Now that you’ve done your PPC soil prep its time to plant.
Account Setup
Setting up a PPC account is easy. For AdWords it can even be too easy. The first step in setting up AdWords is to decide if you would like the Starter Edition or the Standard Edition. Even though Google says that the Starter Edition is “recommended for those who are new to Internet advertising”, do NOT commit the Sin of Insecurity and choose Starter Edition. If you chose Starter Edition, just upgrade to Standard (no charge) so that you have full control over the account spend.
Okay, now that we’re on the same page, let’s talk about account structure.
Account Structure
PPC accounts have three main levels of organization. The highest level is the account. The next level consists of campaigns in the account. The lowest level exists in campaigns and is the ad group. Proper planting involves both campaigns and ad groups.
Campaigns
Several options are only applicable on a campaign level. Therefore, here are situations where you’ll need separate campaigns:
- You offer different types of products/services. For example, Zappos would want separate campaigns for running shoes, basketball shoes, sandals, etc.
- You want to target different areas with location specific messaging. For example, you want ads targeted to just San Antonio for your Spurs merchandise and ad targeted just to Dallas for your Mavericks merchandise. Geotargeting only works at the campaign level.
- You want to target mobile devices. Again, mobile targeting only works at the campaign level and you should have separate campaigns for mobile since the customer will likely be in a different mindset.
- You want to use the content network. Many people avoid the content network, but the content network is powerful if bridled. The key here is that you should have your content network efforts in their own campaigns.
Looking at your keyword research and using these guidelines you should have a good idea of where to start with your campaigns. Now what about ad groups?
Ad Groups
Here is where you’ll need to get your hands dirty. Ad groups are where keywords, bids and ad copy reside. Most of your time and effort will be spent here.
The ideal ad group has a handful of keywords that are all tightly themed. For example, San Francisco divorce lawyer and San Francisco divorce attorney would go in the same ad group. However, San Francisco DUI lawyer should be in another ad group because the person is looking for two different types of lawyer. Once you have your keywords grouped, you need to write at least 2 ads for each ad group. Use messaging that matches what the keywords. Consider using Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) but make sure that the ad matches the keyword (and as we’ll discuss later, that the keyword and ad match the landing page). And why 2 ads? You want to test which one gets more clicks and more conversions. Get in the habit of testing now, because it’s a big part of PPC farming.
To recap, our planting efforts will give you the potential for a bounteous harvest. You placed your keywords in nicely themed ad groups that were organized into intuitive campaigns. Your ad copy is relevant to your keywords and you’re eager to see your seeds sprout. But what will help them germinate (sprout)?
