7 Steps To A Perfect Pay Per Click Campaign by Rachelle Money, 3 September 2008
Pay Per Click can be a little daunting, especially for small businesses who don't know the tactics to use in this type of advertising campaign. Wordtracker's very own PPC expert, Ian Howie, takes us through the seven stages of Pay Per Click, including how to use keyword research to refine your strategy.
Wordtracker’s PPC expert, Ian Howie, will be running a PPC Masterclass for Profitable PPC Campaigns on 13th November in London.
What is Pay Per Click?
Pay Per Click (PPC) is an online marketing and advertising formula, where the advertiser does not pay a fee to place an advert, but rather pays a certain amount of money each time someone clicks on their ad and is taken to their website.
In PPC you can choose the keywords or phrases you want your website to be associated with when a search is performed. This means you have to decide how much you are willing to pay each time someone clicks on the search result - but the upshot is that you are advertising to people who are already interested in you.
PPC expert
Ian Howie is a leading expert in Google AdWords and PPC. For 12 years he has worked in web creation and online marketing. He now works for 1UpSearch in London, helping businesses large and small create new marketing opportunities online.
Seven steps
So - you know your customer, you know what your approach is going to be, you know what you want to promote and you have a clear marketing message - now Howie is going to reveal the seven step strategy he applies to all his PPC campaigns.
1. Identify the product you are selling
Let's say you are selling iPod cases. Look at your range and decide which ones you want to promote. Look at what you're offering in terms of price, and how competitive you are in terms of price, customer service and delivery. Do some searches on Google to see which ads come up, and which offers your competitors are focusing on.
2. Keyword research and PPC
Use Wordtracker for keyword research, and you'll find it's particularly good for finding negative keywords. SEOs are mainly concerned with keywords they can include in their copy, but in PPC you have different match types - broad, phrase and exact.
If this is your first PPC campaign you can use broad matches to try and see what the market is doing and what people are typing in. Use exact match when you are sure they are the best keywords to go for. Another very popular technique is to use broad and phrase matches with a lot of negative keywords.
For example, if we entered 'iPod nano', with a broad match, the results would include ‘MP3 nano’, or even ‘iPod classic’. To prevent this we can add negative keywords into our campaign to stop ‘MP3’ or ‘classic’ coming in: this will eliminate a lot of wastage. It's hard to believe that people don't use negative keywords.
3. Build your PPC campaign piece by piece
Let’s say your iPod cases site has sections for Nano accessories, classic accessories, and one each for iTouch and iPhone etc. Each one of these sections is a campaign and each has its own ad group - so you will have many ad groups, and each ad group is really just a collection of keywords and adverts. Each type of Nano accessory would have its own AdGroup - furthermore, the AdGroups for iPod Nano cases can be broken down by color and by style.
A good PPC campaign should start with at least 10 AdGroups, and ideally (if you have time) 50 or more. For iPod Nano Accessories you may have over 20 to 30 groups just on Nano cases. The more relevant the keywords and the ads in each AdGroup, the better the Click Through Ratio (CTR). CTR is the ratio of clicks to impressions – it is the measurement of response. The better the CTR (ideally 1% or above) – the more likely you are of getting rewarded by Google by lowering the amount you pay for a click and increasing your ads position on the page.
If a customer is looking for a Black iPod Nano case specifically and they see an advert for a Black iPod Nano case, they are more likely to click on this one, rather than on a generic iPod Nano case advert with no mention of color. It's one of the most common mistakes people make - building generic ads doesn't mean you are targeting the widest possible range of people. The opposite is true - what you should do is dig into the long tail keywords - and the way we do that is by breaking down the ad groups into tightly themed groups of keywords and ads.
4. Build specific landing pages
Each of your products should have their own page, with a very clear 'buy button' and a nice description. Amazon do this very well. Link the ad straight to that page – the keyword should mirror the ad, which should mirror the landing page. It only takes people three to four seconds to make their decision so you have to make sure the page is quick to load.
5. Ad variation
PPC campaigns allow you to have different ad variations, so you can have text ads which can increase your CTR. By producing different kinds of ad you can monitor any patterns showing which ad is being clicked, and which aren't.
6. Report and analytics
Use Google Analytics or Yahoo Index Tools to help you look at your SEO and PPC keywords. Pay attention to your bounce rates because that is a very important indicator in PPC. If you are getting a high bounce rate of over 50%, but a high CTR rate (ie 3% or more), then you need to work on your landing pages.
Questions to ask – does your copy match the PPC ad? Is your copy above the fold? Is it clear what the user should do next? If you are getting both a high bouce rate and a low CTR rate – then you need to look at your PPC campaign. Look at your Ad text and ask yourself - does it match the Keyword Query? You may need more negative keywords so that you can get more relevant traffic.
7. Refine Your Campaign
Keep looking at your campaign, keep studying it, learn from it and keep refining it wherever possible. We apply the 80/20 rule. Out of all the keywords, only 20% to 40% may give you real value - ie sales. So never be afraid to pause Keywords or AdGroups that are not delivering a positive ROI.
