Are you planning to use PPC as part of your marketing strategy? Here is a guide to setting up your first PPC campaign in Google.
What Is PPC?
PPC, or “pay-per-click”, is a form of internet marketing where advertisers pay a fee each time one of their online ads is clicked. This is a more concrete way of ensuring visits to your online site.
How Does PPC Work?
Once an advertiser has set up an ad, payment is determined by clicks. For example, if the ad is set up on Google, each time a user clicks it, the advertiser must pay the search engine a predetermined fee.
Ideally, if the PPC is set up correctly, the user might purchase something on the site, and the advertiser would run a profit.
What Is Google Ads?
Many of the most common PPC advertisements are paid search ads, in which ads appear when users look up keywords in search engines. Google Ads is the most popular platform for this type of PPC advertising.
Other types of PPC advertisements are display advertising and remarketing.
How Does Google Ads Work?
Google Ads offers a platform for businesses to create ads and bid on keywords to appear on the Google search engine and other online services. Each time a user begins a search, Google draws from its pool of businesses to choose advertisements to display in the ad space on the results page.
This process is completely automated and runs almost instantly. Many factors go into how the ads are chosen, including the relevance of the keywords and the size of the corresponding advertiser’s bid.
Specifically, each advertiser has a calculated Ad Rank, which is scored by multiplying their CPC Bid by their Quality Score.
Ad Rank = CPC Bid x Quality Score
An advertiser’s CPC Bid is the highest amount of money an advertiser is willing to pay. An advertiser’s Quality Score is, just as it sounds, a measure of the ad’s click rate, relevance, and quality of the landing site.
This way, Google can quickly match users to ads in a mutually beneficial relationship.
Wordstream has a helpful infographic comparing Google Ads to an auction.
PPC Management
How to Setup Your First PPC Campaign in Google
Brainstorm
The first step to successfully set up your PPC campaign is to know your audience. That means knowing how your consumers search based on the product or service that you’re offering. Specifically, it’s important to have a good sense of what keywords or phrases your consumers use to potentially search for your product.
This is to ensure that your keywords are finding your consumer base, and you’re not wasting money targeting people who do not want your product.
With this in mind, brainstorm a list of keywords that you think people looking for your product would use. Don’t hold back in this phase - write down anything and everything that comes to mind.
Use Keyword Tools to Check the Demand
Once you’ve brainstormed a list of keywords, it’s time to cull from the list with solid research. There are many online tools for this, but the Google Adwords Keyword Planner is the best tool for checking the demand for your keywords.
This intuitive planner helps by allowing you to search for new keywords (from a phrase, website, or category), see data on search volume and trends, and multiply keyword lists to obtain new keywords.
It also offers the ability to plan your budget and get forecasts by entering or uploading a list of keywords. This quickly lets you gauge your keywords with estimated suggested bids and keyword competition. Keywords with higher competition have a higher cost per click.
Before you delete keywords from your list though, check to see if Google has any suggestions for alternative keywords with more fitting results.
Organize Your Keywords
Now that you have a long list of keywords, it’s time to organize them into more structured groups. Closer groups of keywords are easier to work with, whether you want to analyze the performance of your keywords or write more specific ads.
You can also have variations of keywords that go from broad to specified, which could be better tailored to individual ad campaigns and ad groups, respectively.
Include Negative Keywords
Negative keywords are words or phrases that may engage the wrong audience and thus be much less profitable.
Some negative keywords may still have favourable search volume, cost per click, and competition. However, some clicks may not end up turning a profit if the wrong consumer base is targeted.
Work Backwards From Your Budget
An essential consideration for your PPC campaign before you begin is your budget. It’s important to know what you can afford to advertise as you will not begin profiting immediately.
Wordstream has a helpful infographic illustrating the industry standards for the average cost per click in Adwords. You can consider this when putting together a budget.
