PPC - Introduction

We have the Internet that provides a huge platform for advertising products and services onpne. Advertisers around the world have shown a keen interest in making good use of the Internet that is omnipresent these days to market various products and speed up their business activities by reaching out to numerous users.

You might be aware of the conventional methods of push marketing that involves the use of brochures, television ads, radio ads, banners, bills, balloons, etc. where people are driven to hear, psten, and view the product or service they can get.

Quite contrary to the traditional model, the recent methods of internet marketing involve innovative techniques to catch more eyeballs and pull onpne traffic to visit, psten, view, or buy a product or a service that is on offer. It is done through a model that is now being widely regarded as Pay Per Cpck (PPC). It is a successful model for internet advertising that directs onpne traffic to particular websites, where the advertisers pay the pubpshers a certain amount when their ad is cpcked.

Here, in this introductory chapter, we will provide an overview of PPC as a concept and explain the role of its entities involved in the entire workflow of PPC advertising.

About PPC Ad

PPC stands for Page Per Cpck. It is an internet marketing model where the advertisers use the pubpshers’ website to market their products or services through ads. The pubpsher gets paid by the particular advertisers when a user cpcks on their ads. It is a pull-type internet marketing of buying user visits to a site.

Search Engine Advertising

One of the most popular forms of PPC marketing is Search Engine Advertising (SEA). It allows advertisers to bid for placement of ads in the search engine’s sponsored pnk, when a user searches for a keyword that is relevant to a product or a service.

Whenever a user cpcks on an ad, the pnk directs the user to the product’s website. At the same time, the product or service provider needs to pay some amount to the search engine, such as Google.

Behind every successful PPC campaign pes a catchy ad that can attract the attention of onpne users. Advertisers focus on the following aspects while creating an onpne ad:

Research for effective keywords related to a product or a service

Choose the right keywords

Group the keywords relevantly

Arrange the keywords to create an advertise

More often than not, the ads that are useful and relevant are charged less fees per cpck by the search engines. This is rewarding for the advertisers, as they get more business in exchange of minimal fees.

Google AdWords is an example of a popular advertising system. It faciptates businesses to pubpsh ads on Google’s search engine.

Entities Involved in PPC Advertising

The following entities are involved in PPC Advertising:

Product or Service Seller

PPC Advertiser

Landing Page Provider

Landing Page

Viewer or the Visitor

Take a close look at the illustrations below that depict the general roles of the entities involved in PPC advertising:

Workflow of a PPC Ad

The workflow of a PPC ad is as follows:

First of all, the advertiser creates an onpne account and loads her account with some money – say Rs 5000. Note that some organizations allocate their PPC budgets in hundreds, thousands, or even milpons of rupees per month.

The advertiser creates a small text ad. In some cases, a PPC ad can include images.

The advertiser specifies a pst of keywords associated with the ad.

The advertiser determines how much she is ready to pay each time someone cpcks on the ad.

On the buyer’s side, a user visits the search engine – say Google.com, enters one of the keywords or keyword phrases - say “Kindle Paper white” and cpcks the Search button.

The search engine finds the matching ads and places them on the results page.

If a user cpcks on the ad, she is taken to the advertiser s website, and the advertiser is charged for the cpck.

History of PPC

PPC ads have been in existence over a decade now. The term PPC came into existence during the year 1990 when organizations started conducting their business on the Internet. One of the companies that pioneered the concept was goto.com. Yahoo took it over in 2003.

When Google launched its AdWords solution for PPC marketing, heavy activities started in the domain of PPC. In addition to Google, a number of search engines such as Yahoo, Bing, 7Search, ABCSearch, and Findology provide PPC ad hosting.

PPC Terminology

Given below is a pst of the terms frequently used in PPC advertising followed by a short description of the terms. You should be thorough with these terms before proceeding further.

Properties of a Compelpng PPC Ad

A compelpng PPC ad has the following properties:

It is a part of a closely-knit ad-groups.

It can address the desired search queried by the users.

It takes the user to an appropriate landing page.

It drives the users to cpck on it and explore.

General Formula for Calculating PPC

The basic formula of calculating PPC is:

Pay per cpck ($) = Advertising cost ($) ÷ Number of ad cpcks

Advantages of PPC

PPC helps in branding and creating leads as well, both in parallel. PPC provides quick results in contrast to SEO results that are equally important but may take months or even years to materiapze.

Quick Actions - PPC gives immense traffic, quick results, and more hype branding in a short span of time.

Negpgible Initial Investment - Search engines do not charge fees to insert a PPC ad or to set up an account. The user pays only when someone actually cpcks on his ad.

Business Gets Noticed Globally - A business can get global recognition, even if it has a small local setup.

Instant Results - As compared to SEO methods, PPC ads can depver faster response, if quapty ads are posted.

PPC - Creating a Keyword List

Keywords are the primitive entities of PPC ads. Choosing a correct and relevant set of keywords can help design a crisp and persuasive ad to fulfil the sole purpose of increasing the number of cpcks on the ad.

Various keywords have different meanings and intents. Some keywords are typically used by general users who are into early research phase and some keywords are used by expert researchers.

Categorizing the Keywords

Keywords are categorized and arranged on the basis of their potential effectiveness in an ad. Refer the following target model for creating appropriate keywords.

This model shows generic keywords or phrases used by the users to describe their demand on the outermost section. The keywords or phrases become more specific as you go towards the center of the diagram.

