SEM 101: How to Launch a Successful PPC Campaign

PPC, pay-per-click, is a method of advertising that has grown extensively in the past decade, and for good reason. PPC is cost-effective, attracts twice as many visitors as SEO, and ensures your website is boosted to the top of the search results. Despite Google’s efforts to automate much of the onboarding process, PPC setup and successfully launching your first campaign (without wasting precious advertising dollars), can be a steep learning curve.

Picking the Right PPC Platform

PPC can be used on different platforms, from social media to search engines. Choosing which platform is best for your business is the first step to implementing PPC advertisements.

1. Google: Google is one of the most effective platforms to advertise on with PPC. Since Google has over 100,000 searches every second, having your website boosted to the top of the search results would increase your page visits significantly.
2. Facebook: Facebook is another good option for PPC, due to its specific targeting advertisement options. Targeting can be segmented by shopping behaviors, geographic location, and demographics. This ensures that your target audience will be viewing the ad on their feed, rather than hoping they will come across it in a search.
3. LinkedIn: Another PPC option, for more professional advertisements, is LinkedIn. LinkedIn allows companies to specify their advertisements based on the target audience’s salary, title, job field, and location.

Setting Up Your SEM Program

Before launching your first PPC campaign, you’ll have to decide on several things relating to how the advertisements will function. From the cost of each advertisement to the actual landing page of the advertisement, these decisions will influence the campaigns’ success.

Effective Landing Page: After your advertisement is clicked on, where on your website will consumers be brought to? The landing page needs to be related to the advertisement since that is what caught the consumer’s attention. This page should be informative, contain a call to action, and have an excellent user experience.

Bidding Method: Bidding is either manual or automated, and you’ll need to choose a method before you begin. Manual bidding allows you to set a max number of pay per click, which can be better for lower-budget campaigns. Automated bidding is more hands-off and allows you to optimize your bids.

Use Keywords: Keywords ensure that your advertisement is reaching the right audience, so using the right keywords is essential in PPC campaigns. You can research which keywords audiences are looking for on search engines using platforms like Google’s keyword search.

Monitoring Your SEM Progress

Once PPC advertising has been implemented in place for enough time, you’ll want to monitor the success as the campaign progresses to make sure your business is on the right track.

Traffic Metrics: You should be seeing significantly higher visits to your website after implementing PPC advertising, and the traffic metrics will reveal if this is holding true. Traffic metrics will allow you to see how many people have visited your site, as well as how they got to your site.

Click-Through Rate: Understanding your click-through rates, or CTR, is an essential part of PPC advertising because it gives insight into how effective your advertising is. The higher your CTR is, the more successful your PPC campaign will be. To calculate this, you’ll take the total number of clicks on the ad divided by the number of impressions.

Cost per Conversion: Cost per conversion, CPC, is a measure of how much it costs your company to get a new client. If your company is spending too much money on attracting one customer, it shows how your advertisement might not be effective in reaching and selling to audiences. To measure your CPC, you take the total cost spent on advertising and divide it by the number of new customers.

Event and Funnel Tracking: Your website contains a variety of “funnels,” including lead generation forms, applications, contact forms, and newsletter sign ups. Ensuring you have proper event tagging setup across your website is a heavy lift, but critical to monitoring the success of your PPC media efforts.

Advancing the Art and Science of PPC

Once you’ve mastered the basics mentioned above, you’ll be ready to accelerate your PPC performance with a number of advanced tactics. You can begin using first-party data from your CRM or digital application tools tied to your website to inject customer intelligence into Google or Bing and build lookalike audiences or tighter bidding constraints to ensure your search and retargeting ads are delivering to the most likely buyer. Additionally, you can begin building dashboards that ingest additional data sources from your other marketing channel efforts to get a fuller picture of your marketing investment and performance attribution.

After understanding the benefits of PPC, the most effective platforms, and the tools used to monitor your business’ progress, you are ready to successfully launch your first PPC campaign. Good luck!

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