Newbie - A good PPC method to start plz?

PPC is a great marketing platform & when it is used well the results can be fantastic, however, when it is not used properly & people dive in without fully understanding how to set up campaigns, how to manage bids & how to analyse data in both adwords & analytics then it can be a very costly learning curve.

I wouldn't advise you to buy any more "Guru" products about PPC as tempting as they are - we've all done it before but until you really understand how it all works you will probably be flushing your money away.

Here are a few quick points to start you off in the right direction:

1. Learn about campaigns & ad groups and how the keywords should be as closely related to each other as possible within each ad group.

e.g. If you are an affiliate for a travel agent then you might want to set each country you are promoting as separate campaign and then within that campaign you could have every single destination, hotel & resort as separate ad groups (separating again for associated terms - e.g. vacation, all inclusive etc)

Example Structure

Campaign = Australia

Ad Groups = Melbourne Hotels, Melbourne All Inclusive, Melbourne 5 Star, Melbourne 4 Star, Melbourne Holidays, Melbourne Package Deals etc

Keywords = Melbourne Hotels, Hotels in Melbourne, Cheap Hotels in Melbourne, Hotels in Melbourne Victoria (basically anything hotel related that doesn't intrude on your more specific ad groups such as all inclusive, or package deals etc - e.g. All Inclusive Hotels Melbourne would go in the All Inclusive ad group because all inclusive is the head terms).

The above may be a little too focussed for some PPC people (me included actually) but in theory that is the kind of relationship that keywords should have to each other within ad groups.

This brings us on to:

2 - Ad Texts.

The reason for highly focussed ad groups is three fold:

Firstly the tighter and more relevant your keywords are the easier it is for you to manage the bids within similar areas.

Secondly the tighter your ad groups are the more relevant you can make your ad text. e.g. if someone searched for all inclusive hotels in Melbourne by having a separate ad group for all the all inclusive terms the ad that the user sees will state All Inclusive Hotels in Melbourne, however if I had grouped together a load of similar terms and stuck them in the same ad group then the ad text would have been more generic & someone searching for all inclusive hotels in Melbourne would have seen an ad that would probably have just said something along the lines of Great Deals on Hotels in Melbourne - That isn't what they were looking for - they wanted all inclusive hotels so they will probably disregard my ad and click on another one that tells them that they have all inclusive offers to Melbourne.

Thirdly - Without focussed ad groups it is highly likely your ad will receive a poor click through rate and this will ultimately lower your Quality Score which in turn means you will be paying more for clicks.

3 - Keyword Tool - The Google keyword tool is really handy for getting keyword ideas but don't rely on what it says too much. The traffic estimates are way out of whack and the average CPC and first page bid estimate really aren't definitive. The best way to find a suitable bid price is to just test the waters when you start your campaign - you will have a rough idea of what to bid - try bidding slighltly less than that - gather some data and then start to amend your bid prices based on the position you are achieving at that bid price.

4 - Remember that 1st position in PPC is not necessarily always the best position. It is true that you will most likely get a much better CTR however you will also get a lot of happy clickers who see your ad before anything else and just click on it without any intention of buying & being in 1st position - the chances are that you are bidding quite high so you don't want unnecessary clicks. It is nice to be in the top 3 positions but it isn't always best practice.

5 - A Campaign isn't built in a day - When you start a new PPC campaign it is imperative that you analyse and optimize on a daily basis. This includes looking at all the search terms to make sure that the searches people are performing are relevant to a) your product and b) your keyword. We call this keyword cleaning and all the data you need is available within the adwords interface. When you find a search term that isn't relative to your campaign then you need to block further searches of that nature coming through and costng you money - you can do this by adding negative keywords in the appropriate match type (broad, phrase, exact).

Other points to watch out for when you optimize a campaign - you may have a keyword such as "hotels in melbourne" that brings you in 75% of all your sales, however when you actually analyse the ROI of that keyword you may find that it is not actually profitable - e.g. it may be costing you more to bid on than you are makng from it. In this instance you would have to try reducing the bids to secure a lower position, make sure the search terms are all relevant and ensure that everything on the landing page is working fine & can't be improved. If all this doesn't provide any decent results then you will have to bite the bullet and pause the keyword. So many advertisers are relctant to turn off these kinds of keywords because of the fact that they are responsible for the bulk of the sales - but you have to remember that they are costing you money not making you money and the more clicks you get - the more you money you will lose!!

6. Don't turn a campaign off after 2 days because you don't see any results - you need to have a lot of data to start making informed decisions about whether or not a keyword is working. For example - if you have 75 clicks and you have made 0 sales then a lot of people may turn that keyword off. Why? If you get 2 sales in the next 25 clicks then you have a 2% conversion rate which would often be OK. However, lets say you have 1000 clicks and you have made 2 sales, This would equate to 0.2% conversion rate and it would take another 38 sales over the next 1000 clicks to get to 2% conversion rate - this keyword you could say is worth turning off.

Learn about statistical deviation to understand this more - it is one of the keys to braving out the ups & downs of Adwords & knowing when it makes mathematical sense to turn a keyword off.

That's about enough for now but I hope that gives you a few pointers to do some "Free" research on before you buy any more guides.

Ross