How to Run your PPC Campaign Smoothly
All right, your PPC campaign checklist has all the boxes ticked. You’ve got the right keywords (don’t forget synonyms and phrases) and everything’s ready to go so you can just sit back and relax for six months. Are you crazy- Would you just open a sandwich store and go to sleep for six months? A PPC campaign is like any other business venture and needs ongoing management if it’s going to be effective.
Tracking the activity on each ad to see if it is productive and efficient is important. You can use tools like AdWords to help calculate the traffic percentage brought in by each advertising. You can then check information from your web host to find out what traffic makes sales. A click sometimes does not make a sale and, if that’s the case, could be viewed as just a waste of money.
Keyword ads that aren’t effective at producing sales are a drain on your resources. Idle keywords could be replaced by those which are more useful. Keywords that bring traffic, but don’t lead to sales, cost money without giving you a return. You’ll pay for every click, even the ones that don’t produce a sale for you.
You should quickly examine ineffective ads. Check the ad is put together correctly, first. Then Do a quick search and see if it’s in the first five to ten pages of a search. If it’s not, you need to take that ad back to the drawing board. If it is showing up on the search, see if the keyword is the issue- you might have a dud keyword!
Most people want the more popular keywords - it does make some sense to go with what’s popular. But fad keywords are nonspecific and are used to start a search, not make a sale. The popular keyword is usually a last resort by people who haven’t done their homework, or the first choice of a novice.
You’ve got to be able to think like the Average Joe out there. Think about using a search engine yourself and the sorts of things you type and then read. Look at the other ads that appear on your search and consider whether or not they work better than yours do? What sites are other ads associated with and can those sites work for you?
Careful monitoring of your results is an important management step. You need to stay on top of what works for you and what doesn’t! Keywords are a resource and any resource that doesn’t perform needs to be corrected or removed. Choosing the right words is one thing, but it’s only part of the job, making them productive is when you really earn you cash. Much kudos to you if you get it right the first time, but many campaigns need to be tweaked and tightened on their way to success.
