How to Set Goals for Your PPC Campaign

A PPC adver­tis­ing cam­paign is a sim­ple and effec­tive way to sup­ple­ment ongo­ing mar­ket­ing and adver­tis­ing efforts. A thought­ful­ly con­struct­ed PPC cam­paign includes strict bud­get­ing and clear goal-setting. 

As does any prof­it-yield­ing endeav­or, a PPC pro­gram per­forms more opti­mal­ly when work­ing against clear, real­is­tic, and oppor­tunis­tic goals.

PPC Strategies Drive Campaign Results

With­out clear goals and objec­tives, a PPC strat­e­gy can quick­ly become scat­tered and fruit­less. Instead, well-defined goals shape the tra­jec­to­ry of the strat­e­gy and in turn, deliv­er the high­est-achiev­ing results. 

Set­ting goals demands up-front think­ing about long-term plans, but it’s worth the effort for the end result. Fol­low along for fac­tors to use to assess your cam­paign goals and ques­tions to ask for the best results. 

How to Set Goals for Your PPC Campaign

• Assess­ing Busi­ness Needs

Before get­ting too deep into goal-set­ting, bring the busi­ness lead­ers togeth­er to talk about what the com­pa­ny real­ly needs. While these needs are not nec­es­sar­i­ly your cam­paign goals, they are essen­tial ele­ments to con­sid­er, plan for, and to check off along the way. Busi­ness needs cre­ate the bones for longevi­ty, con­ve­nient­ly con­tribut­ing toward big pic­ture goals and help­ing you achieve suc­cess along every step of the way. 

• Set Real­is­tic and Ide­al Goals, and Define the Difference

Goals can include both imme­di­ate, tan­gi­ble results and long-term brand dreams. Both are essen­tial. Real­is­tic goals cre­ate tan­gi­ble next steps and oppor­tu­ni­ties for achieve­ment that lead to con­fi­dence and momen­tum. Ide­al goals are lofti­er, but they give the team a rea­son to keep grow­ing and devel­op­ing the product.

• Cre­ate Short-Term Goals

Short-term goals can include numer­i­cal­ly-dri­ven data, such as yield­ing a set num­ber of new vis­i­tors or cre­at­ing a set num­ber of posts along a des­ig­nat­ed time­line. Short-term goals can be accom­plished swift­ly and in a time­ly man­ner. They can help keep the team in check, account­able, and enthused about the next goals to achieve.

• Cre­ate Long-Term Goals

Long-term goals are where dreams man­i­fest and your team finds the oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring your com­pa­ny to its poten­tial. Long-term goals are essen­tial because they give the team some­thing to keep work­ing toward. Each long-term goal is sub­stan­ti­at­ed by the more imme­di­ate, short-term endeav­ors. At first, a long-term goal can be over­whelm­ing or appear dif­fi­cult to achieve. But as the team chips away at the small­er steps, it will become clos­er and soon, checked off the list. 

• Cre­ate Results-Ori­ent­ed Goals Over Action-Ori­ent­ed Goals

Goals cre­at­ed with results in mind go far­ther than goals that sim­ply focus on actions. For exam­ple, instead of intend­ing to bid on a cer­tain num­ber of ads, a results-dri­ven goal would focus on the per­cent­age of leads that come from the earned bids. 

•  Set Spe­cif­ic Modes of Tracking

A big part of goals is deter­min­ing how you will track progress. With­out a track­ing sys­tem in place, there is lit­tle to no way to observe the effec­tive­ness of a cam­paign and if/how it is track­ing toward the over­ar­ch­ing goal. As you endeav­or to set spe­cif­ic goals, clear­ly out­line the mode through which you will track data. The data will like­ly not show results right away, but it will be crit­i­cal to have dur­ing the analy­sis and review of your strategy. 