It's a very interactive process with the end-users – use PPC to get people into your Landing Page and use Analytics to learn what they do after they get there.
Following this step will really help you make the most out of your PPC campaigns. And the great thing is that all the lessons you learn from PPC can be taken into your SEO campaigns.
About Rachelle Money
Rachelle Money is a freelance journalist based in Scotland, UK. She graduated from the Scottish School of Journalism in 2005 where she was awarded an internship with two national publications - The Sunday Herald newspaper and The Big Issue magazine. Rachelle has been working with Wordtracker since August 2007 and is a regular contributor to the newsletter.
33 comments
I am a new adwords affiliate. What is the bounce rate. I see not such item in my adwords campaigns. Thank you
Hi Brian - the bounce rate is the percentage of people leaving your site without clicking on any links. You can find out this metric using Google Analytics..
Hope this helps.
Hello,
Could you give us your opinion on the difference between WordTracker and the free tool that Google provides for finding keywords. Advantages and disadvantages.
Thanks (and you look like a movie star)
There are many differences between WordTracker and Google’s keyword tool. WordTracker’s advantage is that is shows more variations of the keyword such as the order of the phrase. An example being “hotel new york” vs. “new york hotel”. WordTracker also provides different types of keyword searches such as exact or misspellings and you can save these as reports. The disadvantage of WordTracker is that it uses the Dogpile and Metacrawler meta search engines and not Google or Yahoo so the volume of search data is much smaller. Google just recently started showing the approximate number of average monthly searches and the previous month which is very valuable, before it was just using a graphic bar to represent the volume of traffic.
Thanks for the info Rachelle, your information will be very helpful in finetuning my PPC ad campaigns. I have never considered having over 50 ad variations.
Good general article. One more basic thing is to duplicate each adgroup and have separate campaigns for the search network and content network. This will ultimately pay off in Google analytics by giving you separate and more detailed information which will improve your conversion rate quickly.
Great Post. I want to expand on one comment. The importance of using Wordtracker to help research great keywords is essential but the point about finding the negative keywords will stop useless ppc clicks. For example, I have a client that does advertising sales training, not real estate sales training or insurance sales training etc. When we formatted her google ppc campaign to eliminate various types of training that she did not do - there were more real leads for her and less bounce rate. Good luck to one and all.
Great information, thank you for sharing with us for free. The whole idea behind selling is that it works with both your own shop or an affiliate shop, thus making part of the affiliate marketing.
Great post. Someone can tell me what are the best places to do PPC? Thank you in advance
Thank you for great information. Talk about negative words and landing page, well this describes me for every time I see PPC I zero in to search for new and proved ways. Thanks You Bill McConnell
"you can use broad matches to try and see what the market is doing "
How to use broad matches in Adwords that don't effect to the CTR and QS? i think broad match will build large Impression , right?
Please advice , Thanks!
(sorry i'm not good in English and also beginner in PPC)
Some valuable PPC info here. I usually write a few ads at most for PPC campaigns, but have never considered anything like 50, as time is an important consideration for me. Negative words are something I don't spend much time on either, but will from now on. Thanks for a great article!
Thanx for the insightful article! After have played around a bit with the free scaled-down version of WordTracker, I decided I needed to buy the full tilt version with all its capabilities. I was quite happy with the purchase. For two months I did some intensive keyword mining and research, which ultimately helped improved my PPC ad campaigns and CTR. Well worth the money, WordTracker is!
Another thing I like about the service: You can pause your subscription for up to 6 months. So, in my case, I did two months of keyword work, then I paused my subscription so that I could now focus on putting all my keyword research to work. WordTracker will save all of my research for up to six months, so that whenever I am ready within that time frame, I can re-subscribe to the service, and all of my previous work (saved searches, keyword lists, etc.) will still be available to me. I love this option!
Thanx WordTracker!
Best regards,
AJ the Gambler
P.S. Yes, indeed... Rachelle Money is hot!
Really sound advice. I am glad you put #7 in there for everyone. Often people work on their ads, create some landing pages and then just figure "it will work". Working on refining ads and landing pages can really increase your results quickly. Those who test tend to do the best :)
Can i publish this article on my blog.
I did not find this article to be helpful at all. Maybe it's because I am inexperienced in PPC, but I have no idea what a negative keyword is.
I would add that many keyword searches on Google are new and therefore each new PPC campaign should include keywords "from head". Wordtracker is very helpful, but you need to think "outside the box" anyway.
Herschel: We can deduce that the Google tool uses a small sample of searches - a sample of it's available searches. Otherwise, why would Wordtracker - with its sample - be showing Matt Cotten more variations of a keyword?
The 'search' numbers shown are estimates. Notice how many are exactly the same number. And take a look at the historic trend graphs and you'll often see large variations for words with no logical seasonal trends. All these observations suggest a small sample is used.
Also, the Google Tool is aimed at Pay Per Click account holders and has been shown to include 'searches' that are not made on search engines. Such searches might be useful for PPC but could mislead your SEO planning.
