The PPC Blueprint for Immediate Results

Rahim

Rahim Karsan

March 20, 2020August 28, 2021

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A successful pay-per-click (PPC) campaign can generate immediate results to help your business grow. Below, you’ll find the complete PPC blueprint to achieve this. As a digital marketing agency, we will walk you through the vital steps of setting up a campaign in Google Ads and how to maximize your return on ad spend.

Here’s what you’re going to learn about PPC campaigns:

Get your prospects to reply
Channels to drive traffic to your website
Choosing the right channel
Performing keyword research
Building your keyword list
Using head, mid and long-tail keywords

Four PPC variables that impact results
Grouping keywords into ad groups
Creating ads for each ad group
Setting up landing pages
Achieving good ad rank to maximize ROI

Let’s start by looking at what channels can be used for successful PPC marketing.

Channels to Drive Traffic to Your website

There are different channels that you can use to drive visitors to your website through PPC, including Google Ads, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Bing.

Let the Numbers Guide You

It’s is important to choose the right PPC channels for your business and not chase the latest fad. Let the numbers guide decisions on what channels and ads to spend marketing dollars on and where to cut back. Let’s quickly touch on each of each channel.

Google Ads

In terms of Google Ads, if you’re in a business where people are searching for things that you have to offer, this is a good channel. For example, for Blueprint Internet Marketing, if someone’s looking for search optimization services, it makes sense for us to have an ad in Google Ads.

YouTube

In terms of YouTube, if people are viewing videos related to Internet marketing, it makes sense to not only have videos within YouTube, but do some YouTube advertising as well. There are different approaches we can take – including text ads, banner ads, or even video ads. You want to make sure that you’re testing different mediums within YouTube to see what medium is performing best.

Facebook & Instagram

In terms of Facebook, consider testing both Facebook and Instagram. You’d be surprised how often Facebook can outperform Instagram. Sometimes Instagram will outperform Facebook. If you’re running a PPC campaign, and you’re not sure which channel to use, test both to see which one is going to get you the best return on ad spend.

LinkedIn has its opportunities as well, if you’re going after a more B2B audience, LinkedIn can be a channel that can be worthwhile for your business.

Bing

In terms of Bing, although Bing is a much smaller search engine compared to Google, you want to make sure that, as you’re scaling your business, you start adding additional channels. Although Bing has a small percentage of market share for search, it is a channel worth adding for additional traffic.

Establish Your Overall Objectives and Goals

Objective

Before developing your PPC campaign, start by determining your high-level objective – is it lead generation or ecommerce? If it’s lead generation, ensure that you’ve got the right landing pages set up with web forms to capture leads. If it’s online sales, make sure you’ve got a really good e-commerce website that’s going to maximize the conversion of visitors into sales.

Goals

Take the time to outline your projected cost per click (CPC), cost per lead (CPL), cost per opportunity (CPO), and cost per sale (CPS). This will help you understand what your targets are to achieve your target profitability. Also, outline the volume of leads, opportunities and sales that you need to generate in a specific timeframe. This will help you understand how much you need to spend to achieve your goals.

Choose the Right PPC Channels

When selecting the right PPC channels, you want to test and compare channels based on the CPC, CPL, CPO, and CPS.

Leading Indicators of Success

The CPC and CPL are your leading indicators of success. By comparing your CPC and CPL across different channels, you can see which channels are most efficient.

Lagging Indicators of Success

You want to track how your leads are converting into sales presentations and sales and if the overall throughput is efficient. These lagging indicators, including your CPO and CPS are actually more important because they show what it costs to generate a qualified opportunity or sale.

Let the Math Adjust Your Spend

Develop a projection report that shows you all of your advertising channels, as well as your CPC, CPL, CPO and CPS by advertisement. Then, make your spend adjustments based on the numbers. It’s all about identifying which channels are producing the highest number of leads, opportunities and sales most cost-effectively. Then, increase your spends on your most efficient channels. That’s how you scale your business.

Your Industry and Product Has a Say

It’s important to keep in mind that the same product can perform very differently from market to market. This happens because you compete against different companies in different markets. Since PPC is an auction, the CPC is different from one market to another. You also want to be testing different channels for your business to understand which one is producing the best results in different markets.

Keyword Research

In terms of keyword research, you want to determine the feasibility of launching your PPC campaign in the first place. Start by using Google’s Keyword Planner tool, which is in Google Ads. There are three things you want to be looking for when you search for a particular keyword:

Search volume
Relevance
Average CPC

Outline Your Initial Keyword List

Search Volume

Search volume is important because you want to ensure that you can drive enough traffic.

