How to Set Up a Solid PPC Campaign - Loading Your Campaign into Adwords

You may not realize it yet, but you've already finished the hard work. Think about it....

• You completed the keyword research
• You created your categories / adgroups
• You wrote your ads

See that? Now it's just a matter of putting the puzzle pieces together. Every tab on your spreadsheet is an adgroup. Each with its own keywords and individual ads. So when you're ready to create your new organized campaign, it's as simple as creating a new adgroup for each tab.

Now, there are pros and cons to keyword match types - broad, exact, and phrase (a post for another day). However, if you are looking to use some or all of the keyword match types, here is a great keyword wrapping tool for you to use.

If you've create a lot of ads per adgroup, I would not use all of the ads right away. You want to do some A/B testing (again, a post for a different day). Try 2-3 at a time and then work others into the rotation based on performance.

Also, do not forget to add your negative keywords if using broad or phrase match.

While the hard work is done, the tedious work is not. Wrapping keywords, copying and pasting ads, and setting bids can be time consuming. The wrapping tool should help, but be prepared for some mind-numbing work as well. But once you are done it should be worth it.

However, you're still not done. The last step is adjusting the settings on your Google Adwords campaign. That's where this post helps...big time.

Pros and Cons of9 Adwords settings.

And as for setting your bids, that will come down to your budget, the size of the campaign, competition levels, etc. However, here is some material to help you with that as well.

7 Strategies for Small Business Adwords Campaigns

Once you digest the material in those posts it's time for launch. That's when the fun begins...analytics. Because when it comes to Search Engine Marketing, it's all about the ROI.

7 Strategies for Small Business Google Adwords Campaigns

If you are a mid to large-sized company that has a healthy budget for your Google Adwords account, you have a lot of freedom within your campaign strategy. You can bid aggressively for high-converting keywords and advertise far and wide.

But what happens when you have an Adwords account for a small mom and pop shop that has a very limited budget? Shouldn’t you get just as much for your advertising dollar as the big guys? The answer is yes, but you’ll need to use a different strategy in order to achieve this.

Imagine that you—a small bakery called Grand-Ma-Ma’s Goodies—have only $5 a day to spend, and you take orders from people within a ten mile radius. And you’re closed on Tuesdays.

Here are 7 things to consider for Grand-Ma-Ma’s Adwords campaign:

1. Use Only Longtail Keywords – Yes, I mean only. ‘Bakery’ and ‘pies’ are great keywords, but they’ll eat up the $5 pretty quickly.

However, if Grand-Ma-Ma is famous for her Cream Cheese Pie (It’s a Philly thing), then use the longtail term “cream cheese pies,” which comes at a cheaper cost per click and is more likely to result in a conversion.

Sure, the term “cream cheese pies” will rarely be searched compared to ‘pies,’ but if you’re only spending $5 a day, and you have enough longtail keywords—peach cobbler pies, banana cream pies, etc—you’ll probably fill your budget out pretty well while attracting highly targeted customers in the process.

2. Get Granular – Segment ad groups down to the finest detail. Cost per click is a serious concern with a small budget campaign. How do you keep costs under control and gain quality clicks? The best way to do this by maximizing your quality score.

If Grand-Ma-Ma sells 10 different kinds of cookies, create 10 different adgroups for cookies. Put the scrapple-related cookies in a scrapple cookie adgroup. Write a scrapple cookie ad and send Web visitors to a scrapple cookie landing page. If there is no page dedicated to scrapple cookies, send it to a page that is the best match, or at least has some scrapple cookie text on it. Better still, create a landing page for scrapple cookies.

This will increase the quality score and allow ads to achieve higher ranks with lower bids since ad rank is based on the bid and the quality score.

3. Match Types and Use of Negative Keywords – With a small campaign, broad match shouldn’t even be considered. If utilized correctly, and with the appropriate negatives, broad match can be used for larger clients, but with a client the size of Grand-Ma-Ma’s, rather focus on other matching options—with few exceptions.

Exact match is a no-brainer, and phrase match can be utilized as well. However, when using phrase match, negatives keywords are essential. You don’t want someone clicking on your ad if they’re searching for ‘free chocolate cheese steak cake.’ Grand-Ma-Ma sells chocolate cheese steak cake, but it sure ain’t free.

