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How to Create a PPC Campaign

One of the most common challenges that pay per click advertisers cope with is creating a campaign with the right structure. Most PPC platforms provide tutorials that explain the basic construction. Those tutorials are usually limited in scope and leave advertisers to waste hundreds - even thousands - of dollars on poorly structured projects.

Today, we'll provide you with a quick blueprint of a properly structured pay per click campaign. It's worth noting that the following structure is merely the beginning of a successful strategy. An experienced PPC agency can expand your project over time to take advantage of emerging opportunities and compensate for new competition.

Categorize Your Audience

Before creating your campaign, separate your audience into targeted groups. For example, imagine that you operate a golf website that sells balls, clubs, and golf-related vacation packages. Each product caters to a different audience and must be individually categorized into its own campaign.

Build the Tree

Your pay per click campaign should follow a tree-like structure. Your broad categories form the trunk while targeted keywords that are related to each category form the branches. Using our example above, consider a strategy for golf balls. Related keywords might include "used," "new," and "custom logo." Each of those words would represent a branch of your campaign. In the context of a pay per click project, each branch is represented by an individual ad group.

Create a Negative Keyword List

You will want to prevent your ads from displaying when a user's query includes certain words. For example, if a user searches for "free golf clubs," that person may not represent a viable lead for your website. If your ad were to display and they were to click on it, you would be wasting your marketing budget. You can prevent your ads from showing when specific words are included in queries by creating a negative keyword list for each individual ad group. These lists will grow over time as you track and analyze your pay per click campaigns.

Create Your Ads

Each ad group should have a minimum of two ads (and preferably many more) that rotate evenly. The reason that you'll want to create multiple ads for each group is to support continuous testing. It is only by establishing statistical benchmarks and testing them against new ads that you can improve the performance of those ads.

Designing ads that attract attention and persuade the right audience to click through to your website is a discipline that can only be learned through experience. We'll cover this topic in more detail in a future column.

Expand Your PPC Project

Nearly every PPC project can be expanded; there will always be keyword territory that has yet to be discovered. Sometimes, new phrases can be created by using synonyms or modifiers. For example, "discount golf clubs" might yield "low-priced 5 iron golf clubs." You can also uncover new keyword territory by exploring thematically related elements; "Calloway 5 iron" might yield "Calloway 5 iron review." Each phrase should ideally be separated into individual ad groups to be consistent with your project's tree structure.

Only the Beginning

The process that we've described above can be used to design your next PPC strategy. But, that process only marks the beginning of your project. Pay per click advertising requires continuous testing and tracking in order to deliver a positive ROI. If neglected, you'll find your ads' clickthrough rates will begin to decline, bids will begin to rise, and your competitors will start occupying sponsored positions that you once controlled.

Whether you're located in Los Angeles, New York, or Chicago, pay per click requires dedication. The level of attention that you need to devote to your pay per click strategy is substantial. This is the main reason why many businesses hire an experienced PPC company to design the strategy, create the campaigns, and track their success.



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