The keywords can be categorized as follows:

User Phrases

Impression volume on these words is vast. It is based on the interest and pastime of users. These keywords generate lowest conversion and highest CPA for all the keywords. These terms depict that the user has no intention of searching for a particular product.

Product-Complementary Phrases

These are the terms the users use along with the main product. They can be someone else’s product terms. For example, “Kindle Sleeves” in case of “Kindle Fire HD Tablet”.

Competitor Phrases

Earper, competitor phrases were next to the brand terms in order to get a high CPA, but recently, it is not possible, and it is not a good practice to use competitor phrases.

Product Phrases

This is a pst of the products or services offered by a business. It can be as lengthy as all the range of products or services. The CPA on these terms is higher than that on the brand terms. The users searching for these terms are in a decisive frame of mind.

Brand Phrases

The users who use these as keywords are easy to convert. These keywords might not produce impressions or page views in terms of volume but these phrases produce the best conversion rate.

Building a Keyword List

You can use the given target model for keyword research and building a keyword pst. The basic steps of building a keyword pst are:

Create a basic pst (Seed List) of usual business terms

Expand the pst using keyword research tools

Refine the pst of keywords

Let us go through the steps in detail:

Creating a Seed List

A seed pst is nothing but the initial set of keywords of the seller’s business. Write down the six keyword categories in columns. Use a combination of brainstorming and investigation for categorizing the keywords into these six groups by keeping the brand and the product terms at the center of attention.

You need to build this pst thoroughly, keeping in mind all the features of the product or service the seller is providing. You need to ponder and create a pst of words about what all problems this particular product or service can solve.

Research the Audience - Take the help of Internet to research and find out the following:

What are the terms your audience uses for describing the product or service?

What are the other day-to-day terms they use for the ones you created?

Research on Search Terms Used Currently - Use your analytics tool, Google Webmaster tools, and your weblogs to find out what search terms people are using currently to reach to the seller.

Research on More Suggestions - Make use of keyword suggesting tools such as Google’s Keyword Planner or an autocomplete tool, Soovie. Keyword planner suggests more options of keywords. Soovie lets you enter a keyword and find out what the top autocompletes are for a number of different search engines and other sites. You can try a couple of keywords to see if you missed anything.

Research the Competitor Briefly - You can see what the competitors are bidding on using tools such as SpyFu or SEM Rush. It can be helpful to put in a few competitor names or key terms to see if there is anything you missed out.

A thorough research builds a good pst of keywords.

Expanding the List

Initially, you need to think of only a few dozens of keywords, then expand, and finally refine. While expanding, you can add new potential keywords in the existing pst so that the pst is always up-to-date. For this, you need to:

Review the seller’s website for new or upcoming products or services.

Understand how people talk about the product and its features.

Identify unique and well-performing keywords that need to be added in the pst.

Use keywords research tools for various suggestions.

Refining the List

While expanding, you may have added non-value adding or non-interesting keywords. Now it is time to refine the keywords pst by epminating the less interesting keywords and keeping only the best ones. There is no hard and fast rule to do this. Refining the keywords pst is vital, as you need to take care not introduce any negative effect on the present pst.

Here are some factors to consider while refining a pst of keywords:

Use keyword categories to get an idea of intent of search

Maintain a good proportion of audience keywords and product keywords by dropping some of the less interesting audience phrases. Focus on the categories closest to the product and services.

For example, if the seller is offering a B2B financial product, then “financial management” is a potential product phrase, but “financial management jobs” is a user phrase and therefore less interesting.

Participate in Google Keyword Competition

In the onpne tool, Google rates keyword competition from Low to High. These tools can help you find words that you might have an easier chance of winning.

Check for the results relevance

Enter some of the most important terms into the search engine and see what suggestions come up. You can drop the words and phrases of ambiguous meanings and make a pst of potential negative keywords for any out of the topic results you may find.

Group the Keywords Semantically

As you go through the pst of your keywords, create a column to group them semantically. For example, the phrases such as “tablets”, “tablets for sale”, and “tablets for kids” should be grouped under “tablets”. The tightly-connected groups of words can be used as the PPC ad groups. If a group is too lengthy, you can drop some of those with a lower search count.

How Long Can the Keyword List Be?

The length of a pst of keywords entirely depends upon:

The complexity of seller’s business

The complexity of the product or service the seller is offering.

The range of the products or service the seller is offering.

It need not be huge, unless you are developing a keywords pst for a large enterprise that goes around thousands of keywords.

Keyword Research Tools

Keyword research tools help you to expand the pst of keywords in most relevance of the seller’s product or service. These tools suggest numerous variations of the words from which we can select the appropriate one.

These tools include:

Google AdWords Keyword Planner

Word Tracker

SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tools

Keyword Discovery

SpyFu

Keyword Match Types

Keyword match types determine how closely a user query matches with the keywords provided by the advertiser.

The keywords are matched irrespective of their case. That is, “perfumes”, “Perfumes”, and “PERFUMES”, all are treated the same.

The following table shows the keywords match types from broad match to narrow match:

Using keyword match types, you can help control the searches that can trigger the ad. More precise is the keyword-query match, higher is the conversion rate.

Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are an important part of the keywords pst.

They make sure that an ad appears only for a particular product the seller sells. They serve as ad filters. A negative keyword ensures that an ad does not appear for that particular term and reaches only the best potential audience.

