Pay Per Click (PPC)

In the first part of this series I talked about how to create ads that get clicks. Any good advertiser will tell you that it doesn’t matter how much you spend on ads. It’s creativity that counts.

We discussed how content for ad writing is vital, and you can get some ideas from studying how other ads are written. Next, now that we have our ads, we are now ready to put them in AdWords and start generating revenue. First, you will need to create a Google AdWords account in order to run your ads. Go to Google AdWords and sign up. Once you are finished with that you are ready to begin placing your ads.

Once you have setup an account it is important to know that there are two ways to set up your ads. The first is via the AdWords website, which is a WYSIWYG/GUI interface, which in real time, shows you what your ads will look like right and doesn’t require anything more than an Internet connection to work. There is nothing to download.

The second option is to download Google’s AdWords Editor to your computer. While not pretty in its appearance it is in my opinion the better tool for both newcomers and veterans. It allows you to easily copy ads, campaigns, keywords, etc. to make your process move a little a faster. It is also the more efficient of the two since it will not allow you to upload your ads unless you have filled in all the required boxes.

In this post we are going to focus on the AdWords website and setting up your campaign this way. The first time you log in to your new AdWords account you will be brought directly to the Campaign Tab (you will also see a Home, Opportunities, Reporting and Tools, Billing and My Account Tabs) with a Welcome to AdWords heading. This will take you through the steps of creating your very first campaign. When creating you first campaign you are then taken to another screen where you are required to fill in the following information. Again we are going to use our travel agency example to fill this out.

Campaign Name – (Keep in simple remember this is just for you) Tuscany Tours

Location – (Where do you want your ads to appear?) Miami, FL, US

Languages – (What Languages do your Customers Speak?) English, Spanish

Networks and Devices – (What sites and devices do you want the ads to run on) for both say All (as recommended) Later on you can decide to adjust this as your comfort level increases.

Bidding option – For this we are going to stick to the basic options but this determines how much per click you are willing to bid on each ad. So select Automatic and then select CPC bid limit. Let’s say $2.00

Budget – How much per day are you willing to spend? They recommend $25 US. A good rule of thumb here is to keep adjusting this over the course of your campaign as you start accumulating data.

Hit “Save” and Continue to move on. Now that your Campaign is created we need to put in the ads we wrote. So going to the next screen you’ll see “create ad” and “keywords”. Taking the ads we wrote before we can start to fill in the blanks.

Headline – Wine under the Tuscan Sun – 25 Character limit
Line 1 – A beautiful Tuscan walking tour – 35 character limit
Line 2 – sample some wineries SAVE up to 20% – 35 character limit
Display URL – www.tuscansuntours.com/wine
Destination URL – http:// www.tuscansuntours.com/wine

If you noticed, I changed the ads a little for a few reasons. I had characters to spare and nothing attracts customers like savings. Once you have plugged this in, the preview will show you what your ad will look like as either a

Side ad
Wine under the Tuscan Sun
A beautiful Tuscan walking tour,
sample some wineries SAVE up to 20%
www.tuscansuntours.com/wine

or a Top ad
Wine under the Tuscan Sun
A beautiful Tuscan walking tour, sample some wineries SAVE up to 20%
www.tuscansuntours.com/wine

Next up are your keywords. Choose how you describe your products or services. It’s important to add specific keyword phrases (usually containing 2-3 words) that will help your customers narrow down their search to your ad.

So for this example we will add 11 keyword phrases
“Walking Tuscany”
“Tuscan Wine”
“Under the Tuscan Sun”
“Tuscany Tour”
“Tuscan Wine Country”
“Wines in Tuscany”
“Wines in Italy”
“Italian Wines”
“Italian walking tours”
“Wineries in Tuscany”
“Wineries in Italy”

Notice the “” around the phrases. These insure that the keywords are a phrase match. There are 4 different kinds of matches.

Broad Match: keyword
Allows your ad to show on similar phrases and relevant variations
(The broad match modifier may also be used to further refine your broad keyword matches: +keyword.)

Phrase Match: “keyword”
Allows your ad to show for searches that match the exact phrase.

Exact Match: [keyword]
Allows your ad to show for searches that match the exact phrase exclusively.

Negative Match: -keyword
Insures your ad doesn’t show for any search that includes that term,

Once you have entered your keywords you may check your estimated search traffic. However since this is your first campaign you may not get enough data to give estimates.

Next up is placement. Do you have specific places where you want to place your ads? Here you can put your ad on sites that also run GoogleAds. This takes a little bit of research and is very much a hit or miss proposition. Now you are ready to go on to billing. Once you have put in all your billing information, you will be brought back to your campaign screen where you can see your Ad and your keywords. It is important to note that your ad will not run without billing and your ad will not run without the status saying “Eligible”. Congratulations you have created your first Google Ad.

Next time we will go over negative keywords, how to use the Editor Application and reporting and tools.