A Baseline for Winning at PPC: How to Plan, Launch, and Optimize Successful PPC campaigns


As one of 360Partners marketing tools, potential clients can receive a free PPC audit of their search campaigns.  Inside this audit, 360Partners compares PPC best practices with the company’s current PPC activity. Through this process, 360Partners has analyzed hundreds of different search accounts. Over time, we’ve seen several mistakes that prevent most PPC campaigns from thriving in an online landscape.

This month’s newsletter addresses how to successfully plan, optimize, and groom high-performing PPC campaigns.

Pre-launch:


Abraham Lincoln was quoted as saying, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”  Every successful campaign begins with a good strategy. One hour of effective planning can save you countless hours or days later fixing broken search campaigns. To provide context, 360Partners typically spends 3 weeks building out a new campaign. Effective planning and research in the pre-launch phase will lay the foundation for winning PPC campaigns.

Here are few activities that 360Partners recommends spending time preparing:

  • Keyword research: There are thousands of keywords inside of each industry. From high volume terms, misspellings, geo-specific terms, and long-tail keywords, 360Partners recommends taking the time to fully research the relevant keywords that pertain to your industry.
  • Grouping keywords into themes: In the opinion of 360Partners, what sets high performing campaigns apart from the rest is the strategic placement of the thousands of keywords generated into tightly-themed ad groups. By taking the time to build out tightly focused ad groups, it allows you to focus your messaging, content, and calls to action.
  • Ad creatives: There are many guidelines and best practices, but 360Partner's strongest recommendation is to develop an iterative testing plan that is focused on serving the right message to the right customer. A search query is essentially a question. When ads display in a search engine, that ad copy needs to answer that basic question.

Campaign Launch:


After the search campaigns are assembled, 360Partners recommends having a cautious launch. 360Partners has three primary recommendations when launching a new campaign.

  • Strategic timing and placement: 360Partners recommends that campaigns be launched in the most optimal search engines first. This typically means launching in Google because they will have the largest avenues of traffic. However, if you know that your audience is more likely to be found in Yahoo! or some other engine, then it makes sense to launch first in that engine. Having a defined roadmap for each engine that includes time of launch, defined media spend, and amount of optimization activity will help your PPC campaigns
  • Defined & measurable metrics: 360Partners recommends having defined and measurable actions for your PPC campaigns. Typical indicators may include cost-per-acquisition (How much you want to pay for a new customer) or ROAS (how much return you expect from your media spend). Determining these metrics and establishing effective tracking will help you measure the success of your PPC campaigns.
  • Cautious first days: As the campaigns are turned on, 360Partners has seen that initial performance typically does not meet anticipated goals. This is to be expected as the ecosystem of PPC requires time and attention. You need to turn off or bid down things that are not working and double down on things that are working. One prospective client mentioned to us, “We tried using Google about a year ago but it simply didn’t work for our business. We ended up spending $10,000 and didn’t get a single sale. I guess the only good news is that Google sent us a pen at the end of the year. We refer to it as the ‘$10,000 pen’.” 360Partners recommends planning for these initial days by keeping your budgets low and optimization activities high so you don’t blow your budget.

Campaign Optimization:


Optimizing a PPC account is an ongoing process. 360Partners recommends having your PPC campaigns frequently measured and optimized.

360Partners has three key recommendations for optimizing your PPC campaigns:

  • Eliminate waste: It’s expected that certain keywords, ad groups, and ad creatives will not perform well. 360Partners recommends utilizing best practices, tools, and analysis to identify and make the appropriate corrections, either shutting them off or reducing bids.
  • Expand on success: 360Partners recommends quickly identifying the keywords, ad groups, and campaigns that perform well and meet your campaign goals. As successful keywords, ad groups, and other themes are successfully identified, 360Partners recommends working to expand on those successes. This will lead to a greater likelihood of PPC success.
  • Expand to other channels & mediums: When PPC campaigns start turning a solid profit, expansion to other channels and mediums becomes important. 360Partners recommends taking your already optimized campaigns and expanding to other channels and mediums. 360Partners has found that strong campaigns in Google will perform well in Yahoo! or MSN. Using this strategy minimizes the learning curve and maximizes your marketing budget.

Conclusion:


PPC can be a great source of steady and profitable volume to your business. However, successful PPC requires focused planning, strategic placement, and diligent optimization.

360Partners employs search marketing’s best practices and processes. Our campaigns consistently and regularly meet their business objectives. If you’d like to discuss how 360Partners can help your business grow, email us at searchmarketing@360Partners.com

About the author: Mike Craig leads an account team at 360Partners. He and his team serve a variety of lead gen clients. Prior to 360Partners, Mike received his Masters of Advertising from the University of Texas-Austin. His emphasis was on new media, specifically Facebook. As part of his masters program, Mike wrote his thesis on the effects of brands portrayed in Facebook images. Mike can be reached at mike@360partners.com