Pay per click (PPC) advertising can be instrumental in driving traffic to your website and acquiring new customers. While many small businesses use PPC, it’s still a tactic they’ve yet to see an ROI (return on investment). That’s often due to not having the piece in place to launch a PPC campaign successfully.

So, what do you need to do before you start one?

1. Develop a Strategy

First, you’ll need to define your PPC strategy. What results or goals do you expect or want? Depending on those, it will inform how you deploy a campaign. Building a strategy should include:

• Determining the products or services to promote
• Defining what action you want prospects to take (e.g., buy a product, request a quote, etc.)
• Who you plan to target (e.g., locations, demographics)
• What your budget is
• The duration of the campaign
• What you need to set up the campaign (e.g., keywords, ad copy, etc.)

Once you have a strategy, you’ll need to work on the logistics.

2. Determine the Keywords to Target

The most important part of your PPC campaign is the keywords you’ll target. These are the terms you believe your ideal customers will be searching. Depending on your industry, keywords can be highly competitive and expensive. You want to select keywords that are:

• Relevant to your business
• Have mid to low competitiveness (i.e., competitiveness means how many companies are bidding on those keywords)
• Have enough search volume that your ads will display

In addition to keywords to bid on, you should also note any negative keywords. This is a list of terms to exclude from your ads so that you don’t get a lot of unqualified traffic.

You’ll group keywords by ad group, and each of these requires ad copy.

3. Write the Ad Copy

Ad copy should be persuasive and demonstrate your company’s ability to solve the searcher’s problem. Strong headlines are a must to catch the attention of users. Ad content should engage your audience so they immediately understand how you can help them. Including the keywords is necessary. Other inclusions would be location (if applicable), social proof (e.g., star ratings, reviews, awards), company name, and action-focused verbs.

4. Align the Ad Copy with a Landing Page

Once the person clicks your ad, where will they go? If they land on your home page, you’ll likely see minimal conversions. You’ve created an expectation with your ad copy, so make sure the landing page aligns with this. It should mimic the narrative in the ad and include a conversion action, which could be a form completion or an actual product or service purchase. Misalignment here will cost you!

5. Set Up Conversion Tracking

To understand the impact of a PPC campaign, you’ll want to include conversion tracking on your website. By doing this on your landing page, you’ll be able to attribute ads to leads and conversions, providing a clear view of ROI.

6. Insert Geographical Settings

Most small businesses that use PPC campaigns only serve specific cities, areas, ZIP codes, or states. If that’s you, turn on these settings. It will keep people outside your area from clicking on your ads.

7.Finalize Your Budget

Now that you know what keywords you’re going to bid on and their costs, you should finalize the budget. You need to spend enough to outbid others, but balance that with what you can afford. Budget is also something you shouldn’t set and forget. As you learn what ads are most effective, you’ll want to adjust spending.

PPC Campaigns: Easier with a Strategic Advisor

PPC campaigns are complex and have lots of moving parts. Partnering with an expert like our team means you don’t have to get into the specifics. We’ll define your strategy and all the other things before launching. Then we monitor and report on the results. Learn more about our PPC solutions today.