What is PPC? PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click.

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2 What is PPC? PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click. When you market your website with a Pay-Per-Click campaign, your website is prominently displayed on the search engine results pages to customers who are looking for exactly what you sell. One of the best features of PPC campaigns is that you only pay when a customer actually clicks on your ad and comes to your website you never pay for people who just see your ad making this a very costeffective way to market your website. Why Should You Care about PPC? What would it mean to your business if every time someone in your city searched for the product or service you offer, your website showed up first? How many additional leads or orders would your website generate? Generally, people who are searching for something online have a keen interest in whatever they are searching for. If a customer is searching for exactly what you sell, in your city, then they are a hot lead! What would it mean if they found you instead of your competition? If you advertise your website using pay-per-click marketing, you will bring qualified web traffic people who are looking for your product or service and are ready to spend money directly to your site. What could be better than qualified leads delivered right to your website? In short, why should you care about PPC? Because you care about sales. Sales that come at a low cost to you and that s what a well-run PPC campaign can deliver. Questions Answered in this Guide How do you get started with pay-per-click advertising? How do you ensure these customers find you? And how can you do this well when you have so many other areas of your business to take care of? These are the important questions that this guide will help you to answer. 2 P a g e

3 4 Steps to a Successful Pay-Per-Click Campaign Get started today with these do-it-yourself steps 1. Baseline If you don t already have any analytics software set up to help you understand your website traffic, then you need to get this done right away. While there are some very advanced, expensive alternatives in the marketplace, we recommend Google Analytics, which is free, and which you can sign up for here: Setting up an account at is straightforward but here are a few tips as you move forward: Set budgets. Google allows you to spend as much or as little as you want to. We recommend starting with a manageable budget, one that you know you can afford. You can always increase your budget later. Once you ve signed up, you ll need to add a small bit of code (called a snippet) to each page on your website, and then Google Analytics will start tracking the traffic that comes to your website. Google Analytics will tell you how many visitors you have, how they found your site, how long they stayed on your site, which pages they were interested in, and more. Best of all, you can create a baseline of how your site is performing in the search engines by looking at the percentage of searches that come from your pay-perclick search campaigns. You can even see the cost-perconversion if you sell online. There are many other tips available to you in your Google Analytics account that will help you learn how to make the most of your Pay-Per-Click campaign. 2. Set up a Search Engine Advertising Account We recommend you start with Google; it's the largest search engine company and will get your ad in front of the largest number of searchers right off the bat. Set schedules. Google allows you to schedule when your ads will be seen. This makes sense if you know that most of your customers shop on certain days of the week, or at different times of day. You can schedule your ads to show (and your budget to be spent) only during those times. Turn off the Google Network for now. We recommend that you start by advertising on Google itself, also known as Google Search; Google Network (formerly "content search") allows your ads to show up on Google's partner sites, including blogs, and other publisher websites. We recommend that you get your Google Search campaign working for you, and then move on to the larger Network. Target by geographic location. If, for example, your business is a coffee shop based in Ottawa that does not deliver, there is not likely much point in advertising your coffee beans to searchers who live in Vancouver. Google allows you to target your PPC ad campaigns by city, province, or country, so be sure to pick the area that s most appropriate for you. Creekside Communication Inc. All Rights Reserved. 3 P a g e

