Your Essential ‘How-to’ Guide to Setting Up a Great PPC Campaign

When you set up your Google Adwords campaign, you are taking the first step at one of the most immediately effective internet marketing methods. Most SEO methods take at least two months to turn over, while, if done right, Google Adwords can have you up and running and making money within two or three days.

The hard part is doing it right and not losing your shirt in the process.

The first thing to do is to research your keywords and make specific ones. Whether you choose to call them “long tail keywords” or “targeted specific keywords” or “niche keywords” is up to you, but finding good ones is your first job.

Picking things like “tennis” is not going to get you anywhere. If you sell name brand items, put the brand name. If you sell guides, specify what you will be guiding them to do.

You can also fine tune your results by applying the “Negative Match” option. If you are selling Tennis guide PDFs, then having “Rackets for sale” or “Local tennis courts” in your keywords is probably not going to get you very far. These people like tennis, but they are not looking for guides.

The next step is to create really, really effective ad copy. The best keywords in the world are not going to get you anything if your ad copy in your short little ads does not call people to action. Make sure you call them to action.

Test your ad copy on the world. Find out what works and what does not work. Find out what brings people in and what gets skipped over, and then fine tune what brings people in.

Here’s another step that you can do to really bring it home with your ad copy: make sure your landing page actually reflects what your ad said. If you put out an ad for tennis that is about improving your swing, and then your landing page seems to be all about precision aiming, you may still get people–but nothing like what you would be getting if you created a landing page for the swing ad, and a landing page for the precision aiming–even if they go to the same guide!

Another thing to do is to set up conversion tracking by putting Adwords tracking to the HTML on your site. Keep track of which words and ads generate what you actually want out of your website. That will help you know which pages they reach after they click on your ad.

When you start using Google Adwords, make sure that you keep within your budget. If it completely flops in the first couple days of your campaign and eats your entire ad budget, do not just stick a bunch more money on it and keep hacking away. That is about as logical as Las Vegas for succeeding at your ads.

Plan how much you can spend on it, and then set it up so it does not just run away from you. One of the biggest complaints newbies have with Google Adwords is that it ate all their money. Usually that is because they have not set themselves up in such a way that they can actually benefit from spending all their money. They spend too much, too soon, too fast, without planning ahead to know what they are up against.

If you someone else set it up–even a professional–and then you just let them run the entire thing without your supervision, you are setting yourself up for trouble. Unless they are bringing in major leads, at least check up on what they have done, possibly just to bring in new keyword ideas in your niche.

One of the worst things you can do to your Adwords campaign is to just set it up and walk off. Monitor it. Don’t go ocd on it, checking it every five minutes, but never let it just float out there on its own for more than two days.

Set a schedule and a list of things you want to learn from your analysis. You can often find which keyword combinations are bringing in the most leads and then use that to generate more good combinations.

Setting up Google Adwords is one of the biggest steps you can take to making your marketing campaign work. Do your best and it should turn out well for you.

Author Bio: Edwin is an avid marketer and writer currently at 9th sphere – An experienced Web design and online marketing firm based in toronto. Edwin has a passion for great marketing to help businesses of all sizes succeed.