Starting Your Own Pay-Per-Click Ad Campaign (Part 1)

Digital marketing – one of the many important facets to a business’s growth and brand recognition in the marketplace. There are many forms of digital marketing, the most commonly practiced being social media, e-blasts, SEO, white papers & blogs. The majority of these tactics are generally a “free” way of promoting your brand. But what about paid methods of brand promotion?

Because more companies are fine-tuning their websites and various marketing channels with SEO best practices, paid advertising is becoming increasingly favored. So much so that search engines are changing their algorithms by the minute, so no single business or organization has the advantage. If we all ask ourselves “where do I see the most ads?” we would probably automatically think: YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram. And we’d be mostly right! There is a wealth of advertisements being displayed on social media to grab our attention and influence buying decisions. However, even though these social media platforms may be the first outlets that come to mind, search engines are in fact the largest channel for advertising efforts.

Vive understands that the audience you’re targeting may not be on social media, which is why we’re going to give you a glimpse of what the search engine pay-per-click world is all about.

Pay-Per-Click, it is exactly what it sounds like. You, your business, or the account owner of whatever search engine campaign is running will pay for every click that is accumulated throughout the duration of the campaign. These clicks are accumulated by search ads, display ads, shopping ads, etc. The comforting thing about running a pay-per-click campaign is that you know EVERYONE uses search engines to find information – potentially your information. To make things easier, we’re going to focus on Google Ads.

Let’s say you’re eager to get started on a Google Ads campaign and aren’t quite sure where to start. We’re here to walk you through this process.

The not so fun stuff

STEP 1-2

• Create a Google Email Account
  • I’m assuming most of us probably have a Gmail account for personal use. Instead of making one for self, create one that is specific to the business or organization the ads will be running through.
• Create a Google Ads Account
  • Creating a Google Ads account is quite painless and won’t take too much of your time. If you’re a business owner or account manager, these ads can be set up through your Google My Business account. If another avenue is preferred, an account can be created by simply typing in Google “Create Google Ads account”.
  • Follow the prompts, add your credit card information for payment, and get rollin’!

The fun stuff!

STEP 3-5

• Define a budget
  • Yes, we know – another bill to your already long list. The best part about defining this budget is that it can be whatever you want it to be. $50, $100, $500, $1,000 or $20,000. Whatever is set to your monthly spend, will not exceed. Increasing or scaling back is also applicable at any time.
• Define a keyword strategy
  • Although there are a handful of crucial steps to a successful PPC campaign, this should be the first step. Google Ads allows you to add or ‘bid for’ as many keywords as desired within the campaign. Whatever keywords are added to the campaign will be the keywords you are anticipating or intelligently guessing a user (just like us) would search on Google with the anticipation your ad would be displayed
  • When defining your keyword strategy, it’s important to evaluate your competitors’ keywords. This should be completed by evaluating the content on their websites, social channels and other forms of marketing-related material. Let’s say I’m a small injection molder in Austin, TX. The top keywords that come to mind would be injection molder, injection molding near me, top 10 injection molders, and injection molders Austin TX.
• Define a max Cost-Per-Click (CPC)
  • Let’s think of keywords like a stock. The price of bidding or ranking for a keyword is constantly changing due to the popularity or relevancy of the keyword in search engines, which is all catered to the searcher. A month ago, injection molding cost $31 per click. Today, injection molding costs $28 per click. More times than not, if your budget is large enough to pay for a click of this monetary value, your ads will be displayed on the first page of Google. If these prices are out of your price range, you can set a maximum CPC on any keyword. So, if $4 is the max amount of dollars you’re willing to spend on injection molding, that’s fine! Your ad will still be displayed by Google, just maybe not in the #1 position. Positions are constantly changing due to the changing algorithms, geographical locations and how many accounts are bidding on the same keyword(s).

Time to Shine

Step 6

• Create the ad copy (the meat of the ad)
  • Google allocates 2 areas of visibility for ads: headlines & descriptions. Headlines are allocated 30 characters in total, and descriptions are allocated 90 characters in total. In some cases, this may not seem like enough room to get your point across, which is why your content must be enticing. Let’s say you’re a custom injection molder and the headline you’ve created reads: “Injection Molding | Check Out Our Website” you’re probably not going to catch anyone’s attention or obtain a click. Instead, your headline is – “Injection Molding | Your Most Reliable Partner” you’re more likely to turn some heads. With the little space given for promotion, it’s imperative to provide value or solution-based information that benefits the reader.

Step 7

• Determine type of ad
  • Google offers various ads that suit your preference. The most common ads are responsive and Responsive ads allow you to add 15 headlines and 5 descriptions. Based on the user search, Google will determine which headline is most applicable to the user search and increase your chances of receiving a click. Dynamic ads are completely Google-generated and pulls information straight from your website that aligns with the user’s search. For Vive’s clients, we create about 4-5 responsive ads with customized ad copy and 2 dynamic ads for however many ad groups are being run.

Step 8

• Finalizing the details
  • Google Ads allows you to get very specific with how the ads are being conducted. It’s important to spend time in Google’s settings to adjust all factors to your liking. The following are available for ad customization:
    • Date & time of advertisement
    • Geographical location by country, state, region, zip code, etc.
    • Demographics or specific age ranges
    • Specific audience segments
    • and more!
  • Finalizing these details will help you accumulate the results you’re looking for!

You Did It!

Step 9

• Launch the campaign
  • Launching the campaign is as simple as it sounds. Just hit the button that screams “launch campaign”. Phew, you did it! You’re done! Well, not so fast… If you’re set on netting a successful campaign an abundance of maintenance is still required.

Stay tuned for part 2, where Jared shares those key maintenance strategies more in-depth.