Whether or not they actually sell things online, many Australian Business Owners, are becoming increasingly dependent on the internet as a source of referrals, enquiries or leads, for the products or services that they offer.

Most Small Businesses have already "bitten the bullet" and have by now created at least a basic website, but for many, the anticipated "flood" of enquiries has just not happened.  

Small Business website owners are generally aware of the importance of being found in the search engines, and most also realise that achieving good Organic Rankings is not an overnight thing.  Achieving page one rankings on the search engines takes time, effort and good Search Engine Optimisation strategies.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

The promise of "quick and easy" traffic is very tempting for small business owners, and there are certainly opportunities available through Sponsored Listings on the Search Engines (commonly known as Pay per Click or PPC).

In many ways, PPC levels the playing field for small business owners - allowing them to realistically compete in, and even win the traffic war against much larger, more established and "cashed up" competitors.

But PPC can be a scary prospect for small business.  Large Pay per Click campaigns can be complicated to setup and even more complex to manage effectively.  PPC is a specialist activity and has spawned a whole industry of professionals who live and breathe Pay Per Click setup and management -  that's all they do, and they are (in the most part) very good at it.

However, it doesn't necessarily have to be a large, expensive or complicated process.  Setting up a small PPC Campaign can be relatively simple, and within the realms of the capabilities of most small business owners.

This post provides some basic guidelines to help business owners understand the steps behind creating a simple but effective PPC Campaign.  It does not attempt to provide a step by step "How To" Guide, but should give you with a good grounding in the principles behind setting up a good PPC Campaign.   
   

1. Look at your website

Write down your core business offerings - what are the main products/services that you offer.  Don’t worry too much about detail at this stage, keep it high-level.  

Once you have this list – take a look at your website and check that the information on the site actually reflects the products or services that you are offering.  If your site does not already guide visitors to the specific services they may be interested in, and encourage them to buy (or enquire further)  then you may be better off looking at Conversion Optimisation rather than Pay per Click.  PPC (and SEO) can certainly drive traffic to your site – but if there is not enough incentive once they get there, you may be wasting your time and money.

In reviewing your site, also try to identify “Key” pages for each of the major products or services that you offer.  These pages are probably going to be used as the Landing page for your PPC Ads (rather than the Home page).  

If you are satisfied that your site is actually capable of making sales, or generating leads - move on to the next step, otherwise, save yourself some time and money, and go talk to your web designer first.   

2. PPC Account Structure

Once you are satisfied in the quality of your website and have a list of the main products or services that you wish to promote, review the list and discard any that are low volume or low profit items  (note: low volume but high profit is OK, but be careful of high volume and low profit items).

This revised list will form the basis for your PPC Campaign's structure and will help guide your keyword research. The relative importance of the items in this list, can also be useful in determining budget allocations.

3. Keywords

Once you have your high level structure in place, you can start to look at the keywords you will use. This involves employing keyword research tools to take your initial list of products or services and turn it into a list of hundreds or even thousands of relevant keywords.

The aim of this process is to discover as many terms, variations, synonyms, misspellings and other related terms as you can. With PPC, you would typically start with a big list of keywords and then whittle down your list as a part of the ongoing management process as you find out which ones are working and which are not.

In undertaking your keyword research (try a Google search for “Keyword tools” if you are not sure how to do this) tackle each main theme or topic individually and capture the output of that research on individual worksheets in a spreadsheet.

4. Keyword Groups

By this stage you should have long lists of keywords under each high level content area. You now need to group these lists into narrow categories of similar keywords called "ad groups."  Use the spreadsheet to move related keywords into separate lists – and give each group a title so you know what each group relates to.

Each of these groups should now contain highly focused keywords that are closely related  to each other.

5. Match Type

Once you have your keyword groups, it’s time to assign match types - which define the rules around which queries your ads will be shown for.

By default your keywords will be a "broad match" – which means that your ad may be shown on any queries that contain your keyword/s – in any order.

You may want your ads to only show up  for very specific searches of your keywords.  This can be achieved by assigning more narrow match type such as "phrase match" or "exact match".  (see : Adwords Match Types for more info).

You should also consider related keywords and phrases that you do NOT want your ad to be displayed for – these are known as “negative" matches.  For example if you provide premium, high end,  or luxury products – you may like to include “Free” or “Cheap” as negative match keywords – which would prevent your Ads from showing up for search queries that included these terms.

6. Choosing Landing Pages

As  part of defining each Ad, you will need to choose where the user is directed to when it is clicked – this page is known as a Landing Page.   For each Ad Group identify one or more landing pages which are relevant to the keywords within that group

It is important that the Landing Page is closely related to the keywords.  Ideally the landing page would also contain a strong Call to Action – making it obvious (and easy) for the user to carry out the action that you would like them to take.  You may like to consider creating specific pages on your site just for your PPC Campaigns, which are not necessarily linked to or accessible from the rest of your site.

As a part of the campaign management process, you should monitor the success of different landing pages, and consider changing these to improve your conversion rates.

7. Writing your Ad

You should plan to write several different Ads for each group of keywords.  Some Ads are likely to perform significantly better than others (you may be surprised how much difference even subtle changes can make).

In writing your Ads, ensure that they are relevant to the Keywords in the Group and to the planned landing page.  You should also try to ensure that the Ads contain your major keyword phrases and that they are “enticing”.

Over time, you will be able to see which Ads produce higher conversion rates, and can drop off low performing ads, and create new (and hopefully better performing) variations of the higher performing Ads.

Setting up your own PPC Campaign doesn't necessarily have to be a complex activity, but there are many intricacies involved in monitoring and managing PPC that you should be aware of in order to get the most benefit from it.  If you've any queries or comments about this post, please leave a comment.  If you  would like advice or assistance in setting up or managing Pay per Click, please feel free to contact us.