Creating a PPC Campaign

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Elements of a paid search campaign

Your paid search campaign will typically comprise the following elements:

• Campaign name
• Location
• Language
• Daily budget
• Multiple ad groups

Ad groups

Remember, you can organize your keywords into ad groups. You can have multiple ad groups in a campaign, and you can cap the combined spend of all your ad groups in a campaign with your campaign daily budget. In other words, all ad groups in that campaign share a daily budget, and all the ad groups combined won’t spend more than your daily campaign budget.

Ads

For each ad group, you should aim to create at least one ad. So, when someone searches for any of the keywords in your ad group, they will see the ad associated with that ad group.

Remember the importance of having smaller ad groups with tightly related keywords! If you have an ad group with hundreds of keywords, it would be impossible to craft an ad that’s relevant to all those keywords. So keep your ad groups small and relevant to drive the best performance.

Assets

Don’t forget your ad assets. These can enhance the clickability and performance of your PPC by adding elements such as site links, call outs, and other relevant assets to your ad. Review all asset options available and include what’s most relevant to your business and customers.

PPC best practices

Ad text

Now that you understand how ads work in paid search, let’s consider some PPC best practices.

First, you need to understand how important your ad text (also called ad copy) is. As you might guess, this is the text in the ad that will appear as a result on Google after someone searches.

And, when an ad is shown on a search engine, you say an ad has been served.

Here are some tips to bear in mind when writing ad text:

• Character limits apply to ads. Don’t worry about accidentally going over the limit, though. Google will alert you if you create an ad that has more characters than is allowed.
• Remember that your ads are associated with ad groups, not individual keywords. This means that several keywords can show in the same ad. (As mentioned before, you don’t have to create an individual ad for each keyword.) This is why it is really important to ensure your ad groups are organized thematically, with related keywords.
• Well-written ad copy will improve searcher experience with your brand and drive more clicks. It can also increase conversions by directing searchers with a call to action, or CTA – for example, “sale ends Sunday, buy today!”

Ad assets

Assets, previously known as ad extensions, provide context on the nature and variety of your products and services before visitors click through to your site. They give users more reasons to click your ad, leading to improved visibility and an improved clickthrough rate (or CTR).

Assets include elements such as phone numbers, promotional offers, and quick links to your page or website to your PPC ads. These enhancements increase the size of the ad on screen and make it more likely to be clicked by the searcher. When you use ad assets, you can actually reduce the amount you pay for a click, as Google can reward you for putting effort into creating good PPC ads by increasing your quality score. With a higher likelihood of clicks and potentially lower costs, there are only good reasons to use ad assets!

Have a look at the different types of ad extensions available to you and choose the most appropriate one for your own or your client’s business objectives.