A First-Timer’s Guide to Launching a PPC Campaign

Nowadays you can see that business is getting competitive. You need to apply valuable strategies in order to gain a competitive advantage.

And, when marketing your business online, you have dozens of options. Most of these options are cost-effective. One of the best options you can use is Pay per click (PPC) campaign. When you are dealing with PPC, you can gain immediate results compare than using SEO. No need to wait for months.

According to World Lead about 50% more in conversion from PPC compared with organic traffic. Additionally, when you are on the top 3 of the advertising space, you will get about 46% of the clicks, which is truly much higher. These only implies that PPC is getting more attractive.

Although this is a cost-effective option, its implementation can be complicated. But when you know the game, you can gain a competitive advantage.

In maximizing the quality score which is used by Google in rating the relevancy of ads, there is a need to have a strategy. It must be an effective one. Luck, gut feeling, and your expertise at guesswork won’t be doing you any favors here.

But that’s why this guide exists. This is ensuring that even a first-timer like you is capable of launching a PPC campaign.

Start by brainstorming

When it comes to dealing with the Adwords campaign, it is necessary to start with comprehensive research about your competitors

it is necessary to search for your customers. Know what they want? What they are finding? And how they are searching for your business.

It is possible to start a campaign even without doing research. You can pick -up the keywords you want. But, you cannot achieve the maximum results of your campaign.

When you’re done with customer research, you can be familiar with your target market profile. This is what you are going to use when you are going to search for your target keywords. Always make sure that you will use your customers’ preferences when finding your target keywords.

If you are not considering who your customers are, you can end spending more money on your ad campaigns gaining nothing, or no conversions.

Therefore, you must truly start getting your target market data in order that you can create a specific buyer persona. By having a complete profile of your target market you can able to start brainstorming which involves analyzing if what keywords or key phrases can fit your buyer persona.

The first keywords list that you can come up with is the results of considering all the data of your customers or your buyers’ persona. This keywords or key phrases answer the query if how they can find your website or business. It will answer what search query they will use as they search for your business.

These keywords can include your brand and its target location. You will also consider the volume of search.

When it comes to brainstorming, you need to consider all the data that you found out as long as it is relevant. Analyze fully the keywords that you come up based on the identified buyer persona.

Make use of keyword tools

Do you have a keyword list? If yes, you are now ready with the next move. This is now the time to find out if your keywords are truly valuable that you need to treasure for your AdWords campaign.

For the next step, you need to make use of the keyword tool, you can opt for Keyword Planner for keyword research. It is vital to invalidating your keyword list. By using the Keyword Planner you can find out about data of your search volume, the trends, then the CPC and the competition data.

You simply need this keyword tool to find out the opportunities over your keyword list. This is awesome in validating the demand for your keywords.

Additionally, it will give more keyword suggestions for expanding your list. All you need to do is to enter the keywords within the ‘Find new keywords’ section. For your keyword seed list enter forecast and search volume section. You can either enter the list or upload the CSV file.

When you are validating your keywords be sure that you set the right location. You can set it down to a localized location depending on your buyer persona location i.e. it can include a state, city, and country.

Using the Google keyword tool is easy and the best way to validate your list. It provides you with CPC  data or suggested bid. Those keywords that are highly competitive have much higher CPC compared to low competition keywords.

Keep in mind that you need to consider all the keywords in your list even those having low volume.
Make sure that you analyze all the keywords within your list. Don’t take for granted even those with poor volume.

Structuring Your Keywords

When already have gathered the data about your target keywords, the next thing that you need to do is to organize and structure your targeted keywords. This is also the time in making sure that they are relevant.

It can be much easier in measuring the performance of ad groups when they are organized and more relevant. It is ideal to create a more specific ad group.

When it comes to keywords grouping, make sure that you consider the changes in users search intent from broad (generic keywords) to a more specific keyword i.e. for “smartphone”. is much lower compared to a much specific keyword like “iPhone X”.

Negative Keyword Inclusion launching a PPC campaign

As mentioned before, when it comes to organizing your keywords you have to consider user’s intent, that is why it is vital to include a much more specific keyword that a broad one.

At first glance, you might decide and pull up all those keywords with high search volume, CPC and competition. You might perceive that these keywords are of much value compared to poor search volume keywords.

Yet, this is not enough, as mentioned before you truly need to go down with your buyer persona and get the most specific keywords. For example, if you are an event organizer for the wedding, using “wedding planner “ is much ideal than using “event planner”

You might wonder that event planner has a much higher search volume compared to wedding planner but, one thing that you need to consider again as mentioned before is the use of search intent. If the landing page is talking about wedding planning and your user is landed with the keyword event planner since they are looking for an event organizer, you end up losing this prospect customer.

If you will use that this can lead to weakening the quality of your ad’s score. Therefore it is vital to flag it as the negative keyword.

Figure Out Your Budget

It is not enough to be prepared with your keywords only. You must also figure out how much will your budget be.

Since you have able to see the bid data, it’s time to see if you truly afford the campaign.

In working with your budget, you must align these to your keywords data wherein your keywords must be relevant to your users’ searches. You must also understand the user intent or familiar why your users are using these keywords. Keep in mind also to analyze if your ad will be attractive to your prospect. Will they click and be able to buy from it?

And if you are clear with the answers above, it’s now time to go on with this question: Using the keyword you have chosen, can you opt for advertising it?

