5 Steps to Starting a Great Pay Per Click Campaign

Beginning your first, second, or fiftieth pay per click can be a little intimidating. There are moments of fear and excitement as well as moments where you face a great deal of uncertainty. Of course, there are things you can do that will make the process go a lot more smoothly and give you a better sense of control as to how your campaign will go.

Keep these steps in mind when beginning your pay per click campaign and you should enjoy greater success than if you didn't let these steps serve as your guide.

Set Goals

No advertising campaign is going to get off the ground much less be a raving success if you don't have any stated goals for the work you're doing to get it up and running. Goals are fluid and can be adjusted as you go but it is important to have goals so that you can create a plan to work toward those goals. Even if you need to establish small goals in the beginning just to get your feet wet and try to get a clearer understanding of how the pay per click process works, you need goals before diving in or you may find that you are really in over your head.

Establish Budget

You must establish a realistic working budget for your pay per click advertising campaign. Whether this is your first campaign or your fortieth, you need to set a limit on your budget in order to keep things from getting out of hand quickly. Even the most experienced advertisers have an occasional dud of a campaign that loses money. Setting a budget will limit your losses if this is the case.

Select Keywords

Hopefully by this time you've learned a few secrets for keyword research. You need to carefully choose the keywords that you will be using in your PPC advertising efforts. Once you've created these keywords you can begin building your advertising campaign and setting things up to get started.

Landing Page

This is one of the most important aspects of your pay per click campaign outside of the keywords you select. The keywords serve to pre-qualify the visitors you are getting while the landing page is what you are using to close the deal and make the sale. You need to create a landing page that is designed to make the hard sale and deliver results.

Analyze—Adjust

Finally you reach the stage of your pay per click campaign where you will study the results. Find out where your strengths and weaknesses lie and make the changes needed to prevent them from being problems or minimize the impact that your problems have on your budget and the success of your campaign. By keeping a close eye on things you can find out quickly where things begin to go wrong and stop the campaign quickly. You can also find out where things are going well and make adjustments to other test campaigns you have running to reflect this new knowledge.

Knowing these five steps can get your next pay per click campaign off to one spectacular beginning. What are you waiting for?