16 Questions To Ask About PPC Advertising Before Signing Up

 

Have questions about PPC advertising? I’ve put together 16 of some of the most pressing questions that people ask before setting up PPC advertising campaigns.

 

Whether it’s for Google AdWords, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads or any other similar platform, you should be clear about the platform and how it works and how it can help your business. In this article I’ll focus more on Google AdWords.

 

So here are 16 questions that many advertisers are asking and that may be relevant to your needs:

 

What ROI will I get?

This is one of the most important questions before launching a PPC advertising campaign. Advertising is all about return on the investment and profitability and you want this to be as positive as possible. A negative ROI means you won’t be advertising for long.

 

What does it cost?

This is a reasonable question and every advertiser should investigate this before getting started. AdWords Budget Setting is a key action to take and budgets should be sufficient to reach your goals. Doing keyword research will help you determine what budget to set.

 

Should I worry about click fraud?

Click fraud is something that worries many advertisers. They fear that competitors are clicking on their ads to inflate their costs and therefore push them out of the market. However, Google has made major strides in combatting click fraud and although you cannot stop competitors clicking on your ads, Google dismisses all multiple clicks on your ads that look suspicious and doesn’t charge you.

 

Who will manage the campaigns?

It’s important to decide early who will have the responsibility for the weekly and monthly management of your campaigns. Will you hire someone or will you manage them yourself? You should decide this early and weigh the pros and cons of each option.

 

What skills do I need?

If you’re looking to setup PPC campaigns and manage them, you should have the skills to do so. Pay Per Click Advertising has a steep learning curve and you should arm yourself with all the necessary resources. There are many AdWords training courses to skill up with and you can sign up here on Udemy.

 

Who am I competing against?

Do some research into your competitors to see who you are going up against. You can carry out a few simple searches on Google to find some of them. The sites that come up for the searches you perform are likely the most prominent for all the keywords that you’ll be bidding on.

 

What keywords are competitors bidding on?

Next you can use a tool like Spyfu to research into the keywords that they are bidding on. This info will help you decide which keywords you should bid on. And it will reveal some keywords that you may not have thought of.

 

 

Which metrics should I track?

There are many metrics to track in AdWords. Your choice will depend on your goals but some major ones to track and improve include Click Through Rate (CTR), Quality Scores and Conversion metrics. You’ll be able to track these for your campaigns, ad groups, Ads and keywords.

 

Where will my Ads appear?

Google Ads is the major PPC advertising platform. So launching campaigns there means your ads will appear on Google, the leading search engine on the web. And Google has hundreds of search partners like YouTube and many smaller search partners that you can advertise on too. You can make this selection at the campaign settings level.

 

What is the average CPC?

Doing keyword research at the beginning will help you get suggested bids for your keywords. And this will help you determine the likely Cost Per Click (CPC) average that you’ll pay. The Keyword Planner tool in Google Ads helps you with this and provides good insight into your keywords.

 

Which keywords should I bid on?

After carrying out keyword research and competitor research, you should decide which keywords to bid on. Not all keywords you find will be helpful. In fact, for some you’ll have to add as negative keywords and block any potential traffic from them.

 

Which campaign type to setup?

There are 5 campaign types in Google Ads: Search, Display, Shopping, App and Video. Search is by far the most popular and is launched by almost all advertisers. Search campaigns basically involves keyword advertising and targets people who are searching for your products or services. The conversion rates for this can be amazing. Other campaign types are mainly for raising awareness.

 

Which devices to target?

The default option is to target all devices: desktop, mobile and tablet. But asking this question early helps you think about your target market and how they purchase products or services like yours. If mobile is important for searching and purchasing with your target market for example, you should focus more on this device type.

 

Which locations to target?

The answer to this question is obvious for most advertisers. If your potential customers are in a specific country or city, you should target that location. However, which locations to target can be a challenge at times and that’s one of the reasons why radius targeting is an option in AdWords.

 

What to include in ads?

Your ad is the only feature in your PPC advertising account that searchers will see. So it should be the best that it can be. This includes adding benefits and features that will get people to click through and achieve a high CTR. In fact, try to include a Unique Selling Point (USP) that differentiates your Ads from competitors. And words like ‘Free’ really get people clicking.

 

Should I hire a Google AdWords Expert?

Finally, you should decide if you’ll need outside help. Google AdWords is a big platform with many features and it can take you a while to master. So you’ll need to put in some training time or hire a Google AdWords Expert to help you setup and launch effective campaigns.