ppc campaign planning

PPC Campaign PlanningSEM-N-SEO

PPC Campaign Planning

1. What is PPC?2. Define your objective3. Determine your target4. Set your budget5. Building keyword pool6. Developing your title and description7. Description8. URL

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PPC Campaign Planning

9. Bidding process10. Dealing with competition11. Tracking12. Evaluation


What is PPC?

Pay-per-click (PPC) is an advertising model in which advertisers pay for click-throughs to their website. Ads are served based on keywords or themes. An effective PPC campaign can help you reduce the cost per click and increase profit. There are four key components of a winning PPC advertising program: Explore, Evaluate, Expand and Enhance.

Explore

The exploration phase requires information gathering and assessment, which includes historical PPC account data, internal Web analytics data and peripheral research on customers and competitors. Determining the amount of additional keyword and competitive market research depends on the quality and quantity of information collected in the initial research phase. The desired goal is to formulate a PPC advertising program test campaign that runs anywhere from two to four weeks in duration.

Evaluate

The evaluation phase consists of implementing the PPC program test strategy (keywords, text ads and associated landing pages) and monitoring performance. In this phase, the goal is to determine which keyword phrases, ad copy, landing pages and bid strategies have the greatest potential, and will serve as the foundation for the ongoing PPC advertising program.


What is PPC?

Expand

The expansion phase focuses on leveraging insights from the evaluation phase to increase the number of keyword phrases in the overall PPC advertising program to generate the desired quantity of leads or sales without sacrificing conversion performance. For example, a test campaign may incorporate 50 keyword phrases, while the expanded campaign may include 500.

Enhance

The enhancement phase involves constant tuning and tweaking of keyword phrases, text ad copy, landing page elements and bid strategies. Typically, this phase incorporates A/B or multivariate testing to ensure optimal PPC program performance. Developing a highly successful PPC advertising program is an iterative process that is never fully-optimized due to changes in the technology, industry and competitive landscape. As such, it is often necessary to cycle back to the exploration phase and test peripheral keywords, ad copy and landing page creative.


Campaign Elements

Once you’ve mastered the “4E process” concept for PPC advertising, the next step is to apply it to the core PPC advertising campaign elements: keywords, structure, copy, landing page, bid strategies and testing. Each of the following campaign elements are incorporated into each phase of the 4E process.

Define your objective: It is important to decide on an objective beforehand before embarking on a PPC campaign. The objective of a PPC campaign should be quantitatively defined; as it is easier to measure the results. The campaign’s objective might be to generate leads, subscription, sign ups, revenue or orders. Each dollar spent on a click should give you appropriate returns, otherwise, your whole campaign’s effort nullifies.

Determine your target: After you have identified your PPC’s objective, you need to determine your target customer. Not every one who clicks on your ad is your prospective customer. You should determine your target customer depending upon the product or service your website is offering. It not only helps in finding out the right keywords and search terms for the campaign but also helps in developing ad’s copy that generates high quality clicks.


Campaign Elements

Set your budget: Do not over indulge or be constraining in your PPC spending, set your budget depending upon your company’s resources and PPC’s objective. It is a different medium of advertising, so you need to use slightly different yardstick while deciding on your budget. At the time of deciding on a budget, you should keep in mind that cost per click varies depending on the bid amount on key phrases and the number of clicks you are receiving.

Building keyword pool: Build your keywords’ pool by doing comprehensive research for the optimal keywords/search terms. The research can start from your own website and move on to competitors’ website and customers, and other sources. After a proper analysis of your products or services, your target customers search habits, competitors’ keywords; you will have a list of important keywords that hold the key to your PPC campaign’s success. However, it is imperative that the keyword/search term should be relevant to your website’s content and offers. You also need to consider that it is unlikely to apply to any other product or services. In a highly competitive market, you may often find that the top bid for a search term is far higher than your own margins allow. Often you can attain far better value by choosing keywords that are more specific. You can consider using search terms that are more likely to be used by people searching for your kind of products or services. On a regular basis, you need to monitor the performance of each keywords/search terms by tracking the number of click through rates and conversions. It might happen that some keywords/search terms will generate more visitors but will be low on conversion and certain keywords will give you high percentage of conversions. The variation may happen because certain prospective customers may be only researching a potential purchase, while those who are ready to buy will use slightly different keyword/search terms. www.sem-n-seo.com | [email protected]

Campaign Elements

Developing your title and description: Title is generally the five-word sentence shown as the main link in your ad’s display. It works like the headline of your advertisement. Be precise and to the point while creating your PPC ad’s title. Do not be vague or use unrelated words; otherwise, you may end up paying a lot for unnecessary click throughs without any returns. You should use the advantage of creating ad’s titles sensibly and keeping in mind the product or service offers of your website.

Description: Description is a little longer sentence than the title, however still with character limit imposed. The description should be one or two punch line sentences that should highlight on how clicking will solve a prospects search query. Be precise like the title and stress on the website’s USP.

URL: It is important to have your URL link working and problem free. The URL should take your visitors to the page that is the most relevant to search term/ keyword used by them.


Campaign Elements

Bidding process: It is imperative determine your expected ROI and PPC’s objective, before deciding the absolute maximum bid per click for each keyword without diminishing profit per sale. You should keep a close watch on your competitors’ bids and yours to manage bids skillfully. If you sleep on your bids, you are most likely to lose your premium positions, so it is better to make necessary changes to bid amounts on regular basis to maintain your position. However, never be drawn into overbidding that would diminish your profit margins and you spend more than your budget.

Dealing with competition: If you are in the business, you will always be having competitors for company. Sooner or later, you have to consider your competitors’ websites and their bids on keywords to chalk out your PPC campaign strategy. You may find that certain keywords are highly competitive and costing a fortune for top position. This is where your keyword research and bid management skills come into play. You need to research keywords that not only drive quality traffic to your website but also give your ads good position on PPC search engines’ listings.It is important that you regularly review your bids, your competitors’ bids, and your ads position. As competitors will never tell you when they are going to outbid you, so, it is important that you review your campaigns regularly and make required changes to maintain positions.


Campaign Elements

Tracking: By tracking each click on your PPC ads, you can tweak the PPC campaign to get the most out of it. Monitor your campaign every day and at regular intervals. Tracking will help you in finding keywords that are generating results and that are of no value. Regular monitoring of campaigns also let you know when the competitor ceases to compete for a certain keyword; this may enable you to drop the amount of your own bids considerably without loss of position. Remember you only need to be 1 cent higher than the next highest bid. Anything more means that you are throwing away profit.

Evaluation: Evaluate how the campaign is doing in comparison to expected ROI and PPC’s objectives propose by you. Assess keyword/search terms that satisfies your PPC objective and giving the preferred return on investment. You did not spend your hard-earned dollars on a PPC campaign just to attract visitors but your ultimate goal is to gain profit from every click. After evaluation, drop those keywords/search terms that did not serve your purpose, add new keywords which may serve you better or only concentrate on those that are sure shots.


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