We frequently get new clients for pay per click advertising that have had the assignment of managing their companies pay per click advertising in addition to their other work tasks. They usually tell us, I know I’m not doing enough to make the advertising as effective as it needs to be, but I just don’t have the time to handle it or learn how to make it effective.

Making pay per click successful takes diligence and knowledge. Campaigns never reach the point of “set it and forget it”. Changes happen on a daily basis and it takes every day management to stay ahead. When done correctly it usually amounts to long hours of excruciatingly boring research and adjustments to get optimal performance. We frequently see exponential improvements in PPC accounts that we take over within just a few weeks of taking them over giving our clients online sales channels that they couldn’t have fathomed previously.

Things that we do in the every day course of business that many average Adwords users haven’t taken the time to actually do or know about usually include:

• Using all the keyword match types (Broad, Phrase & Exact match). Usually most people only use Broad match. Broad match has multiple problems. Your Campaigns will never be efficient with Adwords until you incorporate all match types.
• Conversion Tracking? What’s that? Amazingly MANY people think of PPC success only in terms in getting traffic. Site owners need to have a conversion goal – sales, leads, key performance indicator, etc. All PPC ad platforms offer free conversion tracking and bid management of keywords needs to be based on these conversion metrics
• Using Negative keywords to make your clicks more targeted. Google’s Expanded match problems make this an absolute necessity
• Using smaller, keyword specific Adgroups to improve click through rates, Ad Ranks and Quality Scores, rather than Huge Adgroups for several unrelated products or keywords.
• Using Landing Pages. The average user still lands all of their clicks on their home page. Searchers are lazy and want to see exactly what they are looking for as soon as they click. Landing them on the home page is like landing them at the big map in the mall listing all of the stores…
• Basing bids on conversion data rather than ego. We have had clients that insisted on being number one on every keyword. Once we installed conversion metrics and showed them the data they realized their mistake…Being in the number one ad spot seldom makes you the number one moneymaker.

It’s not that the average user isn’t smart enough to do these things; it’s usually a matter of having the time to do them.

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