Ecommerce Solutions | Holistic Internet Marketing

Pay-Per-Click campaigns are an immediate source of traffic to your Web site or blog, and can potentially be a crucial part of your marketing success. Before you jump in head first, though, I would like to provide a guide on how to go about starting a PPC program.

Determine the Goals and Objectives of your PPC campaign
Determine your budget
Create a landing page
Choose a PPC network
Research keywords and key phrases
Create the ads you will use
Turn your ads on
Measure your success
Revisit, and make one change to your campaign
Repeat steps 8 and 9

Determine the Goals and Objectives of your PPC campaign

This obvious, yet crucial step is necessary to determine the success of your campaign. Typically, the major objectives are:

To make a sale
To obtain a lead
To get a phone call or visit to your business
To brand your company, blog, Web site
To make money from your Web site through affiliate programs, etc.

If you take the “I’ll just get traffic, and see what happens” approach, you do not have clearly defined or measurable goals. Some of the above objectives are easier to measure than others, but success in anything has some sort of relative measurement, So, determine what your goal is, and make future changes accordingly.

Determine Your Budget

This step is a bit like taking a trip to Vegas. Take as much as you can afford to lose. The first time you start a PPC campaign, you need to realize that just because you are paying for clicks does not guarantee anything. You must be able to afford to lose money for a short time, until you are able to measure, analyze, and adjust your campaign until you reach scalable metrics.

Create a Landing Page

This is yet another crucial step that you should not ignore. A landing page is the page that your visitors will reach when they click on your ad. The landing page should include a means to your end goal or objective. For instance, if your objective is to make a sale, your landing page should include the product(s) you wish to sell, a clear call-to-action, and a quick and easy way to make a purchase. If you want to acquire a lead, you must present a need or desire that will be fulfilled by the user submitting their information, and a form that is either on the page or maximum 1 click away, and is as simple as you can possibly make it. I will explain more about landing pages in a later post, as this is another topic that can be greatly expanded upon, but the poing of creating a landing page is to send your visitors directly to what they were looking for when they typed in a search term, and then clicked on your ad.

Choose a PPC network

There are many PPC networks to choose from, but to start, choosing one of major search engines is your best bet, as you will get the best measurement of success, more volume, and higher-quality clicks. If you haven’t already heard, the top 3 are Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter. You can typically find deals for signing up, like free credits.

Research Search Terms

Once you sign up with your provider, you will be able to use their built-in keyword tools to find keywords to add to your campaign. You want to choose the most relevant terms for your campaign, and determine how popular your search terms are. You can also do this without opening an account by using some of the free keyword research tools, such as Yahoo’s keyword suggestion tool or Google’s free keyword tool. There are also many great programs out there like WordTracker and Web CEO. Use these tools by entering some of the key phrases in your landing page. For instance, this blog is about PPC campaigns, so I would type that in, and the tool will give you other suggestions, and an average number of searches you can expect. This helps to broaden your keyword base, but getting too broad will result in non-relevant clicks to your site, which have less potential to create conversions. Try different combinations of keywords and key phrases, and measure which ones give you the best conversions.

This is the conclusion of “How to Start a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Part 1″. Check back or better yet, subscribe to this blog for Part 2. In the meantime, start on these first steps, get your goals set, and do your research. If you have any questions or comments, please let me know your thoughts. Happy marketing!

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