Have you heard saying, "planning is everything?" Perhaps there is some truth in that saying so let’s discover how to successfully plan your pay-per-click campaign.Let’s keep this simple and create a list of required tasks to successfully plan your pay-per-click campaign. These are:
1. Determine your product’s Unique Selling Proposition. 2. Define your pay-per-click campaign’s goals and objectives. 3. Decide starting and ending dates for pay-per-click campaign. 4. Establish click-through rate target for your pay-per-click ads. 5. Set conversion rate target for your pay-per-click ads. 6. Define your budget for pay-per-click campaign. 7. Establish your ROI or Return on Investment goal for pay-per-click campaign. 8. Determine value of each keyword phrase. 9. Plan how to measure your pay-per-click campaign results.
Task number one is determining your product or service’s Unique Selling Proposition, or USP. What is a USP? The USP clearly answers question, "Why should I do business with you instead of your competitors?" Your organization needs to stand out from crowd! This could relate to services or products provided, guarantees offered, delivery mechanisms used, complementary services provided, pricing or any attribute associated with your business.
Identify your organization’s uniqueness since it is pointless promoting cheap prices if everyone else is promoting same. If everyone were offering cheap prices you would be better off promoting higher prices for providing better quality and service as long as you are delivering better quality and service. An articulate USP assists in defining focus and selecting keyword phrases for your pay-per-click campaign. For example, if your USP is focused on quality and service perhaps you would avoid a keyword phrase containing word “cheap” but rather include words denoting quality.
Task number two is defining campaign’s goals and objectives. Typical examples might be: increase web site traffic X percent, acquire X number of new business leads, obtain X number of new customers or orders per day, achieve X sales revenue dollars per time period, etc. Whatever you set as your goals or objectives you must be certain they are quantifiable and measurable in order to determine success of your pay-per click campaign.
Task number three is deciding starting and ending date of pay-per-click campaign. This is a major benefit to pay-per-click campaigns since you have ability to turn a campaign on and off at your discretion. As an example, you could create a campaign promoting National Nurse’s Week or something similar with discounted sale prices supported by advertising coop funds provided by product’s manufacturer.
Task number four is establishing click-through rate target or goal for your pay-per-click ads. The click-through rate is number of times ad is clicked versus total number of impressions. One impression is a one display of ad. In general, click-through rates range from 1% to 5% of number of impressions. The formula is:
Click-Through Rate % = Total Number of Ad Clicks / Total Number of Ad Impressions * 100
Task number five is setting conversion rate target or goal for your pay-per-click ads. A conversion is a measure of searchers clicking on ad and taking next step or call to action such as a purchase, registration, subscription, etc. The conversion rate can be measured versus total number of ad impressions or total ad click-throughs. It’s your choice; but, most organizations measure it versus ad click-throughs. Conversion rates range to all extremes but a good target might be from 5% to 20% of number of ad click-throughs. A quick view of formula is: