Rev Up Your Campaigns – A Beginner’s Guide to PPC

When it comes to driving your business forward, PPC is one of the most efficient and widely used routes in the digital marketing world. Just like getting into the driver’s seat of a car, setting up your PPC campaign requires preparation and the right mindset.

This guide outlines all the essential steps to help you gear up for the PPC journey and steer your business toward success.

The Open Road: What is PPC?

Imagine driving on a wide-open highway, the endless road stretching ahead of you.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is like a fast lane to your business goals. It’s an advertising model where you pay a fee to the host of the platform for each click on your ad. The cost you incur is determined by a bidding system.

Your bid enters an auction where it competes with other advertisers, and the platform factors in bid amount, ad quality, and relevance to decide which ads to display and what your cost-per-click (CPC) will be. 

Your ads can appear on search engine results pages (SERPs), social media platforms, YouTube and affiliate websites to name a few. Listed below are some platforms that you can run and manage your PPC campaigns on: 

• Google Ads: Advertise across Google’s search engine and network
• Bing Ads: Advertise on Bing and its partner websites
• Meta Ads: Reach users on Facebook, Instagram, and other Meta properties
• LinkedIn Ads: Reach an engaged audience of business professionals

This guide focuses on the process of creating a Search Ads campaign, specifically on platforms like Google Ads where keyword targeting is the core of the strategy.

Safety Checks: Account Setup

Before you start driving, you need to ensure your seatbelt is fastened, mirrors adjusted and all other safety checks have taken place. Similarly, in PPC, you need to ensure that all the required account settings are in place in order to avoid any potential issues as your campaigns progress.

• After the completion of the sign up process on your chosen platform, enter your business information. This includes aspects such as your business name and usually your website URL. (Other options include your business phone number and your app download page, depending on where you want to direct users who click on your ad). 

💡Roadside assistance: After providing your business details, the next step the platform provides you is with campaign creation. It is recommended that you skip this step at this stage and choose the ‘leave campaign creation’ option.

• You will then be directed to a page where you are required to confirm some crucial account settings such as the billing country, time zone and currency. (Please note: these settings cannot be edited once submitted.) 
• The next step is to input your payment information by setting up a payments profile. Once completed, this should result in a ‘Your account was created’ confirmation. 
• Google Ads will then encourage you to complete advertiser verification at this stage. It is highly recommended to do so to ensure a safe, transparent experience for both you and users, and to keep your ads running smoothly.
• You are now ready to commence the creation of your campaign structure, starting with establishing a campaign goal

Setting Your Destination: Define Your Campaign Goals

Defining your goals is like choosing your endpoint on the map. Google Ads provides you with several campaign objectives to assist with this. Outlined below are some of the most commonly used objectives: 

• Choose Sales: If you want to drive sales online, in app, by phone or in store. 
• Choose Leads: Get leads and other conversions by encouraging customers to take action.
• Choose Website Traffic: To get the right people to your website. 
• Choose Awareness and Consideration: Reach a broad audience and build interest in your products or brand.

Fuelling Up: Campaign Structure and Keyword Research

Now it’s time to fuel up and get moving! Campaign structure and keyword research are the gasoline that power your PPC campaign. This is where you decide the ‘route’ you’ll take and the ‘keywords’ that will get you there.

As a beginner, Google Ads’ built-in Keyword Planner is a quick and efficient tool for research. It enables you to find relevant keywords that align with your business needs and the interests of your target audience. 

The tool allows you to input a few initial keywords and your website URL which it uses to generate additional keywords suggestions and also provides average search volume and forecasts.

There are several other metrics which the tool provides data on such as the level of competition on each keyword and its estimated top of page bid. It is essential to take into account this additional information to ensure that the keywords included in your campaign are well informed, relevant and align with your budget. 

After finalising your keywords, the next step is to organise the keywords into campaigns and ad groups. 

• Campaigns: The highest level of your structure. Often relating to aspects such as product categories. For example: Skincare, Makeup etc.
• Ad Groups: Groups within a campaign that contain closely related keywords. Each ad group focuses on a specific product or theme. For example: Skincare can be broken down into Moisturisers, Cleansers, Sunscreen, Serums etc. 
• Keywords: Specific words or phrases related to your product or service that trigger your ads when searched. For example: The moisturiser’s ad group would contain keywords such as ‘buy moisturiser’, ‘moisturiser for dry skin’, ‘best face creams’ etc. 

