This article is written for people who have little or no experience in ‘paid advertising’ such as ‘pay per click’ but who are interested in getting started.

Hopefully this will answer any questions you might have, but ask away if you want to know anything else.

How much to Spend on Ads?

To know this ideally you should know your Customer Life Time Value (CLTV). 

Lets say on average customers order €1 worth of goods and on average make 10 orders during their relationship with their business.

That means a single customer is worth €10.

By the time you minus your costs your profit on average is €2.

That means you can afford to spend €1.99 to get a customer who will be worth €2 to you and still be making a tiny margin of extra profit for your business.

Without measuring and knowing the data we can’t know are we making money or losing money on advertising

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half” ~ John Wanamaker

Who should be targeted by your Campaign?

They say that 80% of your profit typically comes from 20% of your customers. So we should target the types of people that make up that best 20%. Think about who they are, what makes them different than the rest. Once we know what kind of people make up your more profitable customers, we can target them.

What action do you want them to take?

Let’s say you sell smart watches online. You probably want your customers to buy a smart watch, that’s the action you want them to take. If you were a plumber, you probably want them to call you. In any case we need to have a clear definition of the exact action we want the customer to take for each ad.

Ensuring they take that action.

Lets say you want your customer to buy your latest Samsung S3 Smart Watch from your site. We find a keyword phrase which is cheap and gets people who are interested in buying a Samsung smart watch to your site. If there’s problem with the page the land on (your landing page) after clicking the ad, the customer could likely ‘bounce’ off your site and go looking somewhere else.

We need to make sure that each ‘landing page’ on your site that your customers will visit after clicking your ad, is properly optimised to maximise the return on your ad spend budget.

Getting a customer to click on the ad isn’t enough, it’s getting that click to convert into a sale that equally matters.

How will you know the PPC Campaign is a success?

We setup conversion tracking on your website to make sure that enough people who click on your ad are taking the action we need them to take (i.e. buying the Samsung watch, or calling your plumbing company to book a call out.)

Reducing the cost and increasing the profit.

Advertisers who follow the steps below get the lowest price ads.

• Keyword Relevance – Crafting relevant PPC keyword lists, tight keyword groups, and proper ad text.
• Landing Page Quality – Creating optimized landing pages with persuasive, relevant content and a clear call-to-action, tailored to specific search queries.
• Quality Score – Quality Score is Google’s rating of the quality and relevance of your keywords, landing pages, and PPC campaigns. Advertisers with better Quality Scores get more ad clicks at lower costs.

Investment

Quick note we have 3 kinds of PPC services each with their own costs.

The cheapest is the DIY option where we help you setup your ads account and leave you to it.

The next cheapest option is the DWY or Done With You approach were we setup your ads account and give you a monthly hour video call to go over your ad account with you.

The best options but most pricy is the DFY or Done For You option. If you’re interested in earning serious money and you have a marketing budget then go for this. We setup your account and continually watch it each week to make sure it’s doubling or tripling your money.

This is screen shot of a real recent client of ours. He’s making 3 x the amount of sales each day compared to the same day last quarter.

Three costs for PPC are:

• the initial account setup
• the cost of the ads
• the on going maintenance

As an example a medium sized ad account would consist of 5 campaigns and 3 ad groups + 3 ad variations.

The initial account setup would cost around 1100 USD ~ 800 GBP ~ 940 EUR ~ 1500 AUD – and included would be the first month of maintenance, where we would check to make sure the ads are running well.

We generally recommend a minimum ad spend of €1,000 per month for small business.

However if you’re feeling a bit risk adverse right now and want to ‘test the water’ we’d recommend starting with 480 USD ~ 350 GBP ~ 410 EUR ~ 660 AUD for the management and the same again for the ad spend.

Serious businesses should be spending 2 – 3 x that much though. If you want to double / triple or more your revenue we need to spend what it takes. But,having that ‘testing the water’ option is good so you’re not risking too much and can start seeing some results right away.

Extras

Fees above don’t cover things like :

• Landing page design, creation and optimisation
• On-site conversion tracking and optimisation
• Reputation management
• Search engine optimisation

However all the above go well with  PPC, especially landing pages, so we might discuss these options if they’re going to be worthwhile for your company.

What you’ll get

• Dedicated Account Manager
• Account Review & Goal Setting
• Keyword Research
• Account Structure/Restructure
• Campaign & Ad Group Creation
• Text Ad Creation & Optimization
• Advanced Bid Management
• Geo Targeting
• Call Tracking
• Conversion Tracking
• Multi-Platform Advertising
• Personalized Call Schedule
• Detailed Performance Reporting (weekly, bi-weekly or monthly)
• Landing Page Optimization Recommendations
• Transparency – You Always Have Access to Your Account5

Next Steps

Fill in this the questionnaire about your business, competitors, customer and goals.

If you’re unsure of any of what to write in any parts of the sheet, just leave them blank.