Guide to Pay-Per-Click Strategy for Beginners

You need to know the purpose of your campaign

Keep the main thing, the main thing. Whether you are looking to sale old coins or you have a local lawn service you are advertising, stay within the range and scope of the exact thing you are trying to do. Know what your niche is and stay in it. Nothing fancy.

I recommend: Study the competition.  Look at the ads that are selling what you are selling  and do what they do.  Of couse check out Google, but look at Yahoo as well. Advertising on these two alone will put you in front of over half of all search traffic. Once you identify your competition, take a look at the words they use and the landing page. If it looks like something you would click on, then others will too. 

What would you consider a successful campaign?

Every campaign should have a goal. Know what you expect from your PPC campaign. Be reasonable and stay focused on your purpose.

I recommend: Again, this is a simple, low competition ppc campaign.  100$ is our limit.  So don't get into any "bidding wars", you aren't ready for that. The purpose for this first campaign is to get your feet wet not to challenge a well financed site for the top spot at $15 per click.  IMHO Google Adwords has an excellent guide to help you understand the bidding process.

What's going on in your market?

Learn who you are going up against by searching for your product on Google. Study the paid advertisment on the right side of the results. This is your competition.

I recommend: Market research can get involving, but for this campaign we are looking to keep cost and time down to a minimum. I'm going to again suggest you look  at the sponsored ads on the right side of Google.com.  Search for your product or service and study how the competition advertise.  Click thru on the links and see how well your competitions landing page matches the information in their Google ad. 

Good keyword list

What keywords are people searching for to find your product?

I recommend: There are a few good tools to help you do this. But if you want it good, fast and dirty nothing can beat Overture keyword selector tool. This is probably the hardest part for a beginner and it does take a certain amount of research and study.  But remember the point here is to collect the words that people will be searching for to get to your product or service. Collect as many as you can then use your competition sites to help eliminate the word that are not relevant to your objective.  In most cases the words will be pretty obvious.

Make your ad copy

This is what people will see when they are searching for your product.

I recommend: Follow pretty closely to what you see already.  Don't try to reinvent the wheel.  Ads should be short, sweet and to the point. Plus you don't have alot of space to write, so just learn from looking at your competition. AdWords Help Center has more info on how to write ads.

Your landing page

This is where people will go once they click your ad.

I recommend: Without getting into "landing page best practices".  Just remember that you want your landing to match your ad.  So if you are advertising a conference, your ad should say:

Register now for the Conference
Get more info about Conference
conference-url.com

When they click the ad link they should land on a page talking specifically about conferences.

Track results

How many people are clicking thru and are they doing what your want once they land on your page?

I recommend: The best way to measure the success of a campaign and, or web site  performance is to identitfy if it's doing what it's suppose to do.  From your Adwords interface you can track how many click thrus and impression your campaign has received. Also, by using Googles analytics you can have ready made reports analyzing the success of your Pay per click campaign.

Eliminate non-preforming ads

No click thru? It must be dead.

I recommend: Your ads should invoke an action for your target market to click on your ad link. If the ad is not doing what it suppose to do then remove it. Learn the specifics from Google Adwords.

Expand on performing ads

If it's working, then keep doing it!

I recommend: Effective ads will draw your target market. (The people interest in your product or service) If the ad is producing, then make more ads resembling the producing one. Duplicate all success!

Next, go back to step 7.

I recommend using Google Adwords or Yahoo's Overture

Good luck!