💡Fuel for thought: While AI is a powerful tool for finding relevant traffic, it’s not perfect. As platforms increasingly continue to incorporate AI and broader keyword matching, the risk of irrelevant traffic has grown. Hence, the inclusion of negative keywords is more important than ever. 

Negative keywords assist in reducing wasted ad spend by filtering out irrelevant search queries and ensuring your ads reach the right users. Tools such as the ‘Search Terms’ report in Google Ads can be utilised to monitor incoming search queries and identify potential terms to be negated.

Hitting The Road: Creation Of Ads

With your route mapped out and fuel in your tank, it is time to hit the road and create those ads! Your ad copy is like the signs along the motorway – it needs to grab attention and guide users toward the destination.

A standard search ad in Google Ads requires the addition of headlines (maximum of 15) and descriptions (maximum of 5). Please note: this will vary depending on campaign and ad types. 

It is essential to include ad copy that is relevant to your keywords (ensuring the actual keywords are strategically included in the ad copy), highlights your business’s unique selling propositions and includes strong calls to actions such as ‘Shop Now’ or ‘Get a Free Quote Today’. 

The ‘ad strength’ metric displayed during the creation of the ads can also be used to assess the quality of your ads.  A higher ad strength indicates increased ad relevance which helps the search engine accurately match user’s search queries due to your ad placements being higher. 

💡Steering you right: While Google typically mixes and matches headlines and descriptions for each ad, you can pin specific ones to ensure that a particular headline or description is always displayed in your ads. However, the recommendation is to not pin any copy because this will reduce ad strength as it limits the platform’s ability to optimise and test different copy combinations.

Speed Limits: Bidding Strategies and Budget Management

As you drive, you need to keep an eye on the speed limits and fuel gauge. In PPC, your bidding strategy controls how competitive your ads are in the auction and how much you are willing to pay for each click. 

After assigning a budget to each campaign, the next step is to determine your bidding approach and select the most suitable bidding strategy for your goal. Google allows you to take either a manual bidding approach or an automated one. However, advertising platforms are continuing to enhance the capabilities of automated bidding and phasing out the need for manual bidding. 

Automated bidding strategies leverage machine learning to adjust bids based on real-time factors and make data-driven optimisations. When used correctly, these can often lead to higher conversion rates and improved ROI. Additionally, the absence of the need to manually adjust bids is time saving and highly efficient. 

💡Turbocharged Tip: Despite the increased adoption of automated bidding, if you are running a small campaign with limited budgets or offer a niche product/service it might still be best to use manual bidding. The complete control allows you to optimise bids for specific keywords that are crucial to your campaign.

Roadside Pitstops: Ongoing Monitoring of Campaigns

Every road trip needs a few pit stops for rest and adjustments. In the same way, you’ll need to optimise your PPC campaign along the journey. PPC isn’t a “set it and forget it” kind of deal. It is all about constantly reviewing your performance and making enhancements. 

Outlined below are key metrics to monitor: 

Click-through Rate (CTR): Helps to measure the effectiveness of your ads, by understanding what percentage of users that see your ad actually click on it. 

Conversion rate (CVR): Provides you with an insight into the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action after seeing your ad. 

Average cost per click (CPC): Monitoring the average amount you pay for a click on your ad is essential for cost control and maximising return on investment. 

Cost per acquisition (CPA): The cost you pay for each acquisition (conversion) is a crucial metric to monitor in order to ensure that your campaigns are profitable. 

Search impression share: An indication of how often your ads are appearing compared to the total possible impressions for your targeted keywords. This is also a highly valuable metric to track competitor activity. 

💡Mechanic’s Secret: Test and learn! Regularly conducting A/B testing of ad copy, landing pages and bidding strategies whilst using the metrics above as key performance indicators is crucial to establishing what will provide your campaigns with the highest chance of success.

Reaching Your Destination: Summary

Congratulations! You have made it to your destination – your PPC campaign is up and running successfully. Just like any great road trip, PPC requires careful planning, adjustments along the way, and a bit of patience. But by following the steps outlined in this guide, you will be on your way to driving traffic, generating leads, and making sales.

So, are you ready to hit the gas and start your journey? Contact us today to speak to a member of our team about the award-winning PPC services we can offer your business.