Make Money
with PPC Advertising

Landing pages.

You absolutely must have good landing pages that are designed to convert. Especially with service businesses, you have to make it easy for the user to take the next step. Your landing pages have to load quickly, look good on a cell phone or tablet, look visually appealing, and professionally designed. You can test your site to see if it loads fast by going here: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ or here: https://gtmetrix.com/

Make sure your site has an SSL certificate, indicating that it is secure. You should be able to get that thru your hosting company. In most cases, you want to have content above the fold (get to the point, what you do, how it can help the user, why should they use your business, etc.) Add confidence factors on all your landing pages, such as testimonials or awards you’ve won, training you’ve completed (certifications), Better Business Bureau logo (assuming you are a member), and any other confidence factors that make your business stand-out. Make it easy for the user to contact you. Consider offering a discount or special offer. Considering putting together a valuable free guide (like this one) that a user would find of value. Write down some valuable tips and info for someone who needs your type of service. Don’t promote your business, just give them some helpful info.

Good account and campaign setup.

Your initial setup of your Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) campaign setup is critical to your success. Whoever does the initial setup (that might be you) make sure they know what they are doing. Make sure they (or you) have gone thru some Google Ads training, and hopefully are certified in Google Ads. Here’s a link to Google Ads training courses, which you should find very helpful: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6146252?hl=en

It’s also helpful if the person has set up and managed several Google Ads accounts. Experience and knowledge are great for having a good initial setup.  In general, it’s best to run strategic campaigns that are focused on keyword relevance (of your service or products) and search volume. Make sure your keywords are focused on user intent (for example it’s better to run targeted keywords, such as “Golden Retriever Puppy breeder near me” instead of something broader in intent, such as “Golden Retriever Puppies”. You can use Google’s keyword planner tool to find good keywords for your campaign that have user relevance and search volume. (Note that when targeting locally, don’t get too hung up on search volume, especially with areas with smaller populations).

You’ll also want to decide if you only need one campaign or will you need more than one campaign, with separate daily budgets. The advantage of having one campaign is simplicity. The advantage of having multiple campaigns is you can more granularly control daily budgets, targeting, and more. Either way, you’ll want to set up your ad groups focused on relevance and search volume, with ads having good content and strong calls to action, all going to relevant landing pages.

Reduce waste & inefficiency.

By default, there can be a lot of waste and inefficiency in Google Ads & Bing Ads advertising. By default, the keyword match type is broad, which can waste a lot of your money. In general, you’ll want to run phrase match keywords, although there may be times to either run +broad +match +modifier (especially for local businesses or non-profits).

Here’s a link to more info about keyword match types: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7478529?hl=en&ref_topic=3122868.  You’ll also want to make sure your targeting in the user settings is properly configured.  Under the locations option, in most cases, you’ll want to choose “People in or regularly in your targeted locations. You’ll also want to add a number of negative keywords, to help block irrelevant search queries/searches.

Measure results.

It’s very important to measure results and optimize your campaigns based on conversions. A conversion is an action you want a user to do, such as calling your business or submitting a contact form, etc. You’ll first want to set up conversion tracking tags on your website which will help track results. Here’s a link that explains more about how to set up conversion tracking: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6095821?hl=en as well as how to set up Bing’s universal event tracking: https://about.ads.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/training/universal-event-tracking.

It’s also a good idea to make sure that you have Google Analytics installed on your site: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1008080?hl=en Once you have all of that done, you’ll want to set up goals, especially in your Google Ads or Bing Ads account. You’ll want to track things like phone calls to your site, contact form submittals, button clicks, etc. I always label my conversions within my Google Ads and Bing Ads accounts, so I can easily see what is working and what is not.

Optimize your campaigns on a regular basis.

Pay-per-click advertising is NOT a set-and-forget strategy. It’s NOT like print advertising, where you finalize an ad and it’s done. PPC advertising is more of a live auction process. You get lots of valuable data within your account and can make adjustments as you see fit, at any given time. You can adjust daily budgets, keyword maximum cost per click bids, keyword match types, remove low-quality score keywords, add new keywords, pause non-converting keywords, add negative keywords, adjust settings, write new ads, and much more.

In general, I suggest you invest time optimizing your campaigns on a bi-weekly basis, with more time and attention in the first week of starting a campaign. It’s important to optimize your campaigns based on objectives and results. If you have never done any pay-per-click advertising, it’s a good idea to start small with your daily budget so as to not have a bad initial experience. You don’t want to start too aggressive and lose the money that you may need. You might also want to consider using a click fraud protection software service, such as ClickCease. This type of service adds another layer of protection from fraudulent Google Ads clicks, such as competitors and bots clicking on your ads.

Remember, it’s advertising.

There are no guarantees. Google Ads (and Bing Ads) can be very competitive. Look around you, and almost everyone is staring at their phone. They search and click for information, products, and services. It’s easy to click onto a website and then bounce out if you don’t like what they see.  So, it’s very important to put your best foot forward with your paid advertising, your landing pages, and the quality of the services or products you offer. A good advertising program can help grow a good business, product, or service but it can also hurt a bad business, product, or service, as it can increase exposure to potential users who ultimately don’t buy from your company. If your company is struggling to get new customers, then more advertising probably won’t fix your business. Today’s business environment is competitive, so work on your business and treat your prospects and customers well.

This article was written by Steve Pitt. Steve has specialized in PPC management since 2010. He owns and operates Pay Per Click Authority and Internet Expert Online. Pay Per Click Authority is a digital marketing agency offering PPC management, landing page design, web design, SEO, and more.