or cookies to target people who have previously engaged with your brand in some way. That action could be signing up for your email list, reading a blog, filling out a form, or simply visiting your website.
Social– Social ads are just that, they’re ads on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Each platform offers unique opportunities to show up in front of your audience with some directly in the feed, on stories, or on side panels. You’ll want to look into each Platform’s unique offerings.
Perform Keyword Research
We touched on this in part 1 of the series. Knowing the keywords you need to use to reach your ideal audience is critical to your PPC campaign succeeding. You need to understand the phrases people are actually typing into search engines.
Campaigns will require you to create a set of keywords you wish to target.
Thanks for following along with our basics of pay-per-click advertising series! We hope it’s helped you learn whether or not PPC could be beneficial for your business. If it is, these practical steps and tips will help you implement your PPC strategy successfully. If you need help with your PPC campaigns you can contact us about our PPC services.
If you’re looking for more marketing tips, tricks, and how-to’s we would love for you to stick around on our Fusion One Marketing blog.
Set Up Goole Analytics and Tracking
Google Analytics and other tools are so helpful when creating and tracking the metrics of a campaign. It’s a free tool that links with your website to track visitors, page clicks, conversions, and so much more. You can even take a free course from Google on how to understand the platform and the metrics it tracks. This data is so valuable not only for pay-per-click advertising but for all your marketing endeavors.
Best Practices
Just like any other form of advertising, PPC has specific best practices. You’ll want to follow these to make sure your marketing dollars are spent effectively.
In general, there are a few specific areas you’ll want to focus on:
- Your Ad Cop
- Landing Page(s
- Maximizing Your Return of Investmen
- Testing Your PPC Ad
We’ll delve into each of these now.
Your Ad Cop
Messaging is always important in the world of marketing. While the PPC ad will get your ad in from of people, you need to make sure they understand your ad and actually want to click on it. As you create your copy you need to keep your audience in mind. Here are a few tips to help you develop incredible ad copy:
-Keep it concise.
-Keep your target audience/buyer in mind.
-Include relevant keywords without sounding spammy.
-Provide a call to action so your users understand the concrete next step
-Mention any promotions in an appealing way.
-Mirror the copy and language of your landing page.
Landing Page
Often your landing page is the most important piece of your pay-per-click advertising strategy. As we mentioned last week, this is where your users will ultimately end up after seeing your ad. You want to hook them immediately and keep them on your website so you can achieve your ultimate goal(s).
This page needs to be highly targeted, specifically related to your ads, and deliver on any promises or promotions you have made. Users need to feel that you’ve created a seamless marketing experience to build trust and help push them to achieve your goal.
The better your landing page is, the better your ad will perform. It will help increase conversions and even help your ad place better! Here’s what you need to prioritize when creating your landing page:
-A strong headline that reflects your ad copy
-A clean and easy-to-navigate design
-A call to action.
-Copy that mirrors your ad and includes relevant keywords.
-Promotions, products, or services that are presented in an appealing way.
-Easy to use and concise.
Testing Your PPC Ad
Most marketers won’t just start an ad without testing it first. This process of testing your ads should continue throughout the life of your campaign to ensure it’s providing you with the maximum benefits.
For your PPC ad, you will need to test 4 key parts: the headline, description, landing page, and keywords.
At the start of your ad write down these 4 areas and the ways you could test them. From there, all you need to do is let your ad run long enough to collect the analytics and metrics you need. You should start this data collection from the very beginning so you can test your ads earlier to make sure it’s performing well.
Maximizing Your Return on Investmen
The end goal of PPC ads is to make more revenue. To do this, you will want to make sure you lower your input (the cost per lead) and increase your output (your revenue). Here are a few things to watch to help you get the most out of your PPC campaign
Decrease Your Output
-Set your budget before you start.
-Continually work to create relevant ads.
-Keep an eye on your analytics. You need to know what’s working and what isn’t.
-Work to improve your quality score so your ad will rank higher.
Increase Your Input
-Follow our best practices.
-Continually improve your landing page(s).
-Make your ad very specific and targeted. The more targeted the ad the more qualified the lead will be.
Thanks for following along with our basics of pay-per-click advertising series! We hope it’s helped you learn whether or not PPC could be beneficial for your business. If it is, these practical steps and tips will help you implement your PPC strategy successfully. If you need help with your PPC campaigns you can contact us about our PPC services.
If you’re looking for more marketing tips, tricks, and how-to’s we would love for you to stick around on our Fusion One Marketing blog.