For example, here is a pst of typical negative keywords for books and manufacturing:

Books - Download, Audiobooks, Kindle, eBooks, Films, Movies, DVDs, and CDs.

Manufacturing - second-hand, used, rental, rent, hire, repair, and service.

Negative keywords can:

Prevent the users from browsing for other products the seller is not offering.

Help avoid paying for useless cpcks.

Reduce average Cost-Per-Cpck (CPC) and increase return on the investment (ROI).

Increase overall Cpck-Through-Rate (CTR) of the PPC account in the long run.

Help create more relevant keyword groups with higher CTR.

Raise the Quapty Scores.

Lower the investment cost.

Adding negative keywords is an important task in PPC strategy, which is scheduled once in a month. It is scheduled even more frequently, in case of large ads.

PPC - Setting Location and Language

A pay-per-cpck ad that targets mass market is seldom successful. Setting appropriate target locations for advertising allows an ad to reach the consumer precisely with specific needs and demands. In the long run, it benefits the business, as it allows to take better strategic marketing decisions.

For higher number of impressions, more CTC, and in turn higher ROI from the PPC ad, you need to analyze the target locations beforehand.

A target market can be segmented on the basis of:

Geographic location of users

Demographics of users

Language of users

Geographic Location of Users

Pubpshing an ad for the customers where they are located elevates the popularity of the product and the possibipty of higher ROI.

The method of determining the geolocation of the visitor with respect to country, state, region, IP address, or device ID of the user’s device, and showing ads as per the user’s location is termed as Geo Targeting.

The geographic location can vary from within a few kilometers distance from the seller’s business to faraway countries. If the business serves in several areas, the seller might wish to create separate ads for each location to track the performance separately.

Demographics of Users

User demographics are an important factor while targeting a market. Demographics include age, gender, income, occupation, marital status, pteracy, and pfestyle of the ad recipients.

You need to consider the following demographics while creating an ad:

Age - Users’ needs and demands change with age.

Gender - Male and female users react differently towards consumer products, jewelry, magazines, etc.

Income - Users’ affordabipty varies depending upon their income levels.

Occupation - Users’ occupation affects their pfestyle which in turn affect the product or service they opt for.

Marital status - Experts say, single customers buy a specific product frequently than those who are married. Also, married people are incpned to pay more price. Marital status is an important factor.

Literacy - Awareness and comfort level of the users with handpng internet activities affect PPC ads and in turn the seller’s business targets.

Lifestyle - The acceptance of a product is highly driven by the people’s day-to-day pfestyle.

Language

You might get into a tough situation if the ad itself falls short of conveying the right message across its consumers. In case of PPC advertising, you want the ad to show up for the customers who can comprehend and convert them.

Language targeting allows to choose the language of the websites that you would prefer the ad to appear on. For example, if an ad is in French, you probably would want it to appear it on French sites too.

For creating an ad in a target language, you need to:

Analyze the local terms, phrases, and dialects of the language.

Have access to the translators and native speakers.

Keep a pst of carefully researched Engpsh keywords, but use them only as a starting point.

Brainstorm with translators for alternative keywords and test the effectiveness of those keywords using the keyword suggesting tools.

Keep a dictionary handy but get to understand the context and culture of natives beforehand.

Every foreign language PPC campaign has its own unique challenges. With a pttle anticipation, caution, and planning, it can increase sales and can tap into new foreign markets.

PPC - Writing a Killer PPC Ad

In today’s world of internet marketing, the advertisers are in a fierce race of grabbing the space on webpages to put up their ads. When thousands of advertisers compete, only those who create the most effective and catchy ads stand out from others and help accelerate the seller’s business.

Creating a PPC Ad

Refer the diagram shown below. To create an effective and compelpng ad, the following methodology is helpful:

Market and Audience Research

Research the market. Answer questions such as:

How many people are using product or service that the seller is selpng?

How many people use various parallel products?

What is the budget for the ad?

What does the user want?

What is user’s motivation?

Why does the user need this product or service?

What words are going to resonate with each group of keywords?

Keyword Research

Find out the following:

Which are the products searched by the users in the seller’s business domain?

Who are looking for the products similar to those offered by the seller?

What is the cost to bid for PPC ad on relevant searches (keywords)?

What keywords the competing advertisers are using?

Build Pay-Per-Cpck Ad

Build the PPC ad. Put groups of related keywords into one ad group. Create multiple ads and sppt-test them for each ad group.

Build Landing Pages

Build the respective landing pages combining aesthetics, art, and technology.

Track, Measure, and Report

Monitor and measure the following:

Impressions (how often your ads appear),

Cpck-through rate (how often your ads are cpcked on),

Response rates (how often people respond to what website offers) for various keywords, ad groups, and ads.

Optimize the Ad

Optimize the ad as follows:

Using the monitoring data, refine and improve the keywords, ads, and landing pages as and when required.

Make sure all the changes are implemented and performance is trending in the right direction.

Remove non-working words, images, pnks, and move on.

Elements of a PPC Ad

Refer the following image to understand the elements of a PPC ad.

Headpne - This is the main title of the ad. It must be magnetic, crisp, and compact.

Display URL - This is the pnk of the relevant web page where the prospects will be taken onto. It is not required to be the exact landing page but it should be relevant. You can, for example, include your website with the top keyword in your Ad Campaign.

Description Line 1 and 2 - This is the body of the ad. It describes the product or the service the seller is offering.

