Tuesday, June 3, 2008

What are the Basic Steps Involved in a PPC Campaign?

Paid search marketing is ruling the online marketplace nowadays. Most web businesses opt for this service because of its immediacy and convenience of implementation. Known as the inorganic form of SEM, it helps businesses in driving targeted traffic to their website and generate good revenues by maximising conversion rates. A pay per click campaign involves the following basic steps:

Keyword Research

Keywords are invariably the soul of such campaigns. This is one area that demands constant monitoring and alterations. Before placing your bids, undertake market research on the keywords used by most businesses in your industry. You can also study your competitors' campaigns and pick keywords that are doing well for them. The basic criteria here is relevance – the words and phrases you target have to be related to your product/service or business at large.

Campaign Development

Once you have selected your keywords, you have to develop your advertising campaign. This means working on creation of ad groups and ad copies. Each of your PPC advert has to have four parts – title, description, display URL and destination URL. All these elements should be incorporated with important keywords. The title and description should be catchy and written in accordance with search engine guidelines. Write in a crispy and appealing manner so as to attract visitors' attention. Categorise the ad copies in such a way that they fetch you good CTR and conversion rates.

Landing Page Identification

Landing pages can make or break an ad campaign. Therefore, businesses should use their best web pages as the landing pages for their adverts. If you manage to retain users' attention through these pages, you will have a great chance of making a conversion. But, make sure your landing pages support all claims made in your ads. Also, they should be completely in accordance with the keywords of the advertisement they correspond to.

Result Tracking

As a marketer, you ought to track the results of your PPC campaign. Constantly monitor results and formulate strategies that cater to latest search engine guidelines. By tracing your efforts, you will be able to segregate the performing ads from the non-performing ones.

Since this happens to be a paid advertising service on search engines, you have to ensure that your ROI is well-balanced. Dedicate a daily or monthly budget to your campaign and make alterations as and when necessary.