What are the metrics we should be looking at in PPC campaigns and what software is available or recommended to set up the tracking url in Google adwords that is helpful to track conversions and also to get metrics faster and/or independent of those of Google?
I still think it's better to rank organic than try and buy your way into the top through PPC.
I liked the article. It's to the point and very helpful. I'm learning PPC ads. More info from the experts please... Many thanks
Hi Rachelle,
Thank you so much for this useful posting. I can learn more from 7 Steps To A Perfect Pay Per Click Campaign.
MES
Useful overview and sound advice. There is nothing better than putting the work in and understanding exactly where you stand. It'll save you a lot money in the long run.
Hi Rachelle,
Good article, though possibly a little advanced in terminology for people new to all this.
Heidi - "a negative keyword" is usually not a word at all but like most of what we do these days it's a group of words or keyphrase.
If you service was offering as Lia said "Advertising Sales Training" you don't want your add to appear for other types of "Sales Training". So, your negative keyphrases would be for such phrases as "Insurance Sales Training", then when someone typed in 'Insurance Sales Training' your add wouldn't appear (as it might as it has Sales Training in it and Google looks for relevant adverts), so saving you money as searchers can't click on your advert - as it isn't there.
Rachelle - have you considered a basic and advanced PPC article, as we've hardly touched on bidding, load time, relevance etc?
As usual though a good, interesting article.
Dats a lot of tips... actually i'm an SEO and not complete without knowing well about PPC campaigns.. this opened my eyes!
thanks a lot!
Your article, as all of your articles, is valuable to those who understand it and work at PPC. As for me, I will think I have a PPC working and then, BAM, I'm just throwing more money down the drain. That is, I start out getting orders and then I don't. There is lots of competition in the flagpole business and the competitors must all be craftier than me. John
As an internet marketing consultant I do run pay per click campaigns for clients, all of whom tend to be confused by negative keywords. This is often owing to lack of understanding, and more commonly how do you use them effectively. The reality is that it can be quite difficult to know under which search criteria your ad is appearing. So a simple example to illustrate. Earlier this year I took on a catering company, that offers services for banquets, weddings, etc. in SE England. They also had 5 years of PPC experience but in the previous 12 months were receiving virtually no conversions. Interestingly, they had no negative keywords set up, and their click through ratio was very low, less than 1%. Discovered as one problem, that they were ranking #1 on PPC for the serach: "self catering accommodation in Buckinghamshire". Why? Because they had a broad phrase "catering in Buckinghamshire" so anyone using those terms within a search would get them. Result: needless impressions and clicks (cos clicks cost). I eliminated as negative keywords: "self", "self-catering", "accommodation" and other keywords that were associated with holidays. I also elimintaed other terms like "delivery" as it appears with catering terms (i.e. delivery catering service). In total I have taken out 96 negative keywords for this campaign and the client's results show how effective this can be but you need to dedicate time to it.
Hi Rachelle,
I hope your article helps people who are at the door step of knowing what is PPC advertising. The article is simple and effective. I liked it. Regarding the landing pages, you have mentioned about the time taken to load the web page. Let me share my views regarding this point.
For a quality Landing Page,
Regards, FourPx
Hi BCC,
Yes and no.
Yes, long term wise it is better to rank organic for free traffic.
No, PPC gives you much faster result compare to SEO and it could be a profitable one if you do your home work.
Also PPC allows you to reach out to a wider range of target audience.
The list goes on...
Very well written primer for setting up PPC campaigns. It's good to highlight how important keyword research is not just for SEO but also for PPC. In fact these two marketing channels are intrinsically linked and something that was mentioned briefly is that running a PPC campaign is a great way to start a search marketing campaign. The knowledge acquired from your keyword research will be invaluable for the SEO campaign. I think too many people separate these two marketing channels and only do one or the other, but in fact they both work hand in hand, futhermore, it is a dangerous game to play to focus all your activities on one activity whether that is PPC or SEO. Paid search costs are very volatile, which is why doing SEO is important and like wise search engine rankings are extremely volatile which is why relying on trying to rank on the first page is tough. Edge your bets and spread your marketing activities across both channels!
I appreciate all the information on PPC because it scares the stuffing out of me to spend large amounts of money on advertising. I always worry that it is like throwing money down the drain. With PPC, I still worry about losing money. What if my ads don't qualify the searcher enough? What if my webpage doesn't convert enough? When I think of PPC at $.80 per click, it means I will pay between $8.00 and $24.00 sale. Many of the products on my site do not cost that much. While it is still a bit scary, I feel your basic guidance has been a big help. Thank You.
I'm a Newbie and need to get my PPC/ CPA business going. . .When You say 10-50 Adgroups per PPC campaign, do you mean 10-50 different Google Ad variations for the same set of keywords per campaign? Isn't that a big cost risk for getting up and running? Also, more pertinent to me, I'm not a techie and don't know HTML; What software is out to make designing the requisite landing pages easy? How would you practically manage the analytics of that many websites/ Click through rates/ bounce rates??
FourPx: Thanks for the extra tips. I like the color one.