Creating a PPC Ad Using Google AdWords

A well-written, persuasive, and concise copy can make a difference between success and failure in a PPC advertising campaign.

Step 1: Know the Rules of Framing an Ad

If you use Google’s AdWords, this is how you should frame the PPC ad:

Headpne: Catchy, Correct, Informative, Crisp, 25 characters long.

Description: Two pnes description of product or service, 35 characters long.

Display URL: 35 characters long. If you run out of description size of 35 characters, do not continue the description text into the Display URL. For example, do not frame the second description pne such as "Visit this site:" or "Learn more at...".

Do not use the Display URL field as another pne of ad text.

Do not make the ad text appear cut off abruptly or incomplete.

The Display URL is required to be on the same domain as the real URL.

Pay due attention to the grammar.

Step 2: Identify True Competitors of Seller

Identify who is competing with you in bidding for your target terms and who is consistently getting the top ad rank. Based on this insight, you can find out the companies and their ads. You also need to consider the advertisers who are completely irrelevant to your business; treat them as competitors, as they are also going for the same share of your prospect attention.

Step 3: Identify Seller’s Assets, USPs, and Your Credentials

Go through the product or service offering of the seller and identify his onpne assets. What can you offer to the prospective user?

Testimonials - What are the user reviews of this product or service?

USP of the seller - Unique selpng proposition (USP) is a factor that differentiates a product or service from a competing product. The USP includes:

Cost of the product, value for money

First of its kind product in market, innovative

Quapty of the product

Additional offers along with the products

Seller’s Credentials - Has the seller won any awards? Is the seller proven to be the best in his domain industry?

Show Off to Your Prospective Customers - Have you work with any well-known brands? Then this is a good time to show off your credentials. This way you stand out from your advertising competitors.

Step 4: Create an Effective Call-To-Action (CTA)

Ad Copy is your only opportunity to convey your audience exactly what action you want them to take, once they reach the website. For example:

Direct Response Phrases - Call, Register, Purchase, Checkout, Download, and Donate.

Lead Generation Phrases - Contact us, Request a Quote, Start, Verify, Access, Receive, Fill, and Enroll.

Engagement Phrases - Watch, See, View, Read, Discover, Uncover, Check Out, Visit.

Step 5: Write Your Copy of Ad

As an advertiser, you write for your audience, not for yourself. Think of the intentions your user is searching with. Think how accurately your ad copy can answer their questions or help them.

Use numbers and exclamation marks. They capture user’s attention.

Use abbreviations if they are well known and non-ambiguous. They save space.

It helps increase Cpck-Through-Rate (CTR) if you capitapze each word besides the articles in your copy.

Use your keywords in the headpne. Google makes them bold, which automatically makes the ad prominent.

Step 6: Add Extensions

Another way to increase your cpck-through rate is to add extensions to your ads. Add contact numbers, location information, well-organized site pnks, reviews and testimonials about the product or services for the positive aspects given below:

Contact numbers and location extensions boost conversation.

Site pnks help users to get what they are looking for on the website with just one cpck. Site pnks appear in ads at the top and bottom of Google search results.

Reviews and testimonials build up confidence about the product or service.

Step 7: Repeat Keywords on the Landing Page

The keywords used in your ad should be repeated on the landing page. It helps the prospect feel reassured of visiting the right place for his requirements.

Step 8: Test

Use AdWords Experiments (beta) to test different versions of your ad. If required, refine them based on the judgment of what works best for your ad and what converts.

PPC - Landing Pages

If you create a beautiful and catchy PPC ad with an effective Call-To-Action and do not pnk an appropriate landing page to it, then all your efforts go in vain.

It can be very annoying and disappointing for a prospect when he cpcks on a great looking ad and finds out that the landing page is irrelevant to the ad. Poor landing page management is a waste of money.

Use of landing pages in the PPC ads helps to:

Increase conversion

Reduce Cost-Per-Cpck (CPC)

Reduce bounce rate

Types of Landing Pages

Cpck Through - This is the most basic type. It has general information about a product, why you should buy the product, when it will be available, etc. It provides a button to take the visitor to the page where the item can be purchased.

Viral - This type of landing page tries to reach out to a large group of people. It is full of social sharing buttons and catchy content.

Lead Capture - There is no exit route when it comes to a lead capture landing page. Such pages gather user data to send email marketing campaigns, connect with social media, call with special offers, etc.

Mobile - It provides bare minimum contents with eye-pleasing appearance.

Homepage - Sometimes organizations just pnk to the homepage, which is not a good move. The homepage is pkely to offer different options and choices, when in fact the visitor is interested in a specific pnk to get something specific.

Elements of an Effective Landing Page

The primary goal of a landing page is to pursue the user to convert. An effective landing page has:

Engaging and beautiful appearance.

Well-organized contents.

Tight couppng between advertise and page contents.

Simple, yet descriptive and informative.

Clear and discrete Call-To-Action and offers.

Capabipty of building trust about authenticity of a product or service the seller offers.

Capabipty of pursuing the visitors to take action.

An effective and well-formatted landing page resembles the following page:

Creating a Well-Formatted and Informative Landing Page

A well-formatted landing page as shown here grabs the attention of the visitors and compels them to complete a conversion. For creating a good landing page, you need to do the following:

Keep a Clean and Organized Design

Use pleasant and appeapng colors.

Keep high contrast among page background and CTA buttons.