4. Choose Ad Running Times Carefully – Grand-Ma-Ma receives orders via her Web site, which forwards them directly to her BlueBerry. She immediately calls the customer to confirm—and hopefully upsell. So she doesn’t want orders coming in at 3am from drunks with a craving for scrapple cookies!

Adjusting running times for ads ensures Grand-Ma-Ma’s ads run when she’s available to respond. Potential late-night customers will be lost, but if the conversion rate is higher during operating hours, then that’s the time to maximize her small budget. So run Grand-Ma-Ma’s ads during store hours only and turn them off on Tuesdays. That’s her day to spend at Rocky’s Boxing Gym.

5. Tighten Your Geographic Parameters – Grand-Ma-Ma doesn’t serve anyone farther than ten miles away, so the radius setting should be ten miles.

Small-budget companies that do accept clients from across the country should not be tempted to run a campaign nationwide at first. If you live in Philadelphia and you convert more clients with face-to-face meetings, spend your budget in areas where you can have face-to-face meetings. Only when you have maximized in that high-converting area should you expand your location to include other areas.

6. Test the Positions of Your Ads – Google allows you to select ad positions. While this isn’t an exact science, it’s worth playing with.

If Grand-Ma-Ma’s new Phillies doughnuts catch on when the Phillies win the World Series (oh wait, they did) and every bakery in America starts making them, the price for this keyword will rise like yeast. Grand-Ma-Ma’s budget will no longer easily accommodate the keyword ‘Phillies doughnut’. But by setting a position preference combined with a low bid, her Phillies doughnut ad will still show up on page one—just less frequently. Keep in mind that even if you have a position preference, you may not ever show if the bid is too low.

7. Bid According to Budget and Data – Get out your calculator, crunch some numbers, and adjust your bids according to positions, ROI, and performance.

You may find a $5.01 bid for ‘glazed soft pretzels’ would work since the conversion rate was 50% and Grand-Ma-Ma made an average of $20 profit per order, but you can’t spend your entire budget on one term and ignore the others. Scrapple cookies, chocolate, and Phillies doughnuts need their fair share of impressions, too. They all convert well and generate profits, and Grand-Ma-Ma shouldn’t depend on one product for her business.

As with most Internet marketing efforts, none of this is set in stone—it should be tested. These are suggestions. If you were to utilize all of them from the start, you could limit traffic too much. Alter them until you maximize your budget and your ROI. If you don’t have enough longtails, you may have to experiment with broader terms, like ‘bakery.’ If you don’t get enough traffic from phrase match and exact match, you may have to test broad match (with negatives).

The goal is to get as much quality traffic as you can with a limited budget and prove that the campaign works. Then, getting Grand-Ma-Ma to increase her small business search engine marketing budget will be as easy as winning the World Series. For the Phillies, at least.

Online Banner Display Advertising and ROI Calculations.

If you are thinking about creating an online marketing campaign or you currently have one running, you'll want to know the ROI for those efforts. If that's the case, then this post is for you.

Most online display advertising networks are priced on a CPM basis (cost per thousand impressions). And a lot of times those CPM’s are high. So how do you know if you are getting your money’s worth?

If your looking for branding and exposure, then things are difficult to measure. You are putting yourself out there and hoping it works. You hope revenues increase. Sure, you can measure clicks, but what if your goal is not clicks? What if you have a banner ad campaign for a new movie release. The goal is not getting people to go to the web site, the goal is to get people to go to the movies!

However, if you do have an action you want to happen, a product to sell, an action you want to measure, then I can tell you how to calculate the ROI on a banner advertising campaign. Tell you if it’s worth it.

Let’s look at a typical example. You sell Ryan Howard Phillies Jerseys. You sell each jersey for $85 on your web site. You have a few banner ads and you’re looking for the best web sites to promote your products. You think PhilliesTalk.com would be perfect. You contact the web site and they tell you the CPM is $10 and you can have 1,000,000 impressions for the month of June. Should you do it? Let’s find out.

First we will calculate the cost. Since the cost is on a per 1,000 impression basis, you need to divide your total 1,000,000 impressions 1,000 which equals 1,000. Multiply that by the CPM $10 and your cost for the month of June is $10,000. You are going to spend $10,000 in advertising in June. Let’s hope this works.

(Impressions / 1,000) x $CPM= spend

If you are going to spend $10,000 and you make $85 per jersey, you are going to have to sell 118 jerseys to break even on revenues (not counting costs and profits).

