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One of the biggest PPC challenges for both new and experienced marketers relates to ad creation. We all struggle with this from time to time!

Welcome to Part One in this PPC Help Series designed to help you create killer PPC ads. You can apply these tips to all your PPC campaigns on Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, MSN/Bing, as well as Facebook Advertising. I hope it helps you!

Once most people create their keyword lists for their PPC campaign, they think that they are done. There is a lot of focus on keyword research, isn’t there? It’s easy to see why Ad Creation often gets overlooked! Unfortunately Ad Creation is One of the areas that many PPC marketers only glance over! Creating Ads and continually testing them is just as important as selecting bid prices for your keywords.

Split testing Ads are the only way to know which Ads are the most profitable, and in this PPC Help Series, I am going to show you how to not only create, but to test successful ads in your PPC campaigns.

Why is the ad creation process is so important?

One of the main factors that Google uses to determine ad placement (rankings) is the click through rate (or CTR) of your ad. If you have a compelling ad that is related to a users search, they are more likely to click your ad, and that results in a higher CTR.  If you write better ads than your competitors, then you will have a higher CTR than your competitors.

Google uses CTR as a determining factor of how “relevant” your ad is. Its simple. Better ads that are more targeted to their users receive more clicks and therefore will have a higher CTR. Google rewards higher CTR ads with higher rankings and lower costs per click.

Let’s say you and a competitor have all things equal besides your ad text (bid price, landing page quality score, campaign history, etc being equal), then the ad with the higher CTR will be ranked higher. This means that with a good enough ad you can also have a higher rank than people who are willing to pay more than you are!

The benefits to spending time on your ads are clear…your clicks will cost less, your ad will be listed higher than your competition which will bring more traffic, which all adds up to higher profit margins!

Be sure to subscribe over there on the right hand side (look for big red arrows) to receive all the updates in this series!

P.S. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s installment:

PPC Help – Ad Creation Tips Part Two – Creating (Kick-Ass) Ads that Get Clicks!

When you are just starting out with Pay Per Click advertising, it’s important to keep an eye on your PPC campaign management. Now, I know this can sound a little daunting, but don’t stress. It’s easier than it sounds.

The first and most important thing is your budget. When starting a new campaign, you can spend a lot of money very quickly. I always suggest beginning with a cautious approach until you can see clear profits.

PPC Campaign Management Steps:

1. Start Low: Set an overall PPC campaign budget – in Google AdWords, Yahoo, Facebook, and Bing, you can set a campaign budget for each campaign. This is different from your overall account budget, and it is also different from the Pay Per Click bids (what you pay for each click on your ad). I usually set new campaigns to have a $30 per day budget limit, but you can start even lower if you prefer. $10 is fine too.
2. Delete Non-Performers: Once your campaign has been running, and you can see clear results, you may choose to pause non-performing keywords, ads, ad-groups. If you choose to create new ads and/or add new keywords, I suggest you stick to your low initial PPC campaign budget. Stick to the initial budget, and keep testing new ads, headlines, images, ad copy, etc. until your campaign is profitable.
3. Increase Your Budget to Test: Now that you have eliminated the non-performers, and conducted some initial testing, you can increase your budget a little and see how that goes. I suggest increasing the daily budget to $50 – or something you are comfortable with. If you have done your homework, chances are you will see an increase in profits with an increase in your spending. This doesn’t always work, however. So you are still in the testing phase. Remain conservative until you see consistent profit from your campaign.
4. Open The Floodgates: Once you see a consistent profit from this campaign, you can increase the budget even further to maximize your potential profits. I would increase my daily budget to $100 to start with. If that works, and you still see an appropriate increase in profit, you can raise your budget even further. Your campaign budget is directly linked to the number of impressions your ad will receive. If you have a low budget, your ad is not being shown very often at all. This is especially true when advertising on Facebook.

Here is more information related to PPC Campaign Management Tools to help your business.

I hope this helps you see why budgeting is such an important part of PPC campaign management. I’m sure this raises several questions in your mind too!

Please share your thoughts in the section below….