Pay Per Click (PPC)

How to build a PPC Campaign

Posted in Pay Per Click (PPC) by Click Consult on 14th of January, 2008

Building PPC campaign can be very frustrating, especially when you don't have basic Excel skills. But let me tell you- even average level of excel won't necessary provide you with easy solution either.

So what can you do?

In order to start building any camping you have to:

  1. Identify what products or services you are going to advertise.
  2. Build you basic keywords list.
  3. Make keyword research using Google/Yahoo/MSN/WordTracker keyword tool.
  4. Download the list and identify which phrases or words could be added to your expanded keywords list & the rest are going to be negatives.
  5. Build you keywords by grouping keywords into campaigns & adgroups
  6. Build your negatives list
  7. Create you ads.

As you can see it’s all looks pretty simple, but there are a few pitfalls which may take a lot of time and cause many mistakes, especially when you are dealing with a large number of keywords. So here my tips:

  1. Stages 1-3 are quite straight forward and only in case of a large number of keywords can take a considerable amount of time.
  2. At stage 4 , when you have a large list of expended search phrases and words returned by a keyword tool you may:

Use SUMIF function to eliminate your basic keywords list, so you’ll stay with a smaller non duplicated list.

Go through the smaller non duplicated list and identify more keywords and negatives that should be on exact of phrase match.

  1. When you have a completed list of keywords, use FILTER functions to sort your keywords and name your adgroups. Adgroup name should reflect characteristics of the keywords within it.
  2. Check that you have plurals and singulars in you keywords list together with synonyms and misspellings by using COPY, PASTE and FIND & REPLACE functions.
  3. Using TEXT TO COLUMNS and SUMIF functions on both keywords and the rest of negatives, create a list of negatives on a broad match.
  4. Create you ads by using adgroups names (which are a common description for keywords within it) in your ads together with current promotion or offer & call to action.
  5. Use CONCATENATE function to join cells or cells & text together.
  6. Use LEN function to check lengths of your ads components.

If you are not just using one of the functions but create a logical symbiosis between a few of them, you campaign building will become a strategic game which you can enjoy.