Learn PPC from Scratch – To Master Level

Advantages of Paid Search compared to traditional media like tv, radio and outdoor banner ads in roads and highways are explained here.

The main reason why Paid search is superior is because you can measure how much money you spent and how much you get in return. Even better is the ability to see the data live and make changes as the campaign progress.

You don't need to wait for a certain period of time say a month in order to measure how effective your campaign was.

You can't do this with traditional media. They say its still good for branding purposes but aside from that, you have very little benefits aside from just getting your product out there using a shotgun approach firing blindly at anyone without any precision.

This is where the beauty of paid search comes in.

The three types of costing in paid search are

CPC - cost per click

CPM - cost per impression (1000 views)

CPA - cost per action/conversion

It is important to understand these three types of pricing because it covers different situations for different needs of any business owner.

Factors affecting how ads are displayed are listed and explained:

Quality score and your bids are the major ones but the quality score is broken down

into smaller factors since they are all interrelated:

Remember, a high quality score means cheaper bids and more clicks for you

Factors affecting quality score are as follows:

- relevance factors

- landing pages

Ad rank is computed as

your bid x quality score = ad rank

Remember:

You only need to have the smallest bid higher than that of your competitor in order to "remain"

on your established ad position

Things to Remember:

The keyword tool is just convenient for you to get a nice list of the initial keywords to use.

More profitable keyword combinations however can be found in the query search report tool AFTER

the campaign has gone live and acquired actual traffic

CONTRADICTIONS :

There are a lot of profitable keywords that are used in ACTUAL searches that will NOT show up

in the query report tool of the keyword planner simply because the traffic is too small

or the tool simply hasn't listed them yet....

Remember, google's keyword tool is INCOMPLETE ...

it does NOT show you all the possible keyword combinations there is...

you acquire that in LIVE campaigns only...as well as intensive research for more

profitable keywords

Also, having an indication of high level competition doesn't necessarily mean the kw

is profitable, it is though, most of the time only

On the reverse, a keyword without traffic can also be profitable

it simply means that google kw tool has no data for them yet

their potential has yet to be determined by you in actual situations...

Aside from the relevance factor...

There is no way to know the actual effect of the landing page's elements on your

adwords quality score except through actual experimentation...

If your budget permits, you simply have to experiment with two designs and use them in

your adwords campaign to see which one google gives a higher quality score and which one

performs better in terms of conversion....rinse and repeat until satisfied

Constant experimentation and testing is required in this aspect to acquire the most effective

combination of keywords, ad copy and landing pages

Of course, if you have no plans to spend that much on a designer,

then create the most informative and user friendly landing page at the very start

to gain a high quality score and ultimately, conversions and sales...

Elements that needs to be seen in your Ads:

-specific

-call to action

-features & benefits described clearly

PPC Vocabulary

Definitions of :

1. Click - when a visitor clicks you ads

2. Impression - number of visitors seeing your ads

3. Cost/Conversion - amount of money spent to generate one lead or sale

4. Cost per Click - actual amount of one click to show your ad at its position

Your actions should change according to what stage you are, in your campaign

Stages of an ADwords campaign:

Testing - set the daily budget small but the cpc for keywords at a moderate level to generate enough clicks

to gather sufficient data

Expanding - search potential ad group ideas inside the keywords query report since they are the ones actually being typed by potential visitors and with proven traffic

Optimizing - simply continue adding negative keywords where applicable and change the bids up or down

Remember : never let the bids permanently be on the low end if you experienced a bad week or month

because sales might pick up on the next week and you are missing out on traffic if you change

the bid too much on the low range of the spectrum.

Important points to Remember:

1. Name your campaigns according to purpose - it is to make reporting easier for you to understand

use the ff: for names

product categories - when your business has multiple products but targeting only one location

geographical location - when the business has only one product like insurance but catering to multiple locations

both product & geo location - when the business has both multiple products targeting multiple locations

note: of course, you still need to factor in your convenience when creating campaign names, these are just strong suggestions, the end goal is simply to isolate related things within themselves so that you gain better understanding when you are generating the performance reports and trying to understand what is happening in your campaign

2. Never use AUTOMATIC bidding, USE MANUAL

you are not saving money nor improving your performance by using automatic

Google simply tries to get the most clicks possible,

NOT necessarily the cheapest or profitable cpc levels

use conversion optimizer later when you are allowed to do so, only after

you understand the concept of cost/conversion and you know what numbers to use

as the target CPA

3. Always separate display and search campaigns

It allows you to understand what is happening with both campaigns because if you

don't separate the two networks, the numbers would become almost useless for you

to understand because the two networks behave VERY DIFFERENTLY from each other

Part of the process to make your campaigns seamless and very targeted

You can either type the name of the place or input their longitude and latitude data

For situations where you are not sure of the exact coverage but rather just near within a center location

You should use radius targeting since it simply uses a specified diameter and covers a circle around

that target area you specified

Ignore the ff:

1. The need to acquire the top ad spot - the returns are not directly positive for you, positions 2-4 are cheaper

with more or less the same results

2. Recommendation by google to increase bid to enter first page - they show your ads anyway in most cases

and even if they don't it is better to understand your cost/conversion to know whether or not you

are in a winning position or not

Points to Remember:

1. Cost/conversion - the single most important concept of this entire course because you will use it as basis

on how much to bid for your keywords

2. Constant changes to the bidding is to be expected because the sales trend is also constantly changing.

You need to constantly monitor the campaign in order to know when to lower or increase CPC

self explanatory

simply paste the code in a page that confirms any action you want to track

Ideally:

1. After a purchase is confirmed

2. After an email subscription is confirmed or request for quotes are sent

The Difference between match types and their scope in terms of acquiring traffic

Note :

1. Always use the 3 different match types of ONE keyword in one ad group

to maximize you exposure while still making it very tight and focused

Negative keywords are more important than bidding management because

even if you don't lower or increase bids according to situation

you already lessen your costs, increase your clicks and visitors

all with a single addition of a negative keyword

This aspect of campaign optimizing should never be neglected

as it weeds out unwanted traffic that has no chance of converting to sales anyway

and makes good use of your limited marketing budget to traffic

that has more potential to convert to actual sales

Benefits of Proper Structuring of Ad groups and Campaigns

1. Cheaper and targeted bids for keywords

2. Ease of reporting, you gain better understanding of the whole campaign

3. Allows you to find more keyword to expand because you covered each match type

for each keyword that is already generating traffic, which leads to more unique variations of the keyword

4. Better maneuverability in terms of making changes

Elements to always include in an AD copy

1.Benefits to the consumer

2. Prices and Features

3. Call to action

Note for using dynamic keywords:

Insert dynamic keyword where you think variation of the search term will take place

You will notice certain obvious set of patterns and qualities of your campaigns

BUT at the end of the day, they can all change entirely

the only real basis here without fault is the data created by the visitors

which determine what match type or keyword is performing well currently or not

Hold no popular rules too sacred as your exact business situation might be slightly different

1. Understanding trends is important in mastering adwords

watch out for changes that are small in scope only like a few days or couple of weeks long

in case you might mistake it as something permanent and make changes to your campaigns

that will be detrimental in the long run

2. Sometimes, even a well performing ad group or campaign will perform very poorly

evaluate trice whether you should lower bids or not

You can just say to your self that you had a bad week and the next one will have different results

and you can leave your campaigns at that without necessarily making changes

Of course, you need to judge this for yourself as the situation could always change

and reverse itself

3. It is also enlightening to compared different time frames in order to understand things better

example: Always compare 2 weeks or 30 days time frame with All time to see

what is the difference between the current situation and how the campaign has performed thus far