7 Steps to setting up your first pay per click advertising campaign

Right now someone somewhere is searching Google or Yahoo for what you sell. And unless your website is optimised to get a listing at the top of search results, there’s a chance they will buy from your competitors instead.

This is where Pay Per Click, or PPC advertising comes in. You can spend as little as £1 a week forcing your website’s listing to the top of search engine results. And it’s proven that the higher up the results you are, the more likely it is that people will visit your website.

When you use a search engine, the pay per click adverts are displayed at the top and on the right-hand side. They are clearly marked as ‘sponsored links’. And they’re called 'Pay Per Click' because you don’t pay a penny until someone clicks on your advert. In some respects, pay per click advertising is the most fair advertising model ever – you only pay for results.

You decide how much you are willing to pay for each click. The more you pay (and the more relevant the search engine considers your advert), the higher up the page your advert appears.

Many businesses are put off experimenting with PPC because it seems difficult. In fact it’s easy to set up and maintain, with a very small investment of time each week.

Here are 7 easy steps to get your first pay per click advert up and running;

1. Decide what you want to achieve

Having a goal for your pay per click advertising is vital, and stops you frittering your money away. You may be keen to sell things from your website, or capture the information of people that visit for future marketing, such as email newsletters.

Beware of using PPC adverts just to “drive traffic” to your website. When people click adverts they are looking to solve a problem or make a purchase. You might as well use that intent to generate revenue for yourself… leave the ego boost of a big expensive website with lots of traffic (but no direct revenue) to the big boys with their deep pockets.

2. Sign up

While several search engines run pay per click, you should concentrate on the ones that attract the majority of the traffic in the UK – Google and Yahoo! It’s very easy to sign up for Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing.

Both often run promotions where new advertisers can get free adverts when they sign up for the first time. These offers are an excellent way to find out if PPC can work for you, without risking any of your own cash.

At present, when you sign up to Yahoo Search Marketing here you get £60 of free credit on your pay per click account and you can receive a free £30 voucher on your Google Adwords campaign.

3. Set a budget

Not only is pay per click one of the fairest advertising models, because you only pay for clicks, but you also have full control over your budget. You can set a daily, weekly or monthly ceiling. When that budget has been spent, your advert automatically stops appearing.

When you first try pay per click, you should set a tight budget and stick to it. In general, PPC is scalable: so if you spent £50 and get £500 revenue, it’s likely you’ll get about £1,000 revenue from £100 spent.

4. Use lots of search keywords and phrases

With pay per click, you are effectively bidding money to get your advert shown when people search for specific terms. Think about what you sell, and all of the different things people might type into a search engine to find it. Ask friends who aren’t connected with your business what they would type. Remember, your buyers may not use standard industry terms – that’s an opportunity for you.

When you’ve picked a load of search words and phrases, pick some more! You almost can’t have too many. The PPC systems will help you estimate how many people search for the terms you have picked, and over time they will measure how many clicks you get for each term.

Read Choosing keywords for your pay-per-click campaign for a detailed guide on selecting successful keywords and phrases for your pay per click campaign.

5. Build ads for each product or service

Once you have chosen your search words, you should now write adverts for each product or service you sell. Be as specific as you can, and use trademarks of your products where possible, especially when they are well known.

Pay per click adverts are very short, forcing you to get to the point quickly. Another great feature of PPC is that you can write lots of different adverts, and the system will work out for you which one performs better (and will use that advert more often). To help you to write powerful pay per click adverts we have a specific guide on How to write a killer pay-per-click advert.

6. Build landing pages

If someone clicks your pay per click advert for a red widget, the worst thing you can do is send them to the home page of your site and make them search again for red widgets. Most people will just hit the back button.

Ensure that every PPC advert goes directly to a landing page. That should either be full details of the product itself, or a specific landing page you have built just for people clicking on your advert.

7. Track results and keep tweaking

The way pay per click advertising systems are built, makes it easy for you to track exactly what works and what doesn’t. You don’t have to spend long to get the most out of the system. Get into the habit of checking your results once a week, and tweaking. Don’t touch anything that works – instead change everything that isn’t performing. Over a number of weeks you will build a collection of powerful PPC adverts and search terms that could help to generate significant revenue for your website.

More advice and guides on pay per click advertising

If you're looking for more advice we have a series of helpful articles to help you to maximise the potential of pay per click advertising including; Pay per click advertising for small businesses and How to test pay per click advertising.