Are you one of those hard and fast believers that if you want something done right you have to do it yourself? Conceptually this may be great when it ...
Are you one of those hard and fast believers that if you want something done right you have to do it yourself? Conceptually this may be great when it comes to performing tasks like changing the oil in your car or mowing your lawn. But when you start getting into jobs that require skill,
abilities and years of experience, you may not be doing the job right when you do it yourself. Case in point would be deciding to not to go with an experienced pay per click manager. Trying to learn the ins and outs, the nuances of setting up and maintaining a PPC campaign could be beyond your reach.
You should, however, take the time to understand the basics of how a campaign works, and be able to at least understand the language of those fluent in online marketing campaigns. Following are 10 tasks that a quality pay per click manager is likely to undertake when they launch your advertising campaigns. Having an intellectual understanding of these items will help you converse intelligently with your PPC manager.
Work Out Your PPC Budget: Unless your budget is unlimited (in which case, why are you bothering with PPC anyway?) you'll want to have a monthly and daily budget worked out. Knowing what the maximum dollar amount you can bid for ALL of your keyword campaigns is important. Always keep your maximum daily bids in mind when making changes to your ad bids.
Research Your Keywords: It can be VERY easy to spend a ton of money on PPC campaigns. Focusing on the right keyword phrases for your business will enhance your ability to succeed with your unique selling proposition (USP).
Categorize Your Keywords: After you've done your keyword research, grouping relevant terms together can make both ad bidding as well as content page creation easier and more focused on your overall PPC campaign.
Always Be Testing Ads: Once you have an ad that performs well for a keyword, write a new ad and try to out perform the original (or control) ad. There is always a bit more performance you can tweak out of your PPC campaigns.
Develop Your USP: Your unique selling proposition will come in handy when you write your ads. Distinguishing how you are different (and hopefully better!) than your competition is the best way to increase your Click Through Rate (CTR), lower the cost of your ads and have them appear higher on the results page.
Exact or Broad Match Bids: This is where you'll really want a pay per click manager's years of experience. Learning whether you should use exact keyword matching or simply a broad match that includes various forms of your keyword. It all depends upon the situation, keyword phrase and your desire to generate traffic to your landing pages.
Be Negative with Keywords: If there are multiple ways a keyword could be interpreted, and some of those ways are not what your business is about, be sure to use the negative keywords to prevent your ad from showing whenever a search is done on that keyword. With negative keyword use, you'll only display for the exact keywords used in the way that makes the most sense for your needs.
Ensure Keywords For Ads Are On the Landing Page: Companies like Google will favor your ads when they are linked to landing pages which are directly related to the keywords in your PPC ads. Be sure the content on those landing pages are optimized for the same keywords of your PPC ads.
Right Time To Advertise: If your online offerings appeal to up late, night owl types, then schedule the bulk of your ads to only display when you know your potential customers might be online looking at them. Most PPC programs will provide advanced scheduling capabilities for you to use.
Take Advantage of Analytics: Finally, be sure to use some sort of analytics program to know how well your ads, landing and order pages are performing. This will help you maximize your PPC budget.
Clearly there's more to this than might meet the eye. If you're concerned at all with wasting time or money, seriously consider the use of a pay per click manager who knows and understands all the nuances required to generate successful PPC campaigns.
