Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on search engines is the best form of advertising for attracting targeted leads and ready-to-purchase customers.

Businesses that perfect their approach to PPC advertising grow like crazy. On the other hand, most new advertisers struggle with PPC marketing.

How to manage PPC campaigns

Never run campaign without understanding your or client business goals

Make sure that you fully understand the client’s business, products, services and target audience.

Make sure that your clearly defined goals (branding, conversions, leads) for your PPC campaigns. Without goals there can be no strategy and without any strategy you are not optimizing.

Structure your account correctly

t is important to structure your account is a way that is easy to manage. If you have a couple of campaigns then that’s not an issue but as you expand your reach and create more campaigns, the account needs to have a proper structure.

Create campaigns matching your site structure / products – This is basic but important. Your account structure should ‘replicate’ the structure of your website as much as possible.

Start with a low budget and increase gradually

Don’t allocate the max of your daily budget from day 1. Start with a low budget and then increase that gradually depending on how your campaigns perform.

Use negative keywords

Losing money on clicks that are not related to your products or services is a total waste of money.

Negative keywords are a very powerful tool to make sure that your ads are only shown for the keywords that matter for your business.

For example, if you are don’t offer any products or services for free, you can add the keyword +free as a negative, to exclude all search terms that include the word free.

 Never trust Google blindly

In fact, never trust any PPC platform blindly – Your interests, and theirs are not the same.

Taking a skeptical approach to Google’s motives will force you look at your PPC account settings before launching, to make sure they align with your goals.

Short conclusion

Don’t set it and forget it – manage your PPC accounts diligently!

Daily diligence doesn’t mean you have to be logged-into AdWords 24/7. But it does mean you need to be checking your data, analyzing your reports, and making prompt adjustments when you see problems.