My tip of the week this week is: Get organized! It may be back to basics, but in auditing some existing campaigns and launching my own new ones recently, I’m reminded of the importance of organization to the success of a PPC campaign.
Smart organizational techniques should apply to many aspects of a paid search campaign, starting with the fundamental structure. A more highly organized campaign will contain themed groups of keywords with highly relevant ad copy and drive traffic to a specific landing page. Be clear and specific in your campaign and ad group naming conventions so that you’ll know later on what’s inside. For example, use “Brand Term misspellings” instead of “Brand Terms 2.” Not only will it be easier to track, but a well-organized campaign will have a high relevance factor to gain you a better quality score and thereby lower your costs. Be organized about your targeting, too. Create mirror campaigns with different geo-targeting, for example, so that you can more easily evaluate what works where.
Once a campaign is set up, plan and organize your optimization and testing strategy as well. Test one thing at at time, not 5 at once, and allow your changes enough time to provide you with enough data to make intelligent performance decisions.
Have more ideas for how to organize a PPC campaign? What’s your best tip? Please share in the comments!
