There is no one right way to create pay per click ads but there are best practices that you should follow. Our philosophy is that there are 5 elements that are crucial when creating an ad; you need to include:

• the top keyword from the ad group for relevancy
• a strong call to action (buy, shop, sign up and so forth)
• a benefit and/or feature that reveals why people should become a customer of yours
• an offer; this could be free shipping, a sales price or some other perk for shopping. If you are not an e-commerce site, the offer could be a free gift or a free demo.
• the relevant destination URL

When creating pay per click ads, it’s important to search your keywords to see what your competitors’ ads are saying – so you can be different.

Come up with something original that will grab searchers’ attention away from all the other ads that look similar to one another. Avoid repeating the same thing over and over and be sure to clearly describe what the searcher can expect if they click.

Be sure to test elements within your copy in your pay per click campaign to move the needle in terms of click through rate.

These strategies include testing:

• a registered trademark symbol if there are lots of resellers and you are the OEM
• a vanity URL to increase relevancy
• the placement of offers in the headline versus in the description line
• ad extensions that allow people to find out even more about the business, such as products, sitelinks, phone numbers or locations

The possibilities are limitless! Still wondering how to write ad copy for your pay per click campaign? Contact The Search Guru today.

It’s a great question to ask, because strategically generating your keyword list is important. Not only are you paying for these keywords, but you are also using them to drive traffic to your site in hopes that the visitor will be taking the desired action. It is crucial that you do not bid on keywords that are not relevant to your business because they will carry a high cost and they will not grow your business.

Best keyword research tool choices for your pay per click campaign:

The best resources to find keywords are your own site, the AdWords keyword tool, Google Analytics and, my favorite, “search complete.” Here are more details about these recommended keyword research tool options:

• Your site is full of relevant keywords that you should add to your list: branded terms; terms used to describe your business, and the brands and products you carry; specific product lines within those brands; and so forth.
• The AdWords keyword tool is a free tool that is in the AdWords interface that can help you develop keywords and show you what kind of traffic to expect on those keywords. Entering in a generic term or a simple brand term will bring back a long list of suggested keywords. Only take those keywords that are relevant to your business or products you sell.
• Also be on the lookout for keywords you do not want in your campaigns. These keywords will be useful when creating your negative keyword list. Another place to get keyword ideas is Google Analytics. Look at the keywords that drove traffic organically to your site and see if you want to add them to your campaigns. Cut out anything that didn’t get at least a few visits because they probably aren’t worthwhile.
• The final keyword research tool suggestion is to use the search complete feature in Google. Navigate to Google.com and begin typing in a brand or product that you are researching. Google will suggest keywords that are closely related to what you are typing in an attempt to complete your query. Those can be very valuable keywords to put in your campaigns.

Next steps in your pay per click campaign:

Take all of these ideas and start creating keyword lists in Excel. Group the keywords in logical groups called Ad Groups. This will better help you manage your keywords and write relevant ads.

Need more help with your pay per click campaign? Contact The Search Guru today!

The first step in setting up AdWords campaigns is to create an AdWords account. If you already have an email you use for Gmail, Google Analytics and other Google products, you can use that account.

There are a few best practices for setting up pay per click advertisement campaigns. If you are only marketing one product, such as leads, you will only need one campaign. If you plan on bidding on brand terms, we recommend having a separate brand campaign so that you can manage it separately.

If you have multiple products, though, then strategically create each individual pay per click campaign.

Some of the common ways to organize pay per click advertisement strategies is by product or product type (i.e., jeans, shoes), by brand (i.e., Kleenex, Puffs), by location (i.e., multiple locations, international businesses) or by importance (i.e., high volume keywords, low volume keywords).

There are many different ways you can formulate your plan for campaigns so do what makes the most sense for your business. Once you have created your pay per click advertisement campaigns, it is important to ask yourself questions about how you want your ads to be seen.

Pay per click ads by location:

Are you a local business? Target locally. Do you operate in only certain states? Block the states you don’t do business in.

Pay per click ads by language:

If your site is in English and your ads are in English, you must target English. Targeting Portuguese will not translate your ads; instead, it will show English ads to Portuguese speakers, which will not be very successful for you.

Pay per click ads by network:

You can run on Google.com, Google Partners and the Display Network. We recommend targeting Google.com and the Google Partners together and running in the Display Network separately.

Pay per click ads by device:

If you do not have a good mobile site or do not desire to show ads to mobile users, block those devices.

