Gyles Seward
Managing your PPC campaign can seem like a never ending chore – with micro-management only leading to more and more work. Unfortunately, there isn’t a bot or bit of code written that can manage your campaign for you. Instead, there is a best practice that you can follow to ensure that you are making the most out of PPC campaigns.
Making sure that your PPC account is in order is the first step to making your search engine marketing campaigns more effective. If your account is well organised, then you can free up further time and resources which would have otherwise been spent on trying to make sense of something that need not be an issue in the first place!
What does an organised PPC campaign look like?
You need to ask yourself some basic questions before you make a start on your account overhaul.
On the campaign level:
- Are branded items and brand terms separate from non brand terms?
- Do individual campaigns have their own content match?
- Do individual campaigns have their own site placements?
- Does each product or service have its own campaign?
On the ad group level:
- Is each ad group about a unique product?
- Do top performing keywords get visibility?
- Do all keywords in an ad group have a good quality score?
If you answered yes to all the questions, then you don’t need to be reading this article as you’re already on it. However if you answered no, then there’s work to be done.
Everyone will find their campaigns slightly different. Some people manage campaigns for one store where others may be running campaigns for a number of brands and product lines. As an example, if you run a shoe store, you could just sell Converse or you could sell a variety of brands and products alongside a range of clothing. Either way, the best way to stay on top of it is to make sure it’s organised well.
Account – Make sure that each brand you are working with has its own account if you are working with many different stores.
Campaign – Keep your categories well organised and broad. If you sell furniture, have one campaign for beds, another for sofas, and other for tables, etc. Don’t lump them all together.
Ad groups – Once you have created campaigns, you can break them down into ad groups. If you’re selling for your furniture store, this could mean that the bed campaigns have ad groups for single beds, double beds and king size beds. This helps to target people correctly as someone searching for a bed will probably search for the specific size of bed they want.
Ads – Create a number of ads with various ad copy for each item to be sure that you’re getting the most from your ads when Google posts them. Try a minimum of three for each ad group.
An organised PPC campaign makes it easier for you to run and manage. Apparently the same is true for a tidy desk. Now where did I put that pen..?
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