Getting Started With Google AdWords & Pay Per Click Marketing

Build Out Keyword Sets Before you can get started with PPC, the first thing you need to do is determine what keywords you are going to bid on. Since you have no historical data, you will need to run some small tests to determine what works and what doesn’t work for your business. Initially, you will want to focus your test on smaller groups of keywords that are likely to perform well. When researching keywords to bid on, think like your customers. What words might they be using to search for. Keywords that are intent related or product specific are going to be some of the best words to start with, so you’ll definitely want to spend some time on those. The AdWords keyword tool is effective in helping you come up with keyword ideas, but make sure to review the keywords carefull and pick those that are specific to the products and services that you offer. As you can see in the image below, if I were selling bedding on my website, bidding on words like bed or bed and bath are probably a bad idea, however, bedding linens might be a better choice.  

Create Your Ads

After you have your keyword sets picked out, you will need to build out your ad messaging. The reason you group your keywords in to sets is so you can create specific ad copy that speaks to those keywords. For example, I wouldn’t want to run the same ad for SEO related keywords and content marketing keywords. Make sure that you follow the ad creation guidelines provided by Google and that you include a call to action to entice the click-thru.

Create Your Landing Pages

Just how you need to create separate ads for each keyword set, you will want to create a unique landing page for each keyword set as well. Same idea as above, you wouldn’t want to send SEO traffic to a content marketing page, so make sure you have a page for each topic and make sure you work to increase your quality score through premier content that’s relevant to your ads and keyword sets.

Keep It Super Simple

When you get started with pay per click marketing, you will see that there are so many options when customizing a campaign. One word of advice for beginners, you need to keep your campaign as simple as possible until you get a few campaigns under your belt. For example, setting up day parting strategies… not your best usage of time 🙂 A better use of your time would be working on messaging and making sure that your landing page is set up to convert the visitors you are going to be sending to it.

Start Slow

One of the things you need to do is set up a daily budget. This is a safety net that you need to put in place to make sure you don’t blow hundreds or even thousands of dollars in a short period of time. I learned this lesson on my first campaign when I lost over $600 in less than five hours. Another tip, make sure you check in on your account at least a few times a day to make sure everything looks good. In the above example, I set up the campaign and went to school and when I came home had blown a chunk of change.

Campaign Tweaking & Optimization

After you have some good data, you will want to start tweaking your campaign and optimizing it to perform at its highest level. That is what I will discuss in my next PPC post probably rolling some time next week, so stay tuned! If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to drop a comment below.]]>