Pay per click ads by bidding options:

This is going to be dependent on how much time and effort you can put towards your Adwords campaigns. Manual CPC is for advertisers that want to adjust bids manually and be more hands on. The other types of bidding are based on your conversion data. This option puts your success in Google’s hands. There have been successes and failures with this type of bidding option but typically it works well for advertisers that get more than a handful of conversions per day.

Recommendations for the delivery method and scheduling of your pay per click campaign:

We recommend standard if your budget is low and you cannot be aggressive. Accelerated will show your ads more frequently and will more than likely require more budget. The scheduling feature is where you can day-part your campaigns based on business hours or best converting days of the week if your pay per click advertisement budget is limited.

Contact The Search Guru today if you need help with your pay per click campaign!

If you have never run an AdWords campaign, you may be wondering if you should – and the answer is often yes. AdWords can be a powerful and successful tool for many different business models.

Here’s why. The beauty of pay per click marketing, as opposed to other forms of media advertising, is that search is a response channel. People initiate searches because they have a need, want or interest. Therefore, when someone sees your ad, he is already engaged because he initiated the search.

When using Google AdWords, you are no longer speaking to hundreds of millions of people hoping that some of them want what you sell. Instead, all the people you are speaking to are already interested in what you sell; therefore, search marketing typically drives a higher ROI than other forms of advertising.

More great features to take advantage of with your AdWords campaign management

When you are advertising on TV or radio, or in print, changing or editing a message may not be easy or quick. With pay per click marketing, though, you control the message and it can be changed at any time with any frequency.

This means that, when using Google AdWords, editing an ad can be done in minutes. This is excellent news whenever your ad is not resonating with your customers or a promotion is expiring.

As part of your Google AdWords management, tweak your message based on a query to satisfy the searcher’s want, need or interest.

There are limitless ways you can tailor ad copy to a query to engage and connect with a searcher. For example, let’s say that someone is searching for a particular brand of a product that you don’t carry. With the right AdWords message, you can entice someone to switch to your product by giving those customers a special “switcher” deal that is relevant and attractive.

Bonus pay per click management tip from the AdWords expert

When using Google AdWords, you have the ability to report in real time and the range of reports is incredible. Being able to run performance reports for any date range, including the current day, and discovering what is working and what is not is really quite amazing.

In addition, you can run those reports off many dimensions, even very specific ones such as performance by geographic region or performance by hour of day. You can use these reports to make decisions, such as boosting your bids during high performing hours or blocking states that are driving spend but not revenue.

If this has piqued your interest about AdWords, The Search Guru offers pay per click consulting as well as full service pay per click management. Contact the AdWords expert if you want to see what The Search Guru can do for your business!

The Search Guru Holiday Guide to PPC Campaign Management will help you answer these questions and more to ensure your Google AdWords campaigns are locked and loaded before the busy holiday shopping season.

Holiday PPC Marketing Tip #1: Consider your customers.

If your company is primarily B2B or does not see high demand during the holidays, you may consider pausing or day parting your PPC campaign during those days to save budget and avoid window shoppers. For example, someone searching for “budgeting software” on Christmas Eve is more likely to be stressed about how much they spent on gifts, rather than being in buying mode.

If your company is B2C, the amount of planning you do should be a direct reflection of your revenue expectations. The more your company relies on sales from the fourth quarter of the year, the more importance you should place on your holiday pay per click marketing.

Holiday PPC Marketing Tip #2: Study last year’s numbers.

Ask yourself these questions about last year’s pay per click management:

• When did my impressions begin rising? It may have been as early as October, especially if you are a retailer for décor rather than gifts.
• What days did I spend the most? Prepare your budget around those days so you can ensure full visibility.
• What were my biggest sales days?
• How many days before Christmas Eve did my returns start diminishing?

All of these indicators will guide you to create a PPC campaign management calendar—marking when to start, when to push up, when to pull back and when to completely pause your pay per click management.

Holiday PPC Marketing Tip #3: Choose the right keywords.

It might be your first instinct to add “Christmas gifts” to your pay per click marketing because your site has tons of gifts at great prices. However, generic terms like these will drive up your costs and are more research-centered than purchase-centered.

If you do choose to add holiday-related keywords, be strategic about it. A keyword like “holiday deals on 10 megapixel cameras” may be just what someone is looking for. Make sure you have a large keyword list for your top selling products, and don’t be afraid to get specific in terms of colors, sizes, etc. Shoppers will get specific because their kids are specific!

Holiday PPC Marketing Tip #4: Develop a copy strategy.

This refers to not only the message in your copy but also your timing. The message is necessary and the timing is critical. Will you offer free shipping? Can you guarantee delivery? How much of a discount are you willing to offer to win the sale? All of these elements are necessary if you want the high conversion rates—but are critical at different times.

