Your PPC Campaign – Know Your Target

An effective PPC (Pay Per Click) Campaign begins in the same way that any other marketing campaign does.  You have a basic idea, you write it down, and then you continually refine it until its ready to be unveiled, and then you refine it some more based on feedback. 

This has been a proven method of traditional marketers for years and you should adopt at least some version of it if you want to have a successful PPC campaign.  You may be thinking to yourself that this is awfully simple and, of course people know that they need to have a plan before starting something like this. 

Well, you’d be surprised at how many people have only vague notions of a plan in their head and use that as their guide.  At some point, we’ve all been guilty of this, but orchestrating a PPC campaign is no place for it.  So, let’s talk about building an effective plan and how to market it.  Write out all of these steps as we talk about them. 

First, decide what customers you want to pursue.  If you are advertising towards a niche group, then your advertisements should use the language that those people use.  All select groups have some sort of shorthand language (check out a message board devoted to computer programming and you’ll see just how intricate some of that language gets), and using that language will make your ad stand out from more generic ads. 

Now, let’s talk scale.  Does your website cater to a select few or is it a more generally accessible site?  If your potential audience is small, then you want to advertise on sites that bring in a similar viewership. 

Using the computer programming example of before, if you run a business that distributes computer hardware components, then your PPC campaign should focus on sites that have people who are likely to want to make modifications to their computers instead of sites that have viewers who don’t have a clue about what goes on inside of a computer. 

You now have a number of things: 

1. A specific group you want to advertise to;
2. A set of words and phrases that are familiar to that group; and
3. A list of places where your target customer is likely to spend his/her time. 

Knowing these is the first step in running a successful PPC Campaign – knowing your target and getting inside their heads.