Getting your business in front of the eyes of people searching for you is a job in its own right. There are an incredible amount of factors to consider: designing and hosting the website, writing the content, making sure the content is updated on a regular basis, and performing actions on the site in the hopes that it's being crawled appropriately to increase your search rank! What a project!

One of the things that can help you tap into search traffic really quickly is to launch a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign. In a nutshell, PPC falls under Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and is a demand generation action whereby a business bids on a set of search terms in order to win favorable placement in a search result. Setting up a PPC campaign can be relatively quick - you can even do it yourself. But if you're not closely monitoring those campaigns, aren't sure what the trends look like, or how to adjust bids, your campaign performance could suffer. Here's how I can help...

Google Ads campaigns can vary between a few hundred dollars and a few hundred-thousand dollars per month. A campaign's geographic spread, audience reach and frequency of ad delivery are all heavily dependent on budget. I work with my clients to maximize dollars to align with seasonality and any other programs or initiatives a company may be running concurrently.

A majority of my time throughout the life of the campaign is spent optimizing keyword bidding and ensuring the budget is staying on-plan. Because cost per click (CPC) can vary by competition and popularity, it is easy for an un-monitored campaign to grow wildly out of control. I check CPC daily to ensure the campaign is hitting its planned targets without too much performance variance.

Campaigns are inevitably going to have some degree of underspend or overspend at the end of the month. This is called the actualized spend (opposed to the planned spend). I carry over any variances into the next month to compensate so that the budget remains on-plan by the time the campaign reaches its conclusion.

All of my clients have on-demand access to the budget-tracking document and have the opportunity to meet with me at the end of each month to review progress.* Clients can also add to or reduce the budget and the distribution plan at any time.

All of my clients have on-demand access to a custom-built dashboard that updates every one to three hours on the campaign. All dashboards display key performance indicators against media spend and include a change-log to keep track of what is happening on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis.

Conversions: Conversions are specific and measurable actions that result in business outcomes. A conversion might be a site visitor purchasing an item from an online store or submitting their contact information on a form. Prior to running ads, I insert event tags on clients' sites or work with an internal team member to ensure the appropriate code is present and fully tested.

New campaigns require a one-time $500 set-up fee. This fee is to cover the time required to implement new conversion tags, generate the initial keyword library, and develop the ad headlines and descriptions. Campaign management is covered through a monthly 10% to 30% media fee that is subtracted from the total monthly budget. The media fee can vary depending on the complexity of the campaign configuration, the industry, and the size of the budget that needs to be appropriately managed on a day-to-day basis. There may also be a fee associated with each monetary transaction to fund the marketing account depending on the dollar amount and method of transfer.

While people visit social media to stay up-to-date with the friends and family, people are visiting search for specific needs. Pay-per-click SEM, Google Shopping ads, and Google Display Network (GDN) are all important sources of site traffic that help put your business in front of people that might be looking for your products or services.

* No Guarantee Statement: Any projections or predictions offered to the Client are based on estimates, assumptions, and forecasts which may prove to be incorrect; and no assurance is given that actual results will correspond with results contemplated by the projects or predictions. Past success is not a guarantee of future results.