Free shipping has become almost the norm for holiday shopping. If you don’t offer it, consider sales lost. If you do offer it—congratulations, your ad will look like every other ad on Black Friday. So, what else are you going to offer? Guaranteed delivery becomes more crucial the closer it gets to December 25. If you are able to offer it, run that message as close as you can to the end, and you may just be a procrastinating shopper’s savior.

These are important business decisions that have to be made to ensure the success of your pay per click marketing.

Bonus: Holiday PPC Marketing Tips for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

These two days are tricky because, every year, advertisers are getting more savvy and strategic with their pay per click management. Here are some tips to be one step ahead of the competition:

• Consider a pre-Black Friday deal. People will be shopping early, clicking early, but waiting to buy. Give them something now that they can’t pass up.
• Have specific copy running for Black Friday deals. Since all ads are subject to editorial review, load the copy as paused a few days prior so it won’t be stuck in editorial for hours.
• Monitor your budget throughout the day and reallocate it to the campaigns getting the sales.
• If you don’t get as many sales as you would have liked to on these days, remember there are probably some latent conversions that will trickle in. Also, you have 20 days or so after Black Friday to change up your offer or to be more aggressive.

These suggestions are just scratching the surface of what you can do with your holiday PPC campaign management. The Search Guru can audit your account and give you recommendations on the best course of action for your particular business. In addition, we offer full-service pay per click management. As a full-service client, these optimizations and much more are part of the routine management of your account.

If you have been running a PPC campaign for any amount of time, you know that “set it and forget it” will not get you very far. There is constant and meticulous refining and pruning involved in pay per click management.

Even though there are a slew of reports available in the Adwords Report Center to help you with pay per click management, there are some reports (and additional columns) that you may not know about or don’t know how to use once they are run. These reports can help you uncover profitable secrets that your keyword reports may be hiding.

What is share of voice – also known as impression share – and why do I care?

Share of voice (SOV) is a metric on the PPC campaign and account reports. This means that, of the impressions available for your particular keyword mix, your account captured this percentage of them. A “good” share of voice can be subjective, based on campaign structures and settings.

Branded PPC campaign

Branded campaigns should always have a high share of voice—somewhere in the 80s or higher. If your brand campaign is lower than that, more than likely your impressions are being hijacked and you didn’t even know it. After all, you may think that, if you are reporting 1,000 impressions, there were 1,000 queries that day.

Run an hourly campaign report to see which hours your share of voice is the lowest. During the lowest times, some less-than-ethical affiliates may be using day parting in a way that harms your business.

Let’s say that your company is in Florida. These affiliates may activate their campaigns from 6 p.m. EST until early the next morning, siphoning off traffic while you aren’t in the office. Or, they may be geo targeting every state BUT Florida; you’ll see your ad because you’re in Florida, but searchers in the other 49 states won’t. To combat the second tactic, run a geographic report on your terms.

You also may want to run a search query report on your brand. This will help to ensure you aren’t:

• opted into expanded broad match
• matching to terms that are completely irrelevant and dropping your rank and quality score

Non-branded PPC campaign

Non-branded campaign share of voice will vary based on budgets, quality score, rank and match types. Typically a “good” non-brand impression share is above 60%. If it’s lower, there are a few indicators:

Accelerated ad delivery: Your impression share may be higher in the early morning hours when you have the most budget. As your budget depletes, your campaign shows less until it’s dark. Running an hourly report will show you when your impression share starts to drop into the 40s and lower.

Standard ad delivery: You may be showing all day, but so infrequently that your impression share never gets above 50%. Try running an open budgets test for 7 days on accelerated. Determine the hours of highest conversions/profitability and choose a day parting strategy that suits your business.

Match types, rank and quality score: These are other performance indicators that will affect impression share. The lower quality and rank, the less you will show. Use match types, individual keyword bids, negative matches and copy testing to refine your quality score and improve rank. The investment will be time well spent.

So, this seems like a lot of work, time and know-how that you don’t have for pay per click management.

How can you ensure that you’re getting the best results possible out of your PPC campaign budgets?

The Search Guru can audit your account and give you recommendations on the best course of action for your particular business. In addition, we offer full-service pay per click management. As a full-service client, these optimizations and much more are part of the routine management of your account.

Share of Voice (Impression Share): share of voice is a metric that represents the percentage of impressions where your ads were shown out of the total available impressions.

PPC Match Types: matching options that determine which Google searches can trigger your ads to appear. The four kinds of PPC match types are broad, phrase, exact and negative.

