Steve Ebner: “For most businesses, I recommend starting campaigns with Google AdWords, the undisputed leader in Internet advertising. Two out every three Internet searches are done through Google. Also, through AdWords,in addition to running ads on Google.com, you can run ads on tens of thousands of independent sites. Google is continually expanding their features, controls, and tools for advertisers. Its PPC marketing application enables any business to pinpoint ads and maximize your PPC budget."
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Steve Ebner: “The following checklist runs through the various steps of a PPC marketing campaign. While each PPC marketing campaign has a unique scope and set of needs, here is the general sequence of a PPC management campaign. Prior to initiating work, Steve Ebner Marketing will develop a customized PPC marketing proposal.
PPC marketing checklist:
1. Strategic Website Analysis for PPC Marketing Campaign
Too often, PPC campaigns kick into high gear without understanding how a company’s website is being used to fulfill the needs of stakeholder groups, such as prospective & existing customers, partners, vendors, employees, and/or investors. One website may be used primarily to support direct sales representatives, while another will be a communication portal for distributors. Public relations and brand awareness will be key for one website, while eCommerce sales will the primary role for another. This analysis is critical for many reasons. Most significantly, it will be the foundation for prioritizing and defining target keywords and website conversion goals.
It’s recommended for clients to have a website analytics application that enables a comprehensive dive into a website’s traffic patterns. We’ll need to understand what’s working and the areas of greatest need in website conversion goals. A great free web-based analytics application is available from Google…Steve Ebner Marketing can even setup and configure this as part of your PPC marketing program.
Each PPC ad contains a link to a particular page of your website, referred to as the landing page.. Advertisers are rewarded for aligning landing page content and PPC ad content with the particular keyword. Google calculates a Quality Score for ad, which takes into account these three components. The higher the Quality Score, the lower a cost-per-click an advertiser will need to pay for that keyword. Therefore, it's important to evaluate website content as you are planning a PPC marketing campaign.
2. PPC Marketing Keyword & Budget Analysis
This begins by researching the volume of search queries for particular keywords. A keyword may contain one word or a combination of multiple words.Too frequently, business managers run ads for keywords that are not specific enough, or too narrowly focused, to generate quality click-throughs. I will research search volume, the estimated cost-per-click for a highly placed ad, and the competitive rating for a list of keywords related to your site. The competitive rating identifies the level of competitors that place ads for that keyword. The higher the competitive rating, the higher the cost-per-click you will pay. The objective is to identify a prioritized list of keywords that we'll use for the PPC marketing campaigns.
I will then use this research data to estimate ad click-throughs and corresponding daily cost of running ads for a particular keyword. This will help match particular keywords with available PPC marketing budgets.
3. Competitor Website(s) PPC marketing Analysis
Prior to selecting your primary target PPC marketing keywords, it’s helpful understand what keywords your competitors are targeting. Are they running PPC ads in Google, Yahoo, MSN, or a combination of services? What do their ads look like? Which keywords are they using? This information can help your business discover a keyword niche, counter a competitor campaign, or avoid an expensive keyword bidding war.
4. Account Setup, Campaign Structuring, & Campaign Targeting
This is where I will configure billing, user access, and broad settings for the PPC marketing account. Most PPC campaigns will utilize multiple campagin types (e.g. keyword-based, content network, site-specific) and multiple ad groups within each campaign. The right organization will help simply tracking and analysis as the campaign continues.
For each campaign, broad settings are configured. This includes daily budget, geographic targeting, demographic targeting, language targeting, and time of day targeting.
5. PPC Keyword Lists, Bid Setup, & Ad Development
This is where all that PPC research and analysis starts to pay off. Separate ads are developed for each keyword, or set of related keywords. Often, multiple ads will be rotated for the same keyword.
There are several ways to configure ad runs so only highly relevant users see your ads. The major PPC marketing programs empower advertsers with the ability to select from multiple classifications for keywords. Remember a keyword may contain one word or a combination of multiple words. Here are the primary keyword classifications that can be used to control the PPC ad runs:
"Broad PPC Match" -- Your ad will be seen when a user searches for any part of your keyword. For example, if your keyword is tennis shoes, your ad would appear when a user's search query contained tennis and shoes, in any order, and possibly along with other related terms.
