Last week we left off talking about the struggles I had with compiling a keyword list and how finally I found the best way to differentiate the words and select the ones I would bid on.  This week we’re going to talk about the next step of the process which is finalizing the words that we are going to bid on and more importantly how much it’s going to cost us.

We finally decided on a couple of variations of -SEO article packages- for three reasons.  First, as a business in the writing services industry SEO articles are high in demand and this a great time to establish ourselves as a premier writing service provider.  Second, it received a high KEI score which indicated to us that this would be a profitable keyword to bid on.  Finally, this was a keyword that we could afford based on our budget.  So how did we establish a budget for PPC? These are the steps we followed:

1) We recognized that there are two numbers that we needed to focus on: the ROI (return on investment) and our net profit.  It’s possible for a small PPC campaign to have a high ROI percentage but a small net profit, so it’s important to pay attention to these numbers to be able to evaluate success.
 
2) How much should we spend the first week?  Well there are numerous opinions revolving around the issue and many may say that we shouldn’t spend a large portion of our budget on the first week because there will be many changes to the campaign depending on results, but I disagree.  Of course if you have an overall budget of $1000 for example, you don’t want to spend $500 the first week.  But it is important to spend a significant amount to be able to see if your campaign is successful.  So we decided that we are going to spend the following:

• $25 to $35 per day – this is affordable to us and will provide us with the necessary information to make any changes to our ads.
• Only bid on business hours (8AM – 5PM PST) – this it the primary time that our target market would be searching for our services.
• Not bid on weekends – since our target market is primarily established businesses it makes no sense to spend money on the weekends.

3) As we start monitoring results and tweaking our ad we will spend less on the bidding.

After establishing a budget it’s time to design the actual ad copy of the campaign that we are going to use when bidding.  This involves taking into consideration the various personality types of our potential clients, which I will discuss in detail next blog.  What are your thoughts about how much is the right amount of spending on a PPC campaign?  PPC is just one of many marketing methods that a business needs to consider, do you agree with our breakdown of how much we should spend and when we should advertise? I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas.