How to Get Started with PPC Advertising (Updated)

PPC advertising is a great way to get traffic to your site or blog. However, it takes time and effort to build a successful campaign. How do you start? What should you consider before launching a campaign?

PPC stands for pay per click. This type of advertising allows advertisers to bid on keywords related to their products. When someone clicks on a link from a search result page, they are redirected to the advertiser’s landing page. The advertiser pays only when a visitor clicks on the ad.

You’ll need to choose a keyword to get started with PPC advertising. Then, you’ll want to create ads that match those keywords. Once you’ve done that, you’ll need to decide whether to advertise on Google AdWords or Bing Ads.

PPC advertising is a great way to get traffic to your site. To start using PPC advertising, you should know some basics before you begin.

PPC stands for pay per click. This means that advertisers pay Google or Bing whenever someone clicks their ads. The advertiser pays only when the ad is clicked. In return, they receive free impressions (the number of times their ad appears) and clicks (when someone clicks on their ad).

You’ll need to use a keyword research tool to help you choose a keyword to get started with PPC advertising. Then, you’ll need to create a search campaign. Once you’ve done that, you’ll need to decide whether to bid on keywords (based on keyword match type such as exact match etc.) or campaigns. Finally, you’ll need to monitor your account regularly and refine your bid strategy to ensure a successful campaign. Remember that you can manually change your keyword bid to help improve your ad position.

I’m sure you’ve seen several Google Ads while browsing the internet. You may also have heard other entrepreneurs talk about their Google ads. Are you wondering how to set up a successful PPC campaign?

Are PPC ads even worth the effort? The answer is yes! One study suggests that 33% of people will click on paid adverts if it answers their search query. This article says that according to WordStream, 65% of all clicks made by users who intend to make a purchase go to paid ads.

Business owners and entrepreneurs have various options for marketing their businesses. Many options cost little more than time (like content marketing or search engine optimisation) and are still affordable, even if outsourced. Despite the cost-effective SEO option, over 70% of business owners in a 2013 survey preferred to cast their budgets towards PPC.

Running a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign for your company can affect your bottom line. PPC is a golden opportunity to generate a lot of revenue for your company. Set up correctly, you can establish consistent ROI and grow your company.

You can increase traffic and conversion rates by creating PPC ad campaigns. Setting a campaign requires constant monitoring. You’ll know what’s working, what’s not, and how to improve by tracking different metrics.

Use PPC advertising to get targeted placement in search engines and niche websites. You can use Google Ads, Bing Ads, or Facebook ads. These are just a few of the many PPC ad networks. You’ll need to use Google Display Network or similar for your display ads to ensure a seamless experience.

Unlike SEO, which is long-term, PPC is immediate! These ad network websites give you access to tools (e.g. a keyword tool, etc.) to track various aspects of your adverts.

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As a rule of thumb, you need to invest in the right tool to help you with your campaign. With the right tool for your PPC marketing/search engine marketing, you can track your advert copy, CTA (call to action), target customer demographics, bidding strategy, clickthrough rate, app install, conversion tracking, etc. Study your conversion funnel to know what works, what does not and how to improve your effort.

Your ability to target and analyse your adverts will enable you to maximise your funds.

How Can You Set up a Successful PPC Campaign?

Plan

Do your research to find out your organic share of voice for the list of keyword suggestions you want to include in your paid search ad budget. If your site has a search function, check all the searches from the last quarter to learn what topics your site visitors are using on your site. Use your site’s Google Analytics and Google Search Console or data from your Google Ads dashboard to identify existing organic target keywords with a high click-through rate.

Analyse your competitive landscape to learn who your main paid search competitors are, what they’re doing that makes their PPC efforts successful, and how aggressive your campaign should compete.

Set your goals, marketing budget, monthly budget and KPIs for measuring your campaign performance. For instance, if the PPC strategy’s primary goal is to generate leads, your KPIs should be the number of sales- and marketing-qualified conversions you generate through paid search, plus how much those individual leads should cost.

Execute

Build your adverts, keyword list, location extensions, exact keywords and respective landing pages around your campaign goals in the campaign setting. Adverts that make concrete promises attract people. But make sure you live up to these promises in your adverts.

Don’t send all the traffic from your adverts to a generic page, e.g. your home page. Otherwise, they’ll feel frustrated and bounce. Your adverts should take searchers to specifically created pages on your website that you have built and optimised. The closer the match between your page content and your site user’s/visitor’s search intent, the higher your conversion rate.

Reiterate search terms and your brand’s unique selling point from the ad in the page header and body text.

Optimise

Don’t just set your campaign on autopilot after you launch it. A successful PPC advert needs constant tweaking. After running your campaign for a while, it’s time to optimise it to avoid wasting your ad funds.

At the campaign level, identify negative keywords and topics that show high impressions but low CTR. Consider tagging each as a negative keyword. That means your ad won’t appear when people search that keyword. Weed out and discard any low-performing keywords and ad groups, and reallocate your funds to high-performing advert groups.

Avoid broad match targeting because your adverts will appear on relevant variations, even if they’re not on your lists. Remember that adverts targeting buyer-intent topics will have better ROI than a top-of-funnel campaign.

The following are the stages of creating a PPC advertising campaign. Click To Tweet

My Favourite Tips for a Successful Paid Ad Campaign

Here are my favourite tips to ensure you know how to run PPC ads (or Facebook Ads) that earn your company more exposure, in-market leads, and even pay for itself.

• Base your ads on the products and solutions you are selling. Set up a separate campaign for each of your products or services. For best results, each product or service must have its unique target keywords and landing page to direct your ads.
• If your goods or services are on a single page, creating a separate campaign for each is still good. It will enable you to analyse, track, and adjust your campaign drive.
• Is your product or service targeted to a particular region or country? Some PPC ad networks have geographic targeting features to enable you to focus your adverts on a specific target audience segment. These days most people use mobile devices to visit websites. So create separate ads and landing pages for mobile and desktop devices.
• Ensure you optimise your website for mobile devices. Create separate adverts for text and display ads with their respective landing pages. It will help you analyse and track which is performing best. Then you can divide more of your advertising budget to the best-performing campaign.
• Ensure that your ad copy (the text of your advert) is simple and enticing. Include your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and use interesting calls to action.
• Suppose you have a sales promotion, including promotional prices, discounts, etc. These will help to attract your potential customers to your advert. It would help if you guided them on what to do next to get your product or service.
• Have separate groups of relevant keywords for your goods or services. Use words from each group in crafting the ad copy.
• Create a separate list of negative PPC keywords. These are those that you don’t want to trigger your adverts. Based on your campaign data, any word or phrase that wastes your funds is negative.
• Please do not set up your ad campaign and forget it! Use the tools available on your ad network to track your ad campaigns daily.
• Review time of day and day of week performance and adjust your campaign drive as required. Include all relevant tracking codes in your PPC ads to track paid-search visitors. Also, create and review A/B tests to know which of your Google ads is performing well and not.

Frequently Asked Questions

Below are some frequently asked questions I receive on getting started with a PPC advertising campaign.

What Is the First Step of a PPC Ad Campaign?

Generally, a PPC ad campaign’s first step is creating a landing page for your ads. This landing page should be optimised for conversions. However, I usually advise my clients to make setting the goals and KPIs for their campaign the first step.

How Do I Create a PPC Plan?

Creating a PPC plan (Pay-Per-Click) can be highly complex for non-PCC experts. This is why I strongly recommend outsourcing it to professionals. Professional PPC management services help companies drive traffic to their websites and generate leads through paid advertising programs, such as Google Adwords, in which you are only charged a fee when a user clicks the ad.

The first step to creating a PPC plan is understanding what keywords you want to target. Then, you need to determine how much money you want to spend per month. Next, you should decide which ad network to use. Finally, you need to set up your budget (i.e. your daily budget or your total campaign budget).

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What Are the Stages of Creating a PPC Campaign?

The following are the stages of creating a PPC advertising campaign:

• Based on your campaign type, set your goals and KPIs.
• Set up your account on your preferred PPC advertising platform. The setup process may vary slightly from one platform to another.
• Choose keywords and ad groups. You’ll need to use the right tool to help your keyword selection.
• Create/optimise your landing pages
• Write your text ads for your search network or create banners for your display campaign.
• Measure your PPC advertising campaign results
• Optimise your campaigns

How Long Does It Take to Set up a PPC Campaign?

In most cases, setting up a PPC campaign takes about 30 minutes. The first step is to create a new campaign account. Then, you need to set up keywords for your business. Next, you must choose which ad group you want to use for your target audience. Finally, it would help if you created some adverts to add to the ad groups.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, PPC advertising is a great way to reach potential customers who may be searching for what you offer. But it takes some work to set up and run a successful campaign.

These are my top tips for setting up successful paid ad campaigns. Do you want to start a PPC advertising campaign but don’t know how to begin? Want to learn more about PPC ads and how you can use them to grow your business? Contact us, and we’ll be glad to help with any aspects of your digital marketing strategy.

PPC advertising is one of the most effective ways to generate leads and sales. However, it takes some effort to get started, so we hope this article helps you get off to a great start!

I hope you find this information helpful. Please use the buttons below to share this article with your friends. See you next time.

Related Article(s)

• 8 Mistakes to Avoid When Doing Keyword Research
• 5 Facts about PPC Advertising That Will Improve Your Business
• PPC or SEO – Which Do You Need?
• What Are the Types of Digital Marketing?
• What Is Digital Marketing?

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