Average CPC varies per industry and there are other elements that cause CPC to increase, therefore, you truly need to ask if you can afford it. In creating a plan make sure that you will consider adding the maximum CPC and your willingness to pay. In this, you can avoid the scenario of overspending. After all, we wanted to get the maximum results of our ads.

Solve also the average profit margin, so that you will know if your investment in PPC or for example working with Adwords is profitable.

Do some competitor research

One of the best move when it comes to dealing with PPC is working with competitor research. By knowing how your competitor works, you will also have an idea on how your competitor spend plus the keywords that they are using.

If you are still having a hard time choosing what’s the best keywords to use and how to spend for this, competitor research is the answer.

Did you know that doing this research is much easier by using tools like Semrush, it has its own section that can discuss your competitors’ ads.

You are at advantage also if you know how your competitors move. You can learn a lot when you are analyzing your competitors PPC campaign. It is also ideal if you check how your direct competitors are doing.

You can also use a competitive research tool like Spyfu which shows how your competitors are positioning their ads.

In Adwords, you will likely know about the competition through Auction insights. You will know that you there is a competition when it comes to your main keywords.

Therefore, when you have identified if who are your competitors, you will learn their profitable keywords. You will also see how they are aggressive with their campaign. What’s awesome about competitor research is that you don’t need to go with testing. You have the real picture of the competition. With this you able to position your ads.

Write the Ad Copy

Now that you have finalized your keywords and budget, it is now time to write for your advertising copy. What are the right words to use to craft the best ad?

It is now time to consider all the data you have gathered and put yourself into the buyer persona. If you will be the customer, will you be attracted to this ad? It’s just a short ad but it can bring big impact especially with sales.

You must make sure that it can have a higher ROI. This ad copy must be specifically created for your target audience in order that it can have high clicks and conversion. Personalized ads are more appealing than the generic one.

According to CMO Council, marketers of about 43% shows that personalization has increased the conversions of the ad.
Additionally, Autopilot also featured that consumer is 4 times likely to act with customized offers.

When it comes to personalization it must not go down to a very specific detail like having a customer’s name on each dynamic ads.

As you are done with the keyword and audience research, you will notice that it is very helpful in creating your ad copy.

Keep in kind also that PPC ads have very limited space, you have to make sure that this ad is compelling punchy enough. The following components that are included in your ad copy are headline, description, and URL.

In writing ad copy make sure that it is attractive and irresistible. One ideal thing that you need to add a Unique Selling Proposition or known as USP. Just be clear on delivering your products and service expectations. What’s your unique offer when they click your ad link.

Why you need to add USP in your ad:

• Adding your USP let your prospect to filtered and turns out to attract the most qualified users
• USP becomes the ultimate reason why customers wanted to click your ad or engage with your business. They will set aside the pricing, instead, they will only consider your unique offers.
• Get an increasing sales and conversions

In adding your USP you are simply attracting the right customers in the landing page. With this, you can convert more customers.

If your missing your USP, it’s time to make one. And here is how you can come up with your proposition:

• What your key features compare to your competitors
• Why there is a must to buy goods or services from your business?
• Simply, what’s unique about your offers?

And ideally, to come up with your USP, you just need to find out the gap within the offer of your competitors.
Aside from your USP, you need to make sure that  ad copy is:

• Valuable. It must not be about the pricing. Your ads must contain what your customers can get. Your offers’ value must be highlighted on this. It is one of the attractive element that your audience wanted to see.
• Believable. Be transparent, feature an ad that offers its true worth. You must deliver the offer that you have promised. Avoid using words that are unbelievable
• Trust. It is ideal that you have added guarantees or trust symbol if possible, just make sure that you can deliver it or you have earned it.
• Findable. To make your ads findable, you must add keywords or target keywords on it. Avoid keyword stuffing on it since remember ads have limited space.

Craft powerful CTA

According to WordStream, they have discovered that the top performing ads included: ‘Get and now’ . These are highly actionable words.

In developing the Call to Action or CTA you must craft words that you wanted your customers to do with your ads. What you wanted them to do after they have seen your ad?

Design and Optimize a Landing Page

So people click on your ads. Now what? It’s time to create an awesome landing page. You must have a page that answers all the needs of your customers. And it must answer its an expectation.
it is ideal if you create a specific page as the landing page and don’t just a homepage.

The relevance of your ads and landing page which is a valuable experience which is highly recommended in order to get a higher conversion and additionally it can lead to improvement of the quality score.

So, when it comes  to optimization of the landing pages, these are for you:

• Make sure that your landing page contains relevant keywords same with your ads in this way you can increase the quality score
• Content must be relevant to the target audience. Do not write for general content and using vague words
• Check your competitor research when you are writing for your content. You must find the gap within your competitors content.
• Add a relevant visual content
• Optimize the landing page in terms of its title, description, headlines and loading speed

Paying attention to user experience is key here. You must spend the ads according to your expectation and not to waste for money.

Additionally, because people won’t stick around for a whole 10 seconds just waiting for your site to load. They’ll flit elsewhere.

Remember that if you got a lot of clicks to be wasted you will simply pay for a lot of it.

In Launching a PPC Campaign

And now that you have to build your campaign, and you’re finally just working on conversions, your work isn’t over yet. Because your campaigns are now live, you must constantly monitor their performance as you collect data.

If you gathered better data, simply adjust your ads and be able to maximize it for increased conversion.

And don’t forget to focus on your conversion, after all the main goal of this campaign is to get more sales.