Relevance

Relevance is vital because you want to make sure there is buyer intent in the keywords that you are selecting. Let’s use Blueprint Internet Marketing as an example. If we’re searching for the keyword, ‘Internet Marketing Company’, we want to look at the search volume for the keyword, as well as what additional keywords Google recommends. In terms of relevance, if we see a keyword, such as ‘Internet Marketing’, we may not want to use the keyword because it is too broad and has no buyer intent. Instead, it would make more sense to focus on keywords with the right buyer intent, such as ‘Internet Marketing Company’, ‘Digital Marketing Company’, or ‘Digital Marketing Services’.

Cost Per Click

You also want to look at the average CPC for each keyword. Different industries can vary significantly in the CPC. For example, the CPC in the personal injury law market is extremely high. In other markets, the CPC could be considerably lower.

Test Your Keywords

Google doesn’t always give you the exact CPC in the Keyword Planner tool. Instead, they provide a general idea of what the CPC could be. You can’t completely rely on it; it’s just designed to give you some direction. To get complete clarity, run a PPC campaign and put some marketing dollars behind it. Even if it’s a small amount, just start testing your keywords to see what the CPC is, so you have a real understanding of what you will have to pay on a CPC basis.

Re-project Your Numbers

Once you have an understanding of what the real CPC is for your keywords, look again for the relevant keywords and determine the feasibility of bidding on the keywords. Based on the CPC, you want to project out what your CPL is going to be, as well as your CPS. For example, if the CPC is $1 and your landing page is converting at 10%, then your CPL is $10. If you know your lead to sale conversion rate is 5%, you can calculate your CPS.

Set Up Your Projections and Budget

Once you work out your CPL and CPS for each channel, you’ll have a projection and understanding of what you need to hit to be able to reach your target numbers. Also, when you start running your campaign, you have something to compare it to.

Launching Your PPC Campaign

There are two primary ways you can launch your PPC campaign in Google Ads.

Tight Keyword List

If you have a relatively small budget, start with a small group of relevant keywords with decent search volume. Using Blueprint as an example, we could start with keywords with buyer intent, such as ‘Internet Marketing Company’, ‘Internet Marketing Services’, ‘SEO company’, and ‘SEO Services’. These are all relevant keywords to what we do, so it provides very little wastage.

Advantages of a Tight Keyword List

The upside of using a short list of relevant keywords is that you don’t waste a lot of marketing dollars. Again, if we’re going after ‘Internet Marketing Company’, we’re not going to waste a lot of marketing dollars that way. Our CPC might be higher because it’s so specific, but if we went after just ‘Internet Marketing’, it’s such a broad keyword that we would have a lot of wasted advertising dollars.

Disadvantages of a Tight Keyword List

The disadvantage of a tight keyword list is that it takes longer to drive traffic to your site because the keyword list is short and it takes a long time develop additional keywords.

Broad Keyword List

If you have a larger budget, you can start with a larger list of keywords to learn as fast as possible and drive as much traffic as possible. Then, you take a look at what’s converting and what’s not, and stop running the keywords that are not converting.

Advantage of a Broad Keyword List

The advantage of using a longer list of keywords is that you can drive more traffic and learn what keywords are converting best for you.

Disadvantages of a Broad Keyword List

The disadvantage of a broad keyword list is that it costs more, and you waste some money in the short-term to learn which keywords are not converting. Further along, we’re going to talk about different keyword match types as well, such as exact match, phrase match, and modified broad match. These keyword match types have a significant impact on your PPC campaign.

Using Head, Mid and Long-Tail Keywords

The number of words in your keywords represent the buyer intent and search volume, so it’s important to make the right selection for your business.

Short Tail Keywords

Short tail keywords are keywords that include only one to two words, such as ‘internet marketing’. As discussed previously, these are not ideal keywords to go after because they lack buyer intent.

Mid Tail Keywords

Mid tail keywords are between two to three words. These are good keywords to go after because many have buyer intent, such as ‘Internet marketing company’.

Long Tail Keywords

While long tail keywords don’t have as much search volume as short and mid tail keywords, they cost less on a CPC basis and can have great buyer intent. The trick is to develop a large list of long tail keywords, so they add up to a lot of traffic.

