4 Essentials of PPC Campaign Management

Many get excited with the prospects of a pay per click (PPC) campaign for their business.  They like the idea of fresh, targeted traffic coming from the first page (hopefully) of Google for certain search terms.  What is sometimes lost is good PPC campaign management.  What I want to share with you is the core elements of good PPC management.

PPC Campaign Management, What’s That?

Let’s be fair here, I’m sharing from my experience.  I too launched my first PPC campaign with no real PC campaign management components in place.  I soon learned that campaign costs can add up very quickly.  I didn’t mind spending the money if the campaign was leading to conversions, and conversions sales (at a satisfactory rate).  The question was what are good elements of ppc campaign management?

Watch Your Campaign Closely

PPC Campaign Management is not a set it and forget it activity.  You need to monitor your campaigns at least daily (in most cases) with proper ppc tracking.  If you are experimenting with a new market or a new keyword set, you may need to monitor it hourly.

Average Position- (Keywords) If you are not landing on the first page of Google (first 10 positions) or other PPC search engine, you need to be there to get traffic, preferably the first 3 positions.

Click Thru Rate- (Ad) Of course this varies per market, but what I’ve found is if you are on the first page of Google, and not falling in the 5-10% range, this needs attention.

Conversions- You need to know what percentage of customers for a given keyword are choosing to take the action you give them on your landing page.  The end game is to get more sales, so this should be measured here.

Cost Per Keyword- Obviously these costs impact your daily budget, and depending on what you are paying, can eat up your budget pretty quickly if not monitored properly.  Don’t focus on how much you are spending, rather on the investment as a percentage of the return.  If you pay $10 for a keyword that yields you an average sale of $500 when clicked vs. a keyword that costs only $5 but yields no sales with twice the clicks, which one do you want?  The one that gets the sale.

You may have some solid PPC search engine placement but you also want to have a decent click thru rate (CTR) when compared with competing ads.  If you don’t, most PPC publishers (like Google) will deem your ad less relevant than others, bumping it down the food chain, and increasing the price you pay to present your ad.  Google rewards the best paying ads, the better your ad performs the less you pay.

PPC campaign management that monitors average position, click thru rate, conversions, and cost per keyword will be head and shoulders above the rest, will cost less than the competitors, and more importantly puts the PPC campaign management owner in a powerful position towards profitability.

It’s Your Turn!: Have you considered Pay Per Click for your business?  What about PPC Campaign Management?  Certainly this is not a complete guide, what elements are missing?  How can it be better?  Chime in below with your thoughts, ideas, and feedback.

Image credit to elplagiarista

Technorati Tags: ppc campaign management, ppc search engine placement, ppc tracking