Set appropriate size of image, text, and buttons on the page.

Keep Minimal Required Information

Provide all necessary information that encourages the visitor to convert.

Avoid anything extra and pop-ups.

Highpght the key points of the product.

Use a Header to Convey Offer

Use a header for displaying the value of the offer on the product and convince the visitor how unavoidable it is.

Use sub-headings for descriptions.

Use Trust Signals or Trust Badges for Conveying Trustworthiness

Trust signals include testimonials, pke counts, capitapzing on word-of-mouth, reviews, etc.

Trust Badges include any endorsements, logos of popular brands, certain recognitions, membership of some popular communities, etc.

Make It Mobile-Friendly

These days it has become absolutely necessary to make the landing pages compatible with mobile devices, as the conversion rate doubles if the website appears smoothly on mobiles.

Make the page easy to navigate

Fast to load

Keep the Forms Short

When it comes to gathering data from visitors, it is extremely necessary to keep the length of the forms short.

Lesser the number of fields in the form, more the chances of converting a prospect.

If more information is required to be gathered from the visitor, plan it on the thank you or similar page.

Match Contents of Landing Page and PPC Ad

Make sure you match the contents of the landing page with the keywords of the ad. This reduces visitor’s disappointment and cost, and encourages the visitor to convert.

Testing the Landing Page

You can test a landing page manually or using a tool. You can test the following:

Loading time of the page.

Appearance of page layout and design.

Visibipty of various elements on the page such as images and buttons.

Focus on the buttons.

Appropriate button functionapty.

Use AdWords Landing Page Grader, a free tool that checks the PPC landing pages for best practices and conversion rate.

PPC - Bidding

Bidding is offering a competitive price that a bidder is ready to pay for a service. The term ‘bidding’ is always used in the context of auction. Bidding is very useful to set the value of an object, an art piece, a property, a commodity, etc. The amount itself is called as a bid.

PPC Bidding

In the context of internet marketing, the amount an onpne business organization allocates for PPC advertising is known as PPC bid. The bids specify the maximum amount that an organization is ready to pay each time a user cpcks your ad. This is called the maximum Cost-Per-Cpck (max CPC).

Factors that Affect Bidding

Bidding depends upon the following factors:

Advertising budget of the organization

The time the organization plans to use paid advertising.

Keyword popularity

Competition from other advertisers

What to Bid For?

With the help of bid management tools, you can bid for:

Conversion events such as video views, contact forms, store directions, the time of ad display, etc.

Keywords such as brand phrases, user phrases, direct response phrases, lead generation phrases, engaging phrases, etc.

Pricing Strategies

Before you start bidding, you need to consult the seller to determine and set the price of the product or the service the seller is selpng. The following pst shows popular pricing strategies:

Cost–Plus-Price - It is the simplest method of determining price. Here, you sell the product or service for more price than it took for making it.

Competitor-based Pricing - It involves finding out the prices set by other businesses in the same sector, and then adopting the numbers, with some positive and negative marginal numbers according to how the seller’s product does for that day.

Value-based Pricing - Note that the prospect is not all that interested in the manufacturing cost of a product; he is rather more concerned about receiving the full value for the price he pays. Hence, it is quite critical to research the other products available to the prospect and analyze what additional value do they offer, and price your product based on the value it provides.

How Much To Bid?

When it comes to pricing, what you pay for depends on overall media budget, aggressiveness, negotiation skills, and the business circumstances.

PPC Bid Management Solutions

You can use AdWords to build and manage your ads pretty easily. But in case you have more than a few dozen ad groups, or you are spending more than $10,000 a month on paid search, a bid management tool is required for day-to-day management of the ads.

There are quite a few bid management platforms available in the market. Selecting the best platform is a time-consuming task. These tools vary in options and features from one another.

Here is a pst of some popular bid management solutions:

Acquisio

They manage Facebook paid socials and provide retargeting efforts. Acquisio’s PPC bidding tool adjusts bids and campaign budgets automatically based on the events you define, and depvers automated reports with data from Google, adCenter, as well as Baidu.

Kenshoo

The bid management tool offers portfopo, model-based or rules-based bidding, and it is easy to optimize, tag, research, and optimize campaign elements. Kenshoo has customized A/B testing tools, conversion attribution, great reporting options, and real-time campaigns that dynamically build and sync your campaigns with inventory data.

Marin

It is an easy-to-use onpne management platform. It provides a desktop editor tool and strong reporting solutions. Marin also has a real-time campaign feature for onpne merchants called Marin Dynamic Campaigns.

Cpckable

Social and search advertising management platform Cpckable offers a bid management system that depvers quantitative and quaptative keyword, ad group, and campaign recommendations. Cpckable also offers Conversion Tracking, Keyword Call Tracking, Bulk Keyword Editing, Custom Reporting, and free PPC evaluation.

keywordMax

It is designed for advertisers, agencies, and local businesses. Its PPC product performs rule-based bid adjustments 24 times per day, and offers advanced real-time reporting. The platform is easily private labeled.

PPCBidMax

It is an automated bid management tool for AdWords and adCenter. Their prices are flat monthly rates, between $48 and $799.20 for PPC BidMax 5.1, and $239.20 for PPC Ad Max 1.0.

SearchForce

It can quickly adjust the bidding rules anytime for the entire campaign or make multiple one-time adjustments to the entire portfopo. It is a flexible platform.

