It may seem tempting to get your PPC account up and running as soon as possible, without giving much thought or time to the account structure – atleast – it is often thought that putting a structure together can be quickly executed.
This post will cover how to strategically lay out your PPC account in a way that allows you to effectively control how you want your ads to be triggered and where (or when) you want them to appear.
So first things first, why is it so important?
Easy to manage– structuring an account in a logical manner to begin with will enable you to set a strong foundation for all of your campaigns; it will ultimately affect how easy your existing and future campaigns are to manage, analyse and optimise at any given point.
Reduce future issues – restructuring an account, by moving keywords around after the ads have begun running, will affect the historical data stored for the performance of each campaign. This will cause issues when it comes to analysing the success of each advertisement and can lead to false interpretations of data.
Account management – a well-structured account will mean that if you need to transition your account management to another person, the entire process will be made both easier and faster for everyone involved.
Better quality scores – A well-organised account will in turn result in better results and a higher quality score; quality score is essentially the scale of how Google justifies the relevancy of your advertising campaign.
Components to your Campaign
Essentially your account is centred around two working elements: the advertisement itself and the keywords associated with it. Both of these are organised into two categories: campaigns and adgroups.
• Campaigns: Typically a campaign will be a product you sell on your Ecommerce website that you want to promote. Each campaign will contain ad groups, which contain keywords that tie to your text ads and direct to your landing page.
• Ad Groups: Under each campaign, you will create adgroups that will be much more specific. Typically for you these will be sub-categories of a particular product you sell.
• Keywords: When someone types a particular search query into Google, this is then matched with a keyword which falls under a particular adgroup. This then triggers an ad and directs users to a relevant landing page. This is where keyword research is crucial to creating the most effective PPC campaign.
• Negative Keywords: Negative keywords will help to keep your PPC campaign concise and focused. Identify new negatives on a regular basis within search query reports to ensure you’re regularly optimising and improving your campaigns.
• Ad Text: This is the actual text that will appear on Google search when your ad is triggered. It’s important to follow AdWords guidelines in order to get your ads approved.
• Landing Pages: This is the destination where each ad will direct the online user to; an effective landing page should present an offering in response to their query, and a clear call-to-action to buy or enquire about your product and services. Landing page relevancy and optimisation is critical to a successful PPC campaign.
So what is the perfect structure?
This is a common question and truthfully – there is no single answer. More than one strategy may prove successful for a range of accounts. However there are a few considerations for ensuring your campaign is structured as efficiently as possible for your construction business.
• Website structure – think about how you structured your construction products website; if you sell a variety of products and services, you would have thought about how quick and easy you can make it for visitors to find what they are looking for, whether this involves different tabs or pages for each product type. Your account structure should be treated in the same way and reflect a similar structure, creating campaigns and ad groups around a specific product on your Ecommerce site.
• Products and services – whilst this overlaps the above point, it’s important to structure your account based on the differences between your products and services. Spend some time mapping out your products and decide how you want to segment them; for example, a merchant selling online rooflights may want to create ad campaigns for boxed rooflights, sliding rooflights, fixed rooflights, etc. Then under the boxed rooflights campaign you might create separate ad groups for the brands you sell or perhaps for the different sizes available. Is there a particularly large demand for fixed rooflights online? If so, this campaign may require a higher budget. Take a look at your various offerings and decide which ones are most valuable.
• Based on Locations: Is location targeting important to your business? You may sell your products worldwide or regionally in the UK and therefore have multiple locations to target. If this is the case, then location targeting may play a contributing factor to the structure of your campaigns. However, bear in mind that these particular locations should ultimately be structured around your products and website.
The way you choose to structure a PPC account will depend upon your individual business requirements and strategy; discuss a range of tactical approaches and experiment with different ideas in order to decide on a structure that can be easily managed, tracked, and optimised for your Ecommerce platform over time.
For more information on implementing an effective PPC strategy for your construction business, download our brand new PPC eBook for Ecommerce websites here.
