3 Steps to a Successful Strategic PPC Campaign

Pay per Click can be a very powerful form of advertising. Google and Microsoft often brag about its amazing reach and how cost-effective it is. However, like everything else in business, if your PPC advertising efforts are aimless, then the profitability will most likely not be there. In order to not waste your time and money, here are 3 Steps (Strategy, Implement, and Optimize) to consider prior to running a Pay per Click Campaign.

1) Strategy

First ask the all important question: Why? What is your purpose of advertising online? This begins the strategy building process, which all starts with an overall objective – Increase brand awareness, generate leads, drive more sales, etc. This defined objective gives your PPC Campaign a focus. Next, decide how much you are willing to spend. Your budget is best set either monthly or daily. The final stage of the strategic process is setting specific and measurable Goals – i.e. to increase sales 3% month over month.

2) Implement

Now that you have an objective, budget, and at least one goal, the next step is setting up the Campaign. Before heading to Google AdWords or Microsoft adCenter, you will want to do some research. A few questions to consider are – Who is your target audience (broad or niche), what are they searching (keywords), and where are they online (websites, Social Media, etc.)? With all of this newly found information, it is time to head to the most appropriate advertising platform(s) (AdWords, adCenter, Facebook, etc.) and set-up your PPC Account. Remember to include multiple ad copy variations, keyword match types, and landing pages for testing purposes, because it is never too early to begin testing to see what will be the most effective and efficient.

3) Optimize

Finally, your PPC is up and running. The last step is to monitor its performance and make adjustments accordingly. Re-visit your goal(s) and determine all your Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s), not just the final goal metric. For example, if your goal is to increase sales 3% month over month, your KPI’s would include:

• Impressions – Number of times the ad was shown
• Clicks – How often your ad was engaged with
• Conversions – Sales, Lead Generation, Phone Calls, etc.
• Cost – Cost/Click and Cost/Conversion
• ROI – Measure and show Profitability

Between checking the important KPI’s and continuously testing different elements (Ad Copy, Landing Pages, Keywords, etc.) of your PPC Campaign, you will be able to make the modifications needed to ensure that you reach your goals and objectives.



To summarize, Pay per Click can do wonders for your business, but you have to put work into it, rather than just running it aimlessly. Start with putting together a strategy. Use that strategy to guide you through the set-up and targeting process. Finally, stay focused on your business’s goals as you monitor, test, and optimize your PPC Campaigns. This simple, yet time-consuming and work-intensive 3-step process will help you build and manage an effective and efficient PPC Campaign.

PPC Advertising Battle: AdWords Vs adCenter

Everyone knows that Google is king of search. But when it comes to Paid Search Advertising (PPC), is going with the Google always the best option? Although Bing and Yahoo combined do not compare to Google's daily search volume, their paid advertising via Microsoft adCenter might be a cheaper alternative that could generate a higher ROI for you.

Round 1 of the PPC Advertising Battle: Stats & Metrics 

From my experience, there seems to be less competition and therefore cheaper prices (CPC) on adCenter. Below is a snapshot look into a client's account on adCenter.

As you can see, they had an almost 2% CTR, an Average Position within the top 2-3 spots, a CPC below $1.00, and a CPA under $20.00. Now let's compare those performance metrics to the same time period on Google AdWords.

 Stats are taken for the same Date Range from Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter.

As expected, Google AdWords brought in more traffic, and therefore more conversions (7 more to be exact). However, each Click cost $0.71 ($0.07 more) and each Conversion cost $26.26 (almost $10 more.)

Round 2 of the PPC Advertising Battle: ROI

If, for example, we assume the value of each conversion is $50 each, which PPC Account has a better ROI? Microsoft adCenter is showing a Cost of $583.10 (CPA $16.66 x 35 Conversions) with a returning Value of $1750 (35 Conversions x $50 value per Conversion). That results in an ROI of $1166.90 ($1750 Value - $583.10 Cost).

Keeping the same assumption of a $50 value per Conversion, Google AdWords earned a returning value of $2100 (42 Conversions x $50 Value), but had a cost of $1102.92 (Cost/Conv. $26.26 x 42 Conversions). With that said, the ROI for Google AdWords was $997.08 ($2100 Value - $1102.92 Cost.)

In this particular case, although Google AdWords earned a 90.4% ROI ($997.08), it was trumped by Microsoft adCenter, which earned an incredible 199.9% ROI ($1166.90).

Google AdWords Vs Microsoft Adverting Battle Re-cap

Microsoft adCenter did well in Round 1 with maintaining a good CTR (almost 2%) and generating 35 Conversions. However, Google was able to out muscle Microsoft, with more than double the CTR (above 4%) as well as an additional 7 Conversions (42 in total.)

In Round 2, Microsoft adCenter came out swinging with it lower CPC and CPA (or Cost/Conversion). After multiplying the incremental costs out, it turned out to be too much for Google. Microsoft adCenter was able to pull out the victory with a very impressive ROI of over $1,000.

If you run similar or identical campaigns on both Google AdWords & Microsoft adCenter, let us know which is performing better. Does your paid search advertising battle end the same way this one did with Microsoft earning the higher ROI?

PPC Experts? - Prove It!

Recently I read an article talking about how there are many "PPC Experts" due to the low barrier of entry. With that said, if you or your company is looking for online adverting assistance, it is crucial to find an agency/person with the right certifications and a proven track record.

The must have as far as certifications are Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter. Google requires an individual to pass 2 different tests to be certified. A general PPC test and a more specific test focused on the Display Advertising, Search Network, or PPC Reporting. Once the individual certification is earned, it must be maintained by retaking at least 1 of the more specific tests annually and the general test bi-annually. Microsoft adCenter, on the other hand, only requires you to pass 1 general PPC test annually to earn and maintain certification.