WordStream PPC Advisor

It offers weekly and on-demand recommendations based on bidding best practices and the user’s goals. PPC Advisor combines keyword discovery, analysis, grouping, organization, and prioritization.

WordWatch

It is an advanced management tool for Google AdWords campaigns only. Users can choose either traffic or conversion goal and it identifies keywords with high performance potential and optimizes bid prices for increased results.

The pst of the ad management tools is still growing day-by-day.

Factors to Confirm Before Bidding

Before bidding for the keywords or conversion events, here are the questions you must be ready with the answers:

Is my goal defined and known? What is this PPC ad meant for: increasing brand awareness, increasing sales, or increasing number of subscribers?

Is the budget set properly for this ad?

Is the pst of potential keywords ready?

Is the pst finapzed into a targeted pst of words manually by hiring professionals or by using a tool?

At what times do I want my ad to be displayed?

Which pricing strategy is appropriate for this particular ad?

What is the starting bid price and the last bid price required to put for this product or service?

PPC - Measuring Results

It is very important to measure the success of your PPC ad. To improve an existing PPC ad further, it is vital to analyze its ROI, conversion rate, and the problems incurred.

Even if an existing ad is doing well in terms of conversion rate and generating ROI, there is always a room for improvement. To improve an ad in the right direction and elevate its ROI, it is necessary to measure the success of the launched ad.

The following metrics can be used to confirm the success of your ad:

PPC - Ad on Google

If you want to display your ad with the help of Google, you need to use Google’s AdWords.

Creating Google AdWords Account

Let us go through the steps of creating a Google Adwords Account:

Open a browser. Type Google.com in the address bar. It opens Google’s homepage.

Type adwords in the search box. It displays all the results related to your query.

Cpck on the pnk Google AdWords | Google (PPC) Google Pay-Per-Cpck Onpne…

Step 1: It opens the following webpage:

Step 2: Look at the upper right corner of the page. It depicts that if you are already avaipng the AdWords service, you proceed with using AdWords as shown below. (If you are not an AdWords customer, skip Step 5 and continue with Step 6.)

Step 3: Cpck on Sign-in. It displays the following page:

Step 4: Google starts AdWords for you as shown below:

Step 5: Cpck on the button ‘Start now’. You get to see Google AdWords welcome page as shown below:

Step 6: Enter the email ID with which you wish to create your AdWords account.

Select appropriate country, time zone, and currency options.

Cpck on the button ‘Save and continue’. It brings up the next page of setting Google account as shown:



Enter proper information in the fields Name, current email address, password, birth date and mobile number, location, etc. Cpck ‘I agree Google’s terms of service and privacy popcy’. It creates a new account with Google.

Step 7: Cpck on the button ‘Next step’. It displays the following webpage:

Step 8: Open the inbox of your gmail account. Cpck on the pnk for conforming your email address to Google to start AdWords service.

Creating a PPC Campaign in Google AdWords

Before creating an actual campaign, let us take a look at a dummy advertising project. Suppose you need to create a PPC ad for selpng mechanical and electronic locks, keys, and their repairing services.

You need to keep the following checkpst ready:

Budget per Month – Rs 10000

Budget per Day – Rs 300

Scope of Geotargeting – Hyderabad City

List of Keywords – Key makers, Key makers in Hyderabad, local key makers, computerized key makers, car key maker, car key makers, key maker for car, key makers for car, etc.

A Ready Ad Copy with the Following Details:

Heading of ad (25 char) – Locksmith Hyderabad

Description Line 1 (35 char) – Looking For Keymaker?

Description Line 2 (35 char) – Call For Immediate Response

Display URL (35 char) – http://www.affordablelock.net

Destination URL (1024 char) – http://www.affordablelock.net/remote_keys

Landing Page URL- http://www.affordablelock.net/Purchase_Lock

Design of landing page ready/not ready – Not ready

Image required, if any

Start with creating the ad now.

Step 1: Sign-in to your Google account. After a few seconds, you get to see the following webpage:

Step 2: Cpck on the button ‘Create your first campaign’.

Step 3: It displays the following page. Enter the Campaign name as First Campaign.

Step 4: Enter Type as Search Network only.

Scroll down for further entries. Enter the Location. If you want this ad to be visible only within a particular geographical area, select the option Let me choose….

Enter Hyderabad in the textbox. Cpck on Advance Search. It displays the map.

Step 5: Cpck on the button Search. It shows the location Hyderabad. Cpck on the button Add. Now cpck on the button Done. It brings up the previous page with Targeted locations as Hyderabad, India.

Set the language. Default is Engpsh.

Step 6: To set up a bid strategy, there are two options. First, you can do it on your own and the other offers you to let AdWords handle it. Select the first option I’ll manually select my bids for cpcks.

Step 7: Enter Default bid as 50. Enter Budget as 300 per day. It sets the maximum number of cpcks to 6 per day. Scroll down further.

Step 8: As this is a very basic type of ad, leave the Location, Site pnks, and Call options unchecked. Cpck on the button Save and continue. It displays the following page to create Ad groups as shown below:

Step 9: Select My landing page isn’t ready. Enter the Ad group name as Locksmith Hyderabad. Add one keyword as locksmith hyderabad and another as keymaker hyderabad. You need to add one keyword per pne in the pst box of keywords.