• Agree to an Analy­sis Timetable

Analy­sis is key to estab­lish­ing the effec­tive­ness of one cam­paign over anoth­er. The only way to ensure that the cam­paign works (that it leads to sales) is to ana­lyze the data you col­lect about it along the way. Set a time­frame for gath­er­ing data and look­ing at it crit­i­cal­ly, and then stick to it. This is the most use­ful way to eval­u­ate your cam­paign and either repeat or rework cer­tain components.

PPC Goal Elements to Consider

As you cre­ate your goals, there are a few com­po­nents to keep in mind to help keep your efforts and end results balanced.

• Key­words That Convert

Not all key­words con­vert. Even if the key­word phrase is pop­u­lar for your product/service, it does not nec­es­sar­i­ly con­vert to sales. When build­ing a PPC cam­paign, do your­self a favor by mon­i­tor­ing which key­words con­vert to sales on your site and which do not. Only keep the words and phras­es to convert.

• Click-Through-Rates

As you look at the results of PPC ads, take care­ful note of click-through-rates. Pay atten­tion to when con­sumers stay, when they veer, and when they quick­ly lose inter­est in your ad. This met­ric can quick­ly tell you how engag­ing your ad is and give ideas for how to improve it and make it stronger. 

• Traf­fic Boosts

Anoth­er impor­tant met­ric to keep your eye on is the num­ber of con­sumers vis­it­ing your site. Note the increase in vol­ume, the amount of time spent on pages, and from which ads con­sumers were most like­ly to check out your brand online. Traf­fic boosts have a pos­i­tive rip­ple effect on mar­ket­ing, but you can be espe­cial­ly aware by tun­ing into how the traf­fic boost impacts leads and sales. 

• Land­ing Page Optimization

When is the last time you opti­mized your land­ing page? Refreshed, reloaded, and recharged land­ing pages play a key role in con­ver­sion from PPC cam­paigns. While it’s always a good idea to update land­ing pages, it is espe­cial­ly impor­tant through­out the dura­tion of your PPC strat­e­gy. If you need help mon­i­tor­ing and man­ag­ing page updates, it might be a good idea to out­source for the dura­tion of the campaign. 

• Neg­a­tive Key­words and Efforts

When you observe neg­a­tive cor­re­la­tions between key­word and effort, elim­i­nate this key­word from your cam­paign. Even if it is a high-rank­ing key­word, it’s not ben­e­fit­ing your end goal if it does not con­vert to leads or sales. Observe and mark these types of key­word phras­es as neg­a­tive. Feel free to rotate them in again in the future but for now, focus your efforts on new key­words, ques­tions, and phrases. 

Goal ques­tions and guidelines:

• Are leads a source of income for your busi­ness? Have they been/not been?
• What are you try­ing to achieve through paid advertisements?
• What do you want to achieve through paid ads in five years?
• What mar­ket­ing accom­plish­ments will you achieve through PPC?
• Which met­rics do you use to ana­lyze results?

Get Your PPC Plan in Place

Set­ting a prop­er PPC plan to fol­low can help you stay account­able to your cam­paign strat­e­gy and more reli­ably achieve your busi­ness goals. An effec­tive strat­e­gy includes con­stant goal-set­ting, exe­cu­tion, track­ing and analy­sis to har­ness the best results in your PPC efforts. 

Have You Used PPC Goals?

Have you set goals for your PPC Cam­paign? How did they fair? Did results mea­sure up to expec­ta­tions? Did the cam­paign help you reach your busi­ness objec­tives? Let us know in the com­ments below so oth­er read­ers can bet­ter under­stand the incen­tives of cre­at­ing goals before get­ting too far into the cam­paign itself. 

Rosy Strategies

Wher­ev­er you are in your mar­ket­ing jour­ney, Rosy Strate­gies is here to help guide you fur­ther. Whether you are brand new to PPC or you could use a review of PPC goals, reach out to us to get up to speed on the lat­est trends. We will help you make the smartest mar­ket­ing deci­sions so you can reap the full ben­e­fits of your PPC or any mar­ket­ing campaign.