4 Key Variables That Impact Results

There are four variables that work together to give you the best results for your PPC campaign, including:

Keywords
Ad Groups
Ads
Landing Pages

1. Keywords

We have spoken about the importance of selecting the right keywords and focusing on buyer intent. The next variable you want to focus on is the match type. When setting up your campaign in Google Ads, you can select a match type for each of your keywords. There are three primary match types, including exact match, phrase match, and modified broad match.

Modified Broad Match

When you select modified broad match as your match type, there is even more room for your ad to show up for related searches. For example, if your prospect searches for a related keyword like ‘Top Internet Marketing Agency Near Me’, you’re still going to show up for that search.

Phrase Match

When you select phrase match as your match type, this allows Google to dynamically add a keyword before or after your keyword phrase. So, for the keyword ‘Internet Marketing Company’, if someone searches for ‘Top Internet Marketing Company’, your ad will still show up.

Exact Match

If you select exact match as your match type, your ads will only show up if someone looks for your exact keyword. For example, if your keyword was ‘Internet Marketing Company’, your ad would only show up if someone searched for that exact keyword. If they searched for ‘Internet Marketing Company Toronto’, your ad will not show up. You can see the problem with using only this match type. While it will have very little wastage in ad spend, you will miss out on a lot of relevant searches and traffic to your Website.

2. Ad Groups

Once you have selected your keywords, you want to group your keywords into ad groups. Each ad group should have a small set of keywords per ad group, so there is a tight ad to keyword message match. For example, if someone is searching for ‘Internet Marketing Company’, if they were to see an ad that said, ‘Internet Marketing Company’, it’s going to be a very compelling ad to them because there is such a tight keyword to message match. That’s why you want your ads and your ad groups to be tightly set up.

3. Ads

In terms of your ads, it’s vital to use as much of your ad text as possible, so you take up as much real estate in the search results as you can. You have two title lines and two description lines.

Title Lines

There are three ways to write your title lines. You can write them as a:

Question
Exact match to query
Benefit statement

All of these work quite well, but you do want to test variations and see what works well for you.

Description Lines

Your Description lines should be used to differentiate your offering and call to action with a compelling offer. It’s also important to use site link extensions and callout extensions to take up more real estate and call attention to your offer, phone number and more.

Test Multiple Ads

Create two to four ads per ad group to test and closely match the keywords to the text in your ads. By testing multiple ads, you can improve your quality score, which reduces your CPC.

The click-through rate (CTR) that you want to be targeting for your ad should be at least 1%, but strive to achieve at least a 3% CTR.

4. Landing Pages

Driving traffic to your Website efficiently is only half of the formula to success. The other half of the formula is conversion. Your landing page has a significant impact on how many people convert into a lead, while minimizing your CPL. The better your landing page converts website visitors into leads, the lower your CPL and the higher your lead volume.

Items to Include on Your Landing Page

There are three variables that have the greatest impact on your landing page effectiveness. The first is your headline. The second is your offer. The third is the length of your Web form. You want to ensure that your landing pages have the right offers that are consistent with the offer on your ads.

Try to keep your landing page as simple as possible for the best result. Your landing page should only include the following:

Headline
Offer
Three to four hard-hitting bullet points
Opt-in form

Additional Content

If you have a technical product, you can include additional content on your landing page or micro site, including additional product or service information.

Required Pages

If you are driving traffic from an external site, such as Google or Facebook, you’ll also need the following pages to meet their advertising guidelines:

About Us
Contact Us
Terms & Conditions
Privacy Policy

Achieving a Good Ad Rank to Maximize ROI

Google rewards advertisers that create highly relevant campaigns. This is why we emphasize matching all of the following parts of your PPC campaign:

Keywords Ad groups Ads Landing Pages

If Google sees that your campaign is tightly matched, they know that you are going to provide a good experience for their users. They reward you by increasing your quality score, which allows you to pay less per click than your competitors.

What is the formula for Ad Rank?

Ad Rank is: Quality Score x Max CPC bid

If you have a good keyword to ad group to ad to landing page match, you’re going to improve your quality score. When they multiply your quality score by your maximum CPC that you’re willing to bid, you end up getting ranked higher than your competitors and paying less on a CPC basis, which is ultimately what you’re trying to achieve.

The biggest influence on quality score is your CTR. If your ad and offer and compelling and well aligned to what people are searching for, you will get a good CTR.

Free PPC eBook

Download our free PPC ebook by clicking below for a more in-depth understanding of how to set up a PPC campaign for immediate, efficient results.

If you have any questions on how to use PPC advertising to maximize your website traffic and volume, feel free to give us a call at 1.888.533.4886 or email info@blueprintim.com