"Phrase PPC Match" -- This narrows the ad run to search queries specifically for "tennis shoes," in this exact order, and possibly with other terms before or after the phrase.
"Exact PPC Match" -- This further restricts the ad run for users that search specifically for the phrase tennis shoes, in this order, and without any other terms in the query.
"Negative PPC Keyword" - If your keyword is tennis shoes and you add the negative keyword "red," your ad will not appear when a user searches on red tennis shoes. Negative keywords are especially useful if your account contains lots of broad-matched keywords. Remember the goal is to not simply get click-throughs, but high quality click-throughs that you can convert.
Bids, or "maximum cost-per-click," are input for each keyword. For Google AdWords, this figure is used in the calculation of an ad's Quality Score. Paying a high bid price doesn't automatically mean your PPC ad will be the first ad seen. However, as long as your landing page content is relevant to the keyword, most businesses can use the bidding feature to appear ahead of a competitor website's ad. Again, your ad's Quality Score is based on the relevancy of your ad text, landing page content, historical click-through rate (if applicable), and other relevance factors.
6. Conversion Tracking Configuration
Conversions may be different for each PPC marketing client. For one client, a conversion may be a direct online purchase. Another client may consider a submission of an online inquiry form a conversion. Perhaps, a new registration for an email newsletter or a download of a white paper download is a conversion. A client may choose to designate multiple website activities as conversions.
The PPC marketing account will be configured to track these quantifiable conversions. This is an effective way to evaluate which keywords and ads are driving your high-quality website visitors. This will help evolve your PPC marketing strategy and fully maximize your PPC budgets.
7. Ongoing Measurement & Adjustment
PPC marketing campaigns must continue to evolve. The bulk of the work is done during the setup, but without strategic monitoring and analysis, the campaign may lose its effectiveness. For example, your competitors may soon discover your PPC marketingcampaign and begin to counter your campaigns. Your ads may include time-senstive content, or your ad content may not reflect recent updates on your website. It's important to continually analysis click-through trends, cost per conversion trends, and a host of other metrics to keep your PPC marketing campaign running smoothly."
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Steve Ebner: “Advertisers have a lot of control over PPC marketing campaigns, including which sites display their advertising, the type of user that sees the ads, and which pages on a particular site display the ads. However, the location on a particular page is typically the same for all advertisers. For search results pages, the ads (a.k.a. "sponsored listings") will appear above and to the right of the organic/non-paid search results. For independent content sites, such as the New York Times website, the ad positioning will be determined by the website publisher.
The figure below is an example of the positioning of PPC marketing ads on Google’s results page.” (click on image to view full-size screen shot)
click here to view full-size image
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Steve Ebner: “The good news is PPC marketing campaigns are scalable to available budgets. For example, there's no daily or monthly minimum level to advertise on Google. Google will simply charge you a one-time $5 setup fee, then charge you for every ad click-through that results in a visit to your website. The cost per click-through will vary anywhere from $0.05 to over $20, depending on how many other advertisers are advertising with that keyword. During the keyword selection process, I will be able to estimate cost per click data to better evaluate the best keywords to use.
My setup and PPC marketing costs will depend on how extensive of a campaign is involved. A considerable amount of the cost will be in the research, analysis, & setup phase of the campaign. Ongoing campaign management is usually a much lower percentage of overall cost. Additionally, if a business has the internal resources, many PPC campaigns can be managed internally with periodic guidance from me. It all depends on what you, the client, wishes. I can also train your internal staff to manage the programs on a daily or weekly basis.
The first step is to sit down with your management team, discuss your corporate business and marketing strategies, and make some initial assessments on the PPC marketing requirements. Then, I will develop a customized proposal for PPC marketingt. Typically, I'll setup Google or the PPC marketing vendor to directly bill the client....I never mark-up PPC marketing fees.”
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