$Spend / $Revenue or $Profit = Breakeven

Now, here is where you have to estimate figures based on historical data. When people come to your website, how many purchase a jersey? In other words, how many people convert (make a purchase).

This conversion rate may vary from search engine conversions to display advertising conversions. For example, a person who types “Ryan Howard jersey” or “Phillies Jersey” into a search browser has a better chance of buying a jersey from you than someone seeing your ad on a random baseball web site. Search engine customers are specifically looking for your product. Banner advertising just gets your product in front of some who might want to buy a jersey. The point here is that the conversion rate will be lower.

Let’s say your conversion rate is around 10% for search engine traffic, you could probably feel somewhat comfortable with a 5% conversion rate for display advertising. However, the best way to get an accurate rate is to test websites before committing to $10,000 ad spends. Maybe test sites on the Google content network or start with smaller websites first. Once you have some data, you can use the conversion rate for future decisions.

However, for this example we will use 5%. Safe for now. So, you are going to sell a jersey to 1 out of every 20 people who come to your site. If you need to sell 118 jerseys to break even, that means you need 2,360 people to come to your site. (20 x 118).

So, out of your 1,000,000 impressions, you will need 2,360 to click on the ad and come to your online store. Now you can calculate the CTR (click through rate). 2,360 / 1,000,000. You need .236% to click on your ad. Please note the decimal point. This is about .25% or a quarter of 1%.

Do the ads on that particular site get that type of click through rate? Do your ads get any where near that type of click through rate on other sites? In other ad networks? On a search engine content match program? Again, historical data will really help tell you how many people click on your ad when they see it.

So the answer to this question is, you need a .25% click through rate and a 5% conversion rate to break even. If you think this is attainable, then a $10 CPM works. If not, it doesn’t.

Maybe you think a 5% conversion rate is too high. Maybe it’s more like 1%. Let’s see if that works. You need 1 out of every 100 to buy a jersey, so you need 11,800 people to come to your site (118 x 100). That means you are going to need a click through rate of 1.18% (11,800 divided by 1,000,000). If you don’t get this click through rate, you can’t make this media buy.

Again, historical data for click through rates and conversion rates will really help with these decisions.

Let’s take this one more step and then we’ll wrap it up. I know this is a long post, but it’s VERY important. So, let’s say you know your conversion rate is 1% from past data. And your click through rate is usually .25%. Can you pay $10 CPM for this buy? No. We’ve figured that much out. But, what can you pay CPM for advertising on this web site?

Well, out of the 1,000,000 impressions .25% are going to click through to your site. That means 2,500 people are coming to visit. And out of those 2,500 you are going to sell jerseys to 1% of them or 25 of them. If you sell your jerseys to 25 people you are going to make $2,125. So for 1,000,000 impressions, you can only afford to pay $2,125 at most. Therefore the best CPM you can pay is $2.13 CPM.

Do you sell a product that goes for more than $85? Then change the Revenue Per Action (RPA) to your revenue per item and re-calculate the numbers. Do you sell a product for less? Use that number. Remember, the above numbers are just examples.

In summary…
• The CPM is given by the website
• The Revenue per product is determine by you
• The CTR will have to be based on past data or estimated
• The Conversion rate will be based on past data or estimated

1. Take the CPM and calculate the Total cost = (Impressions / 1,000) / $CPM
2. Calculate the break even. Total Cost / revenue per item.
3. Take your Conversion rate to determine how many visitors needed = (Break Even items / Conversion rate)
4. Calculate needed CTR = Visitors / impressions.

So what have we learned besides the facts that CPM’s are high? Before you EVER make a CPM purchase for an ROI campaign (selling a product, or needing an action), you need to crunch numbers. You need to know (or have a very good estimate) of your conversion rate and a CTR. Once you have these figures you can calculate the desired CPM of any online display advertising spend.

If you want to know what kind of CPM you can pay for web site advertising campaigns, which we’ve discussed, here is a summary of the steps.
• Impressions x CTR = visitors to site
• Conversion rate x visitors to site = number of sales
• Number of sales x Revenue per sale = total break even cost to advertise.
• B/E cost x (Impressions available / 1000) = B/E CPM

Good luck with your banner display advertising decisions. And please, this can get confusing and complex, so feel free to ask questions in the comments section. It well help other readers as well. Or if you’d rather, contact us with questions