A Terrific PPC Success Checklist!

It's easy to 'lose your shirt' with Pay-Per-Click, however most who do, lose it rather quickly and bail out. Much more insidious is having marginal success, when it could be turned into substantial success.

A lot of it hinges on optimizing campaigns, keywords, adgroups, etc. Unfortunately, there is a lot to consider and keep track of. Too much.

A while back, I came across a terrific "checklist" from PPC wizard Ben Hart. He put together a list of things to remember and consider. This can take your drab or lackluster Adwords campaigns and turn them into real winners.

Do yourself a favor and print this out, and keep it close by when you create new campaigns, and while looking over and optimizing what you already have!

__ Turn off most of Google’s default settings.

__ Start by having your ads show only on Google. Turn off Content Network and Search Network to start.

__ Start with Exact Match for keyword searches. Turn off Broad Match and Phrase Match to start.

__ Make sure your geographic and language settings are correctly set.

__ Pick keywords and phrases your likely buyers are typing into search engines. Put yourself in their place. What is are they looking for?

__ Start by bidding low – perhaps 10 cents a click. If traffic is too light, ramp up slowly – a nickel at a time.

__ Don’t worry about being ranked #1 on the first page for your keyword. That might require you overpaying for clicks. For competitive keyword categories, a rank around #5 has delivered the best ROI for me.

__ For super-competitive keyword categories, I don’t mind if my ad is on page two of the Google list. Searches who get to page two and deeper tend to be more qualified as leads.

__ Do not take clickers on your ad to the home page of your website. Take them to a landing page specifically designed for your ad. Your landing page should be a continuation of you ad.

__ Include your main keywords in the headline of both your ad and landing page.

__ Determine the primary goal of your ad and landing page. What is your “Most Wanted Response”? Is it to make a sale or collect a lead?

__ Do everything in your creative power to capture the names and email addresses of visitors to your site by offering something of value free ( such as an eBook or “white paper” on the subject of their keyword search).

__ Build rapport and cultivate relationships by continuing to send your opt-in subscribers a valuable ezine that’s on the subject of their keyword search that brought them to your site in the first place.

__ Are you ready to do business when your ad campaign is on? Do you have a merchant account, a shopping cart, a way to take payments?

__ Does the headline of your ad stress the main benefit to the read of clicking on your ad?

__ Don’t make your ads about you. Make your ads about what your prospective customer is looking for.

__ Don’t use technical jargon in your ads. What the heck is a “gigabyte”? Instead, follow the lead of Apple’s great ad for its iPod: “1,000 Songs In Your Pocket.” What’s the main benefit to your reader of what you are offering?

__ Don’t try to buy your way to the top of Google’s search engine for an off-the-mark ad that’s getting few clicks. Write a great ad, that gets lots of clicks – targeted clicks from people who are looking for what you are selling.

__ Specific problems require equally specific solutions. Offer specific solutions in your ad copy and on your landing pages. “Improve Your Golf Score” is not nearly as strong as “Cure Your Slice in Five Swings.”

__ Understand who your customer is and what she’s looking for. Then provide it.

__ Every search and every click represents someone with a need. Can you fill that need?


__ Have more than one product to offer that’s on the subject of the keyword searches that brought visitors to your site. Have a steady stream of follow-up products and upgrade products. It’s tough to build a business on just one product.

__ Make an extensive list of keywords and phrases that you believe your customers are typing into search engines to find the main product or service you are selling.

__ Put all your keywords and keyword combinations on a Excel spreadsheet so that you can move them around easily and group families of keywords and phrases together.

__ Take families of underperforming keywords and create separate ads and landing pages specifically tailored for those families of keywords. This can result in you having many ads and landing pages, each with its small family of keywords.

__ If your landing page is intended for “lead generation”, is the free ebook, “white paper” or other free gift you are offering of high enough value to your visitor that she will want to fill out your sign-up form to get it.

__ Is your free offer that’s designed to get leads to fill out your form exactly in line with the AdWords ad that brought them to your site? (It must not be off the mark, even a little).

__ Have an email marketing system (such as Aweber.com or iContact.com) set up before you launch your AdWords campaign so that you can capture leads and follow-up with email.

__ Use powerful keyword research tools to help you brainstorm your keywords, such as Wordtracker.com, KeywordDiscovery.com and GoodKeywords.com

__ Don’t forget to include Negative Keywords – words that disqualify your ad from being shown where certain words are typed into an engine. A good negative keyword might be “free” if you don’t want clickers who are looking just for “free” stuff.

__ Always split-test two ads at a time. “Test” is the most important principle in marketing.

__ Use Google Conversion Tracker to track conversions on your landing page.

__ Use Google Analytics to track visitor behavior on your site.

__ Test landing pages to see which ones are doing the best job of converting visitors into leads and then into buyers.

__Offer one and only one thing with your pay-per-click ad. If you sell more than one product, create different ads, one for each product . . . with each ad leading to a “landing page” also deigned to sell that one product.

__ If your ad is working well, turn on Search Network and see how that goes.

__ If your ad works on Search Network, test Content Network.

__ Start by setting bids low for Content Network. You can set separate bids of Content Network and Search Network.

__ Use the PPSeer.com tracking tool to see how individual sites on the Content Network are performing for you.

__ Tell Google not to run ads on sites that are delivering a lot of clicks, but few sales.

__ If your ads are running on the Ad Sense Content Network, understand how to use Demographic and Site Targeting.

__ Don’t use Google Budget Optimizer (unless you want Google managing your finances and making your marketing decisions).

__ If you are a local business, set up three kinds of ads – one configured for local business, one configured nationally but that uses names of local area towns and cities with keywords describing your service, and one in Google’s Local Business Center so that your local business appears with an enhanced interactive listing on Google Maps.

__ Don’t ignore the pay-per-click ad programs other search engines and many directories offer. offer. Yahoo Search Marketing is the #2 PPC program – and well worth using.

__ Use Google AdWords to conduct super cheap, quick and accurate market research for all your advertising and marketing campaigns (whether offline or online).