PPC Ad Rank: determines the position of your ad on the search engine results pages. PPC ad rank can be calculated by multiplying the keyword max bid and keyword quality score.

PPC Quality Score: a keyword or ad quality score is determined by the search engine and rewards relevancy between the keyword, ad copy, and landing page content. A good quality score results in lower cost per click and a higher ad rank in the search results.

Day Parting: day parting is a campaign setting where you create an ad schedule that specifies the hours and times of the day your ad is eligible to show.

PPC Geo-Targeting: with geo-targeting, you select countries or regions and the languages for your ad. Your ad will only appear to users located in the areas that you have selected.

PPC Accelerated Ad Delivery: with PPC accelerated ad delivery, you allow AdWords to display your ad as often as possible until the budget is reached.

PPC Standard Ad Delivery: with PPC standard ad delivery, you allow AdWords to spread your ad impressions throughout the day to ensure you don’t accrue all clicks too early.

Keyword Reports: keyword reports let you view all the statistics on keyword performance across all campaigns or selected campaigns for a selected date range.

PPC Expanded Broad Match: PPC expanded broad match is a system where AdWords automatically matches your keyword to additional terms that are not currently a part of your campaign.

If you’re ready to boost the effectiveness of your pay per click management and would like expert guidance, contact The Search Guru today!

What kind of reporting will you receive? Will you have total access to your account? How helpful will your account manager be? Another important factor you should consider is whether manual bidding or bid management software is used in managing your account. Not sure which is best for you? Below are some of the main differences between manual pay per click management and bid management software.

Is your account a priority? If you are planning to outsource your pay per click management, you want to know that your PPC account is a priority.

How much time is being spent on maintaining and optimizing your keywords and bids? If you have a question, is there someone you can talk to who is truly familiar with every aspect of your campaigns? A quality search company that employs experts to manually optimize your account will have someone who knows every detail of your account. They can make customized recommendations and are very familiar with your entire business model. A company that uses software to manage your account has little contact with your account. They use the software to run as many accounts as possible with as little manpower as possible.

Reactive versus proactive bidding: Bid management software updates your bids automatically based on your max cost per click and advertiser competition.

Because software can’t predict changes in competition or busy and slow times, frequently there is a lag in a bid being increased, resulting in lost ground against competitors. A search expert manually updating your bids will have more knowledge of your account and can update your bids in anticipation of a change.

Here’s an example. If July and August are your busy months, as shown by historical data, an expert can increase your bids leading up to that busy time and maintain a dominant bidding position all year long, without over-bidding.

Cost: A company that uses high quality bid management software is paying a lot of money to do so, either a large monthly fee or a percentage of all their paid search spend.

In order to make a profit, they drive up the final cost for the advertiser.

Personal Knowledge: Bid management software only goes so far as managing keyword bids.

So what about updating ad copy? Adding new keywords? Adding negative keywords? Setting up day parting and geo-targeting? Making entire account adjustments based on quality score? There are so many different aspects of a pay per click campaign, and having an account completely managed manually allows your account to be optimized as a whole. We believe the short and long term benefits of manual management far outweigh the shortcuts associated with bid management software.

Please contact us if you have any questions about which pay per click management strategy will work best for you!

If you’ve ever planted a garden, you know that choosing and planting the seeds you want is not enough to yield the barrels of fresh produce you are expecting. Careful and regular tending to your garden is needed to check proper growth and ensure no outside factors are hurting your garden.

Pay per click is a lot like a garden. There is plenty of thought and careful planning that goes into the set-up of a paid search account and in selecting proper keywords and ad copy, but what happens after that? Does PPC become an afterthought or is it carefully tended to?

Best pay per click management

It’s a fact that properly tending to a PPC account is time consuming. Even an account that is set up with careful planning and research won’t reach its potential if it is neglected. Regular effort is needed to ensure your keyword bids are still competitive, your ads are showing all day, and customers clicking on your ads are still interested in what they see on your landing page. Like gardening, the initial time investment of setting up a paid search account is only the first step in getting the results you want and expect.

So, what if you’ve set up the account but don’t have time for the best pay per click management?

Well, luckily for you, this is where the garden analogy ends. In the right hands, your paid search account can reach its full potential. The Search Guru can give you expert recommendations about how to improve your account and we can also take over PPC management; then, all you’ll need to do is figure out how to handle the new customers coming your way!

If you’re ready to set up a paid search account but aren’t sure how to begin or you’ve set up your account and are ready to turn over the day-to-day management we can help. Pay per click is one of the most effective and measureable forms of marketing available.

Please contact us for more information regarding our expert PPC management service.