Pay Per Click (PPC) is an on-line auction style advertising system offered by search engines including Google and Yahoo. Millions of people have used PPC advertising to sell their products and services but only a few people are really making any money with this type of advertising. For a small business with a limited budget an unsuccessful campaign may make the difference between paying the bills this month or not. Each search engine has their own rules for keyword bidding, ad placements and landing pages so the average business owner can easily get confused and discouraged about the time they spend managing their campaigns. In recent years advertisers have been offered a helping hand in the form of PPC campaign management tools. These tools are downloadable software or on-line websites that manage much of the day-to-day tedious tasks that are essential to running a profitable campaign.
Before choosing a pay per click management tool make sure it includes the following ingredients:
1. Allows you to manage your campaigns from anywhere in the world at any time. If you choose downloaded software then you will need to lug your laptop with you whenever you travel.
2. A simple and intuitive interface that does not require a degree in engineering. If you have to spend an outrageous amount of time learning to run the software then you might as well manage your campaigns by hand.
3. The ability to manage the most popular PPC advertising vehicles: Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing. Additional PPC programs are a plus.
4. A wizard or step-by-step instructions on setting up an account and campaigns, determining a budget, selecting keywords and writing ads.
5. The option of monitoring multiple campaigns with multiple goals at the same time. If you manage client campaigns you will need a version of the PPC management tool that allows for multiple accounts.
6. The ability to set goals and use several different bidding strategies automatically without human intervention. To be able to use more than one strategy at a time is a bonus.
7. The flexibility for you to fine-tune your campaign keywords, ads, goals and budget at any time. You may want to implement a strategy or budget based on keywords that are related to a hot news story.
8. The option to set-up e-mail alerts for performance changes that you define based on your own criteria. Only you know what your expectations are for each of your PPC campaigns so you should be in charge of when you are notified of any changes.
9. A history or summary screen that gives you an overall picture of your campaigns without having to run reports. Simplifying the process and saving you time should be the goal of the PPC management tool you choose.
10. A robust reporting function that allows you to generate reports using many different variables that you choose on your own. Offering some general pre-programmed reports is a bonus.
Do not buy or register for a pay per click management tool without the offer of a free trial or a generous refund policy in case the tool does not work for you. Do some research on the Internet and read reviews written by people who have used the tool themselves.
If you have stopped using or never used PPC advertising because you lack knowledge, are afraid of losing money or worried that you will spend all of your time managing campaigns when you should be managing your business then you need a PPC management tool.
(c) 2008, Davis Virtual Assistance. Permission to reprint granted so long as the article and byline are reprinted intact and all links made live.
Bonnie Jo Davis is an Internet marketing expert who manages Pay Per Click advertising campaigns for herself and clients. She has used and recommends PPC SaaS(tm) by Dynamic Software(tm) because it offers as simple wizard process for set-up and includes all of the important features for campaign management listed in this article. You can register for a free trial of PPC SaaS(tm) at http://www.ppcsaas.com/
