Best Practice Tips for Newbies

Whether you run pay-per-click (PPC) ads on Google only or across the three major U.S. search engines (including Yahoo! Search and Microsoft’s Bing until the two merge their platforms), setting up a pay-per-click campaign is fairly straight-forward. That is, until you have the campaign up and running and realize you’re shelling out a ton of money for little or no return.

Because we work so often with small and mid-sized businesses just beginning to dip their toes into the PPC waters, we’re introducing a new series — the “It’s New to You” Series — and we’ll be covering how to set up a campaign for the first time, including methods for getting started, making keyword lists, developing your first ads, setting up groups, and how to focus on keywords in each group.

There are a number of good books you can read, too.  For instance, if you want really detailed PPC strategies specific to Google (which is where most businesses begin their PPC campaigns), I recommend you read Andrew Goodman’s classic book Winning Results with Google Adwords, 2nd edition, which Andrew updated in 2008. And we’ll be introducing our own new e-Book, The Link Economy and Why It Matters to Small and Medium Businesses, at next week’s Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo in San Jose, which you’ll be able to download for free right here from our Community page (be sure to check back on August 11th to download your free copy.)

Today: we begin with a few key steps to getting yourself oriented and set up.

Step #1: Create accounts with the various search engines.

To save you some time, follow these links to the three search engines and their sponsored search programs. Do note that Microsoft charges a non-refundable $5 fee when you create an account for its Bing search engine. Google and Yahoo! do not charge to set up an account.

Google AdWords

Yahoo! Sponsored Search (for small business)

Microsoft adCenter

Step #2: Spend some time in the learning centers.

Each PPC platform works a little differently, so it pays to spend some time viewing each platform’s learning demos and other information. Both Google and Microsoft have “open to the public” learning centers that are quite robust with multimedia training, quizzes, etc.

Some things you’ll want to carefully review include:

Billing – Set this up with care as you can’t change your billing preferences with regard to currencies once you set up your account.

Daily Budget Setting – All three PPC platforms allow you to set a daily budget – i.e., once you hit your (say) $10 a day maximum, your ads no longer appear on results pages until the next day.

Search Network – It’s also important to understand where your ads will appear. In addition to the sponsored listings on the search engine results pages (SERPs), your ads can appear across multiple sites within each search engine’s network of search partners; for instance, in the case of Google, AOL, Myspace and Ask.com SERPs are included in their network. Ads also appear within each company’s free email platforms, including Google’s Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and Microsoft’s Hotmail, as well as the various properties within each search engine (i.e., Yahoo!, MSN or Google News).

Content Network – Again, your ads will appear across potentially dozens of media and other content sites such as the The New York Times, CNET, Fortune, blogs, and second- and third-tier websites. (Website owners and bloggers can subscribe to Google’s AdSense program, which serves ads on their sites and generates a share of revenue to the site owner.)

Step #3: Target your customers.

This is the step most new search marketers forget – that is, figuring out the type of customer they want to target. If you’re like most small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), you have three or more types of customers you currently do business with – and perhaps a couple more you’ll want to attract in the future.

For example, if you manufacture pet care products, you may sell directly to consumers as well as to pet stores (and their distributors) across the US or a specific region. And, because you sell high-end (re: relatively expensive) products, you’ll want to target those pet owners who don’t mind spending money on Fluffy or Spot.

Hence, not only are you targeting consumers with a specific household income level, you’re also targeting boutique pet stores (both bricks-and-mortar shops and the online versions) as well as national chains. The campaigns you eventually develop will be different for each distinctive group.

So, before you begin writing those ads, write down the types of customers you’re targeting and any demographics you know about them (where they live, income, job titles, publications they read, etc.)

Okay, that’s enough information to keep you busy until the next post, where I’ll cover setting up ad groups.

Small plug: Yield Software actively manages PPC campaigns for you across all three major search engines through our fully automated system powered by advanced algorithms. For people new to pay-per-click advertising, our simple, intuitive systems get you up and going in no time, guiding you through each step of the process. From determining ideal keywords to setting up campaigns, from managing your budgets to optimizing your landing pages, our Yield Web Marketing Suite makes it easy to get started.

For more information about how we can help you with your web marketing efforts, click here.