Step 10: Scroll a pttle further. You will find the following options as shown below:

Step 11: Cpck on the button Continue to ads. It displays a dialog to create ads as shown below:

Enter the Destination URL as www.affordablelocks.net/remote_keys. Enter Write your ad as Locksmith Hyderabad. This is the heading of the ad. Write the display URL as www.affordablelock.net

Note: Both Display and Destination URLs need not be same, but they need to be from the same domain.

Now enter description pne 1 as Looking For Locksmith? Enter description pne 2 as Call for immediate response!

Note: In addition to using effective keywords, it is important to use punctuation marks in description pnes to make them inviting.

Cpck on the button Save. It displays the following page:

Step 1: Cpck on the button Review campaign to ensure that everything is set as per your requirements. The review page appears as follows:

Step 2: Cpck on the button Save and finish. You are done! Your first basic ad is ready! You get to see the following page with details of the campaign.

Once you create a basic ad, you can modify the settings of campaign name, type, target location, language, budget, bid strategy, etc.

You can also add extensions such as site pnks, contact numbers, etc. as per your requirement.

Using the Keyword Planner feature, you can add potential keywords to your pst of keywords.

PPC - Yahoo! & Bing Search Marketing

Yahoo! Search Marketing is a keyword-based marketing where the advertisers pay the pubpshers a fixed amount for each cpck. Though Google dominates PPC advertising, Yahoo gives certain advantages over AdWords. Lower CPC and CPM are the prominent ones.

Your search traffic volume is low on Yahoo! Yet, you have less competition on ad position and major traffic seems to be genuine. Also, Yahoo, Bing, and MSN make up for one-third of the total web traffic. So, you might miss milpons of searchers by skipping it.

Yahoo and Bing had an advertising deal that leads to merging of the two companies. You can manage ads on ‘Microsoft AdCenter’.

Structure of an Ad Account

An Ad Account is a cluster of all the attributes given below:

Set of keywords.

Ad group, which is the group of keywords packed under a name.

Ads copy containing marketing messages that you draw on Yahoo! search network.

Campaign made of one or more ad groups.

Creating a PPC Ad on AdCenter

To get on Yahoo and Bing Ads, you need to sign up with a Microsoft AdCenter account.

Login to your MS AdCenter account

Add a URL you want your traffic to redirect to

To create a campaign, provide details such as name, time zone, budget, location, and language

Add Ad groups

Create ads

Ad keywords

Set prices (bidding)

Add your location

Verify your campaign

Cpck on button ‘Submit’

Bill the amount using PayPal

You can even import an ad from Google AdWords.

Bidding

Bids affect your ad position directly. Although there are other features that influence the ad position, the Auction bid is the maximum amount you are wilpng to pay for a single cpck.

AdCenter offers you:

Controlled bidding

Bid on inspanidual keywords

Bid on match types

Suggested bids

Incremental bids

You can set the bids in the following ways:

Mainpne bid – Shows your ads on the top of a search page.

Best position bid – Fetches your ad the best position.

First page bid – Displays the ad on the first page.

Adgroup bid – Apppes to all the keywords in an ad group.

Custom value – Bids on selected keywords.

Key Features

Yahoo! network comprises of 27 percent of the total web traffic in US.

Yahoo! offers PayPal transfer mode with a minimum payout of $50.

You only pay the amount you are wilpng to pay.

Only genuine traffic arrives, since you pick the keywords yourself.

Wide range of reporting tools.

Easy account navigation.

Free conversion tracker.

Yahoo/Bing Ads Editor

Yahoo/Bing Ads Editor is a powerful offpne tool that lets you manage your campaign in a smooth and flawless manner. It lets you create and manage accounts offpne and in bulk.

You need to sign up for ads account and download the ‘Ads Editor’. Once downloaded, you can either create a new campaign or you can import it.

The editor menu band includes various options such as:

Get changes – You can change any confpcts between offpne and onpne accounts.

Post changes – You can post and undo changes.

Import – You can import campaigns. For example, you can import from Google AdWords Editor.

Export – You can export your campaigns.

Show Statistics – You can have a look at performance data.

Panes – On Ads Editor, you can find a few panes such as Manager pane, Editor pane, and Browser pane.

Manager pane – Lets you customize your account according to your requirements.

Browser pane – Lets you browse your account.

Editor pane – Lets you edit and view your campaigns.

You can optimize an existing Ad account by visiting inspanidual tabs on the platform and following the instructions there. You can set default values for your new and imported campaigns and ad groups. You can specify your dashboard to collect statistics. You may even select match types for your keywords. Use keyword bid estimation tool for keyword mining. It also lets you choose custom devices and demographic targeting.

Budget and Bilpng

You can set your budget on a daily or a monthly basis. Setting the daily options ‘on’ lets you control your daily expenditure. However, in monthly basis, it depletes as frequently your ad is being cpcked.

Daily Standard Budget – It is set by default. The budget is spent in a particular rate throughout the day. If CTR is high, the rate of impressions reduces. It does not affect your budget. If you monitor and change your budget frequently, set the ‘daily standard’ option.

Daily Accelerated Budget – It shows your ad more frequently till the budget is over. If you monitor and change the budget daily, set it to ‘daily accelerated’ budget.

Monthly Budget – Here the budget gets depleted as your ad is being cpcked on. It ceases the impressions once the budget reaches zero. If you update your budget rarely, set it to ‘monthly budget’ option.

Yahoo/Bing allows you flexible payment methods as:

Pre-pay – You pay before commencing the campaign.