Neil Patel suggests this formula to use to calculate your maximum cost per click:
Max CPC = (profit per customer) x (1 - profit margin) x (website conversion rate)
Here, the profit per customer is the amount you make from your average customer. The profit margin is a percentage of the cost subtracted from the revenue. The website conversion rate is calculated based on what percentage of clicks that become customers.
Once you’ve calculated your max CPC, you can use it as a general guideline to establish a budget. Keywords that have a higher estimated CPC will not lead to a profit.
Research the Competition
When running advertisements in a PPC campaign, you will be competing with other advertisers in your Ad Rank. This directly affects which ads will be shown and how often. Therefore it is important to know your competition.
SpyFu can help you with research on how other businesses are structuring their ads.
Google AdWords also has a built-in report named “Auction Insights” that helps you compare your performance to others. Here, by looking at impression share, you can see who your main competitors are.
With this information, you can validate your keywords, as you should have more in common with your main competitors than other businesses and domains.
Write Ads
Now that you have your keywords down, the next step is to write your ad copy. Here, the important point is to make the ad relevant and personalized.
The three components of your ad space are the headline, the description, and the display URL. You should optimize your limited space to craft an advertisement that is both engaging and enticing.
To create an engaging ad copy, you need to deliver your unique selling proposition. This will help attract more potential consumers, eliminate users who click for price comparisons and increase sales conversions.
Four tips that Neil Patel suggests in writing an ad copy are:
- Make your offer valuable so it’s more attractive to potential consumers.
- Make it believable so consumers don’t think it’s too good to be true.
- Address risk aversion to establish trust.
- Include keywords to ensure your ads appear on Google.
Craft a Call To Action
Having a solid call to action can be an effective way to entice a user to click on your ad. Make sure that your ad contains action words that compel a potential consumer to take a sale.
Two popular words in top-performing text ads are “get” and “now”. Other popular words include “free”, “save”, “best”, “shop”, “try”, and “you”.
When crafting a call to action though, it’s important to remember to keep your words relevant to your product or service.
Design an Engaging Landing Page
When a user clicks on your ad, the landing page they are redirected to should be both welcoming and compelling.
This means that the ad should connect to a relevant page so that the user can have a seamless experience from ad to product. As with your ad copy, your landing page should be personalized. Strong visuals are also helpful.
And most importantly, your landing page should load quickly and be easily remapped on mobile devices. This will also increase your conversion rate.
Focus on Conversions
Ultimately, the primary goal in your PPC campaign is to increase the conversion rate of your target audience. This will ensure you make the most of your keywords and increase your profits.
What Are Some Essential Factors You Can Optimize For Better Results?
Keyword Relevance
Having relevant keywords is essential to a successful PPC campaign. This includes forming lists of relevant keywords with tight groups, as well as optimizing text ads.
Some helpful tips for crafting text ads are to ensure the ad applies to your product or service, the user’s search, and your landing site.
Additionally, you could use ad extensions to attach more information to your ads, such as location and contact information, images of your product, or an email field where potential customers can sign up for an email list.
Landing Page Quality
To keep the user engaged, your landing page must have a high-quality design. This means using clear, persuasive language, as well as highlighting relevant content on the page.
Quality Score
Your Quality Score is a large factor in your Ad Score, which is how Google ranks your PPC campaign. It’s beneficial to optimize this, as higher Quality Scores will allow you to have more ad clicks at a lower cost.
Creative Design
Creating an engaging advertisement is an art, and you must be inventive to invite users. A good creative design, in both the text ad and the landing site, will go a long way in increasing the quality of your ads to draw in more potential customers.
Conclusion
With these steps, you’re well on your way to building your first PPC campaign in Google!
The road is a long and steady grind though, and once your campaign is set up, you’ll need to constantly monitor the performance of your keywords and your competition. You’ll need to consistently tweak keywords, rewrite ad copies, and redesign sites.
As you go along though, you’ll gradually pick up tips and tricks of your own to help you establish your market.
If you're looking for more insights, why not download our Beginner's Guide To Paid (PPC) Advertising? Get it here.
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