So you’ve decided to take the leap into PPC but you aren’t sure where to start? Here’s a short list of what you’ll need to do to get things up and running smoothly. Don’t be afraid to ask PPC specialists, or friends with experience for guidance with the startup process.

1. Plan your campaign and set goals. 

Like any other advertising campaign you’ll need to have mapped out what your goals are and how you plan to achieve them.

2. Competition Analysis.

Get to know your online competitors, their strengths and weaknesses.  Remember that Google returns pages of SERPs and that people evaluate the ads for matches to their search queries. Read your competition ads, analyse what they are doing right and learn.

3. Establish a customer profile.

Get to know everything about your customer base, how they search for you, what they call your product, their demographic, seasonal shopping patterns etc. Once you understand your customer you can effectively market to them.

4. Establish a keyword list and a negative keyword list.

These are the words you’ll be bidding on. Be sure they are right for your specific business. You can start with Google’s suggestions, but keep on doing research. There are many tools out there.

5. Sit down and create ads.

Better yet, have someone who knows what they are doing to create the ads for you. Make sure your grammar, language, and content are perfect. Select your landing pages to match each ad carefully. You don’t want to turn your customers off by making them hunt through your website looking for the page with widgets.

6. Learn how to use Google Analytics.

The data you will gather from Analytics is invaluable to your PPC work, and will help you with your overall website design. You’ll know what pages people are going to, and what they are doing there. It’s all about conversion to sales here.

7. Collect Data, monitor and analyse

Monitor your spend, your best performing ads, and your CTRs. Analyse the data, make adjustments and test your ads regularly.

The learning curve for PPC can be steep, but the investment of time and energy pays off with results.