PART 5 Affiliate Marketing for Beginners
Setting Up Your First PPC SEM Campaign
Okay, now you have an account and some of the basic info. Let’s take you through setting up your first campaign. It can be overwhelming at first (especially when Google redesigns the entire user interface – which happened in 2009!), but as you work with it, you will become more familiar with where everything is, just like any other software.
When you first log in, you should see the main navigation. Click on campaigns, then New Campaign. From here you will enter information about how you want your campaign set-up. From what language you want your visitors to speak, to what part of the world they’re coming from, to other things, you’ll begin with filling out the basic information about your campaign.
Ad Groups
Once you have a “Campaign,” the next step is to create an ad group. This is basically a container for the last unit – the actual ads. The thing to remember when setting up your ad groups (notice I said plural!), is that you’ll want to laser target them as much as possible. For example, one ad group might be for “free baby diapers” while another one is for “discount baby diapers.” You want to have as many ad groups as you need, making sure they are highly focused.
The idea is to segregate them so that you can write super laser targeted ads for each group. So, each ad group bids on a very targeted keyword or phrase and since the ads are written for just that keyword or phrase, they are clicked on frequently. The higher the CTR (click-through rate) the lower the overall cost will become. The big thing to remember is to segment as much as you can. This allows you to drop keywords that don’t perform and pay attention to those that do.
The Ads
While there are image, video, audio and even print options available at Adwords now, PPC is still one of the most popular because you can track how well the ads work and only pay for what works. You might not think you have a lot of room to work with, but brevity is better sometimes. You’ll want to craft your ads so that they contain a call to action – a reason for the person to click. You also want to make sure that when they click through, they know what to expect.
Dynamic Keyword Insertion
One little tip that will come in useful is dynamic keyword insertion for ads. So we have our ad for baby diapers. Let’s say we have Buy {Keyword:Diapers} as the title. What this means is that whatever someone searches for at Google, it will be used in the title. If they search for “baby diapers” for example, your title would automatically read “Buy baby diapers.” If the keyword they type in doesn’t fit, the word or phrase after the colon is used. This is a simple way to make sure your titles are super targeted toward searches, increasing the CTR (click-through rate) and lowering your cost.
Track, Tweak, Repeat
Beyond the basics, you’ll want to track how well each ad does. Most of the time, you should have two or more variations running. After a few weeks, take a look at how well they’re performing and edit the lowest performing one slightly. After a few months of this, you’ll have fine tuned ads that perform really well. Yes, this takes time, but it is how you lower your cost and increase your profit.