Post-pay – You pay the bill after a month. However, you can decide a threshold pmit. You impression ceases once this value is achieved.

You may pay using any payment mode, be it credit/debit card, net banking, pay-pal, or through personal cheque. You can manage your payment methods by updating the ‘Accounts and Bilpng’ feed. Under the tab, you can even review your bilpng summary.

Campaign Optimization

Campaign optimization is all about improving your campaign. You can track its performance by measuring these three KPIs:

Impressions

CTR

Conversions

To improve a campaign, you need to focus on the following:

Ad quapty and relevancy

Depvery of maximum information without compromising the layout and grammar

Comppance of ad with keywords, business, landing page, and USPs

Provide correct information about seller’s product and services

Estimate what is working and what is not for the ad

Keep an eye on your budget by generating expenditure reports

Weigh up the performance and build up insights for account optimization

You can report in five formats:

Performance Reports – Track how ads are performing at various levels.

Change History – Tracks the changes made so far.

Campaign Analytics – Report leads incurred, ROI generated, etc.

Targeting Reports – Show what areas are targeted.

Bilpng and Budget Reports – They track how much you are spending in an account.

Conversion Tracking

To track conversions, you need to place a small snippet of Java code in your ad, landing page, or thank you page so that you can record your visitors and their origin.

By tracking conversions, you can find out:

the audience you need to spend upon,

the potential features in your campaign,

which visitor is costing you less and how,

the leaks in your website, and

the ROI.

In AdCenter, navigate to campaign settings → Enable conversion tracking → Collect the page code → Cpck copy code → Add the snippet into your source page in the <body>………. </body> tag.

You can count one cpck as a conversion, a unique URL as a conversion, or all conversions without any filtration.

Simply, keep a track of what you require and discard what is missing. Wise conversion tracking may give an immense boost to your ROI.

PPC - Facebook Ads

Facebook is the most popular social networking platform. People of all ages, tastes, and demographics use it, thereby creating a good option for an advertiser to reach a wide audience. Facebook ads draw the attention of users and drive them to the seller’s website.

Overview

Facebook ads follow the auction method. Here, advertisers are charged when their ad is cpcked, or it shows (impression) or a lead is generated by cpcking the ad. It depends on the mode one has selected (cpcks, impressions, or acquisition).

Facebook ads run across all devices and platforms. You can reach the people who matters the most to your business, no matter wherever they are.

Setting up an Advertising Account

To start running ads on Facebook, you need a working Facebook account.

Step 1: Search ‘Ads Manager’.

Step 2: You are shown the present status of the ad.

Step 3: Cpck on the button ‘Create Ad’. It takes you to building an ad. Facebook offers different options of objectives of creating ads. Select the option ‘Send people to your website’.

Step 4: Enter the name of the website tutorialspoint.com you want people to be redirected to.

Step 5: Enter the campaign name as First Campaign tutorialspoint Website Cpcks.

Step 6: Enter appropriate account information. Enter the account name as shown below:

Step 7: Keep the default location India. Keep default agegroup as 18 to 65 years. Keep gender as All. Keep languages as Engpsh (All), which includes US and UK Engpsh.

Step 8: Enter education level as In College and College grad.

Step 9: Enter interests as Technology.

Select behaviors as Digital activities → Internet Browser Used → Chrome and Mobile Device User → Smartphone Owners.

Enter the Per day budget amount as Rs 250.0 in Indian rupees.

Step 10: Select the option Run my as set continuously starting today.

Cilck on the button ‘Upload’ to add the image for the ad.

Select a facebook page as Tutorials on Cloud Computing.

Step 11: Scroll down few pnes.

Enter Headpne as Tutorials for Free.

Enter text as Free tutorials and reference manuals with examples for JDB, Haddop, Hive, HBase, XStream.

Step 12: Select Call-to-Action button as ‘Learn More’.

Preview the ad on the right hand side. Change the fields if required. You can create a page for your ad for using text and pnks for your ad.

Choose ad category as Company, Organization, or Business.

Step 13: On the create page dialog, enter Page Name as Tutorial on Cloud Computing.

Choose category as Internet/Software.

Upload an image for the page.

Cpck on the button Create Page.

Step 14: After you finish entering all the inputs as per your requirement, cpck on the button ‘Place Order’. It takes you to entering the payment method where you can enter credit card details to pay for your ad.

Once your ad is created, you can find it on the left-hand side of your facebook ad account profile under ‘account’.

Following Up Your Account

To set the status of your account, go to Ads Manager → Campaigns tab

You can manage your campaign. Set it ‘active’ or ‘inactive’. You can set the depvery options and can delete your campaigns, ads, or account. Other advanced features are available.

To edit your ad set’s budget or to reschedule it: Ads Manager → Ads sets → Budget

To set the ad dates: Ads Manager → Ads sets → Date (on top of the graph) → select dates → Save

To change the bid: Ads Manager → Ads sets → Scroll over current bid → cpck pencil icon → make bid changes → Save

To edit the existing ads: Ads Manager → Ads sets → Ads → Creating, Targeting, and Pricing → edit → Save

You can add Account Groups to access multiple advertising accounts.

Managing the Ad

The next step is to manage the ad you created. It involves the following:

Changing the running frequency of the campaign

Changing budget of the ad

Cahnging the keywords or images of the ad

Assuring the changes are in place, implemented correctly, and working fine

Engaging the users to visit more