In addition to being certified, ask to see what the "PPC Experts" have accomplished for other clients, preferably within your industry. Case studies, white papers, and/or a portfolio of their work and accomplishments should be available and easily accessible. I would think that a "PPC Expert" would want you, as potential future client, to know and see their previous success stories.

I hope that this will help you avoid, as the first mentioned article describes, PPC scams. If you have any questions or comments about PPC, AdWords, adCenter, or online advertising in general, please leave a comment or contact us.

The Cost of a Low Quality Score

Quality is important in advertising, but even more so in PPC advertising. Google AdWords gives the top Ad Position to the highest Ad Rank, and Ad Rank is Max CPC Bid multiplied by Quality Score. This means that there are two factors that decide what position your PPC ads are shown – 1) How much you Bid (CPC) and 2)What your Quality Score is. A Quality Score can range from 1 (terrible) – 10 (excellent), as shown below.


In order to clearly see the Value (or Cost) of Quality Score, let’s walk through an example. First, assume a competitor is Bidding $0.75 with a Quality Score of 7. This means their Ad Rank is 5.25. The Table below reveals the CPC Bid that is needed in order to achieve the same Ad Rank depending on your Quality Score.


As you can see, a Higher PPC Quality Score can actually save you money, while a lower Quality Score could cost you $1.00 or more of additional cost per click (CPC.) Let’s continue with this example and assume 100 Clicks in a month. The below Table shows the additional and total savings/cost due to Quality Score.


The Yellow Highlighted Row is your competitor. The Green Highlights show the possible savings per click, and how you could be paying less than your competitor, if you have a higher Quality Score. However, the Red Highlights reveal that a low Quality Score could cause you to pay more than double your competitors per click. Now you should be able to clearly see how a Low Quality Score will greatly increase your Cost per Click, which in turn increase overall Cost, but also how a high Quality Score could lower you Cost and increase your Bottom Line.

Paid Search Drives Offline Sales?

I just finished reading an article, from MediaPost that stated PPC ads help increase in-store purchases. This is great news for the bottom line of the stores/companies running Pay per Click Ads. However, for the marketers, it is very difficult to contribute the off-line sales towards the PPC Campaigns effectiveness. With that being said, new strategies and technologies are beginning to be implemented to ensure that PPC Campaigns get full credit for the online and offline sales that they drive. An example of a strategy being used is implementing coupons via barcodes or keyword phrases, to PPC Landing Pages can help keep track of people seeing the ads online but buying in the store, this is still a work-in-progress. Do you have any other ideas of how to credit the appropriate in-store purchases to the online marketing campaign that initiated the sales process?

Managing PPC on Microsoft adCenter

Just last week Microsoft updated their adCenter Desktop program, making it easier to manage and update PPC Campaigns running on the Bing and Yahoo Search Engines. A few of the changes included faster bulk bid estimates, easier import process of Google AdWords campaigns, default location targeting, and more. For the official announcement and further details about the updates check out the adCenter Community Blog. Now Microsoft adCenter just needs to make the Search Query Report accessible to agency log-ins, since it contains import data to managing keywords. Anyone have any other changes they would to see on adCenter Desktop program?

By the way, have you seen the new changes to the web UI of adCenter? PPC Hero wrote a great post detailing the major changing.

Alternative PPC Platforms

Check out DaBrian Marketing Group's latest YouTube video, where our Search Engine Marketing Consultant Justin Miller discusses the importance of pursuing alternative Pay-Per-Click platforms.

For more information on our Pay Per Click and Banner advertising services, please check out the SEM Services section of our website! Also, be sure to subscribe to both our blog and our YouTube channel to always get the latest news and tips for SEM, SEO, Internet Marketing, & more!

Is Your Pay Per Click Campaign a Success?

For PPC, how do you measure the success of your Campaigns? Is it by the number of clicks, or do you measure visits through analytics? Are you tracking conversions, and if so, how valuable is each conversion? Is your Pay Per Click marketing goal to increase brand awareness or increase sales?

Lots of questions, but they all need to be considered when starting and running a PPC Campaign. Your answers to these questions will drastically change what metrics you focus on and how you manage your campaign. In order to ensure success in the Pay Per Click realm, make sure that you know how you are going to measure success.

Be Relevant to Searchers with Dynamic Text

Anyone doing PPC advertising knows that you want to incorporate your best performing keywords into your ad copy. Not only will this help your quality score and cause your ad to stand out more with bold text, but it also keeps you relevant with people searching for your products and/or services. If your keywords are very similar or even synonyms, Dynamic Text will save you many headaches.

Using Dynamic Text will automatically insert your keyword or phrase that is generating the impression into your Ad Copy. This means that you no longer have to create a new ad for each one of your keywords. Instead, save time and effort by letting the automated Dynamic Text take care of it for you.

The example of how to implement Dynamic Text below is from Microsoft adCenter, although other popular PPC platforms, like Google AdWords, provide this service as well.

As you can see, this generic Ad Copy will tailor itself according to the keyword list and the search query. Depending on the search this Ad Copy could read:

Looking for Fresh Fruits?

We have the Fresh Fruit You are looking for.

www.--------------.com/Fresh_Fruits

Looking for Apartments?

We have the Apartments You are looking for.

www.--------------------.com/Apartments

Looking for Computer Parts?

We have the Computer Parts You are looking for.

www.--------------------.com/Computer_Parts

A quick warning, before implementing dynamic text make sure that all your keywords will make sense in the Ad Copy. The keyword “rent apartments” would not work in the example above. Also, make sure that the inserted keyword does not exceed the character limit; otherwise, your ad will not be shown.

Hope this helps improve your PPC efforts and keeps you relevant to your audience.