Whether you are outsourcing PPC management or doing it in-house, I assume you know the basics of what makes a PPC campaign work. But how do you squeeze that extra ROI out of your campaign? How can you focus your efforts to get the most out of every impression? Start by taking a second look at the core components of your PPC activities.

There are 4 basic areas of concentration to manage in a PPC campaign and they are:

• Reach
• Engagement
• Conversion
• Analysis

By analyzing and improving on these four areas, you can gain a marked improvement in your overall PPC efforts. Let’s take a closer look at each of these areas.

Reach: This is the ability to get your ad in front of as many eyes a possible. In PPC there are a number of ways to accomplish this. The most obvious is to bid higher on your keywords; however this is not always cost effective. If you have a daily budget associated with a PPC campaign, you can increase this budget without increasing your bid to get a similar increase and maintain your current ROI. You can increase the number of keywords phrases you bid on to improve your “Reach” as well. Finally, expand on the number of different PPC programs in which you participate. The top tier programs will give you the best results, but with careful monitoring the rest can provide traffic as well. It would be wrong if I didn’t mention that the lower level PPC programs are ripe for click-fraud abuse, so you must stay on top of them.

Engagement: Once the surfer sees your ad, you need to get them to click on it. Having the search terms in the title and body of the ad help quite a bit. Both Google and MSN have operators you can use in ads to dynamically place keywords in the copy. You can also experiment with other ad forms. Some PPC programs allow you to create image ads, soon PPC programs will be delving into the radio market (audio ads) and I bet TV is not far behind. Test various ad copy and find the words and phrases that work best for your particular key phrases. Be careful not to over stimulate. You don’t want to use the word “FREE” just to get clicks if you are selling a product. These clicks will cost you money and will not convert. You want targeted traffic that is interested in what you have to offer.

Conversion: Once the surfer clicks your ad it’s your websites turn to get some work done. The goal is to convert that visitor to an action whether is be a sale or something else. Always use landing pages dedicated you your PPC programs, just sending PPC traffic to a normal page on your site is costing you conversions. The normal page has too many distractions such as navigation. You want the landing page to be VERY targeted to the key phrase the surfer used to find your ad. Be prepared to create multiple or dynamic landing pages for you many keyword or phrases. It has been shown that conversion increase dramatically when the phrase the surfer searched for is found on the ad landing page. Target the pages, reduce distractions and get the surfer to the action as soon as possible. If you can do this while still touting your benefits you will convert all day long.

Analysis: Finally you need to be able to tell if your PPC campaign is truly generating a positive ROI and how changes you make affect that ROI. Most major PPC programs now offer a conversion tracking utility. If you are not using your own log analyzer and tracking codes, take advantage of these built in programs. Develop a testing process to try new ad copy or landing pages. Keep looking for ways to improve and use analysis to determine which changes have the most positive impact on your site. Also keep track of the keywords and phrases themselves. Identify which ones produce the best and worst conversion ratios and adjust accordingly. Don’t fly blindly; know what your ads, traffic and site are doing to stay on top of the PPC game.

If you are able to maximize these 4 areas in your PPC campaign, your ROI will thank you. Make sure testing is an integral part of your PPC process. Once you find a combination that works best for your site and products you sales will show the difference. Even if you are doing well with PPC it is a good idea to revisit these areas every once and awhile to see if you can improve your current campaign. Markets are not stagnant and you should not be either.

Stay tuned to this website for a complete White Paper detailing the major components of these 4 areas of PPC and how to best manage them.

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