4 3. Pick Your Keywords, Ads and Bids Next, you ll create your list of keywords, ads and bids. The keyword selection step can be time consuming, but time spent on keyword selection is usually very well spent as it can really impact the outcomes of your Pay- Per-Click marketing campaign. How Do You Pick Keywords? Think about how your customers might be searching for your products or services. What words or phrases might they use? Write a list of words that describe what you do or sell. For example, if you are a florist in Ottawa, you might choose "flowers," "flower delivery," "floral bouquet," and "florist Ottawa." Need more keyword ideas? Try this free tool from Google which is designed to help you expand your keyword list: As a starter, we d recommend aiming for a list of between keywords on it (depending on the variety of products and services you offer). You may find that some keywords are too expensive, or that a more specific keyword phrase (such as your product in your city ) works better than a less specific keyword combination. How Do You Write Your Ads? Start simple when it comes to creating ads. Try two different ads in each group and let Google show both; you'll end up with great statistics on how many times each was seen, and how many clickthroughs and conversions each one helped you get. Include keywords in your ad text. If your ad shows when someone searches for that keyword in your ad group, the keyword will appear in bold in your ad text, helping your ad to stand out from the rest. Make sure that the destination URL you use for each ad is the most relevant page within your site, meaning that the landing page you send searchers to should be what they're looking for. If someone searches for "roses," they're likely to leave your site if you direct them to a page all about "tulips". What Is Bidding? In many search engine advertising programs, you must "bid" on each keyword for which you would like your ad to be shown. On top of your overall campaign budget, you can set limits for each keyword per click. For example, you can bid $0.10 on the keyword phrase "roses Ottawa," and your placement in the list of ads will depend on: What competitors bid. If someone is willing to pay $1.00 per click for that same keyword phrase, they are likely to place higher in the listings. What your Quality Score is. Google uses several factors to measure how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user's search query. A high Quality Score generally means that your keyword will trigger ads in a higher position and at a lower cost. Depending on where your ad is positioned, you may then want to increase or decrease your bid to achieve the placement you want. Different search engines use different terms for very similar features. If you become confident with how one search engine works, the others will be easy to learn. Creekside Communication Inc. All Rights Reserved. 4 P a g e

5 4. Evaluate Your Campaign after One Week Look at the cost-per-conversion of each keyword that you set up. Did any of them perform really well? If so, it may be worth increasing the bids on those keywords to make sure that you get as much out of them as you can. What didn't go as well? Is there something you could change that would result in a lower cost-perconversion? Check your AdWords campaign statistics and Google Analytics and record some metrics to compare each week, so that you know what's working and what's not. Some important metrics to keep track of are cost-per-click, total cost of the campaign, number of conversions, cost-per-conversion, and Return on Investment (ROI). If your overall ROI isn't great yet, look closely at the details. Perhaps one keyword is costing you a lot of money but not bringing any results in -- so perhaps it is a keyword you can forego. Perhaps your ad copy isn't as clear as it could be, or maybe competitors advertising on the same keywords have ads that have more impact than yours. You might consider changing some ad copy. Make the changes that make sense, and revisit those changes in another week to see if they improved your cost-per-conversion. One caveat: Don't make too many changes at once. If you switch up all your keywords, ads and bids, and results change, you won't know which change created which result. Creekside Communication Inc. All Rights Reserved. 5 P a g e

6 Not interested in the Do-It-Yourself Approach? If all of this doesn t sound like something you d like to take on yourself, there is another option for trying a Pay-Per-Click campaign. There are many companies who specialize in Pay-Per-Click marketing. Let s look at some of the factors you ll be thinking about as you try to decide which PPC company to use. 1. What s included? A good PPC management company will offer a consultation where they will gain a good understanding of your business. A good company will also look at your overall company objectives and work with you to create a PPC strategy customized to your needs. 2. How will they charge? Is it a flat monthly rate, or pay for performance? Do they continue to charge you while the campaigns run or do they only charge you for the time you use? 3. What s the company track record? Have other clients been suitably impressed with the service they received as well as the performance of their PPC campaigns? Don t be afraid to ask for references and testimonials. Creekside Communication is Ottawa s premiere network of experienced Internet marketing professionals. Our customized teams of web copywriters, web designers, search engine optimization specialists and Internet marketers work together to help you enhance your marketing ROI. We are here when you need us and gone when you don t so you only pay for the services you actually use. We strategize, design, develop, implement, evaluate and train and we are looking forward to helping you take your web presence to the next level. Connect with Creekside p f e. web. creeksidecommunication.com twitter: marketingmic 4. Is the company willing to train your in-house employees or would they prefer to keep all their secrets to themselves? Do you want to make sure this is something your company keeps control of and that your employees are trained and able to manage it? Is there an option to have them do ongoing optimization? 5. How often will they report back to you and how? 6. What metrics will be used to judge their performance? Will you be judging their performance based on an increase in leads or conversions, or sales, or some other factor? Creekside Communication Inc. All Rights Reserved. 6 P a g e