Most small companies have a limited advertising budget and so when embarking on a pay per click campaign will need to get the most out of it for the least amount of money. Many can find that without proper management their PPC costs are going away from them and their conversions are costing a fortune. Here are a few tips to ensure you get the most out of your campaign.

1. Set a Daily Budget

Decide what you can afford to spend and limit your campaign so that you cannot spend more than this. You will then know what your costs are going to be and you only need to work on getting the most out of that money.

2. Set up Conversion Tracking

It is all very well getting clicks on your website but if you are not converting any of those clicks you might as well be throwing the money away. If you are selling something on your site you can very easily set up an automatic conversion tracker with Google and other similar programs. This will show you very easily your conversion percentage and profit margin. If you offer a service it is not so easy to quantify profit, but for every sale you do get, make a record of how people found you and do your own calculations on it.

3. Use Ad Groups

Decide on the people you want to target and set up an ad group for each one. For example, if you are selling products set up an ad group for each category using keywords that target people looking to buy that category of products. Keep the keywords in each group down to 3-5 separate words or phrases and write an ad for each one. Aim to include your selected keywords or phrases within your ad, doing this should help to increase your click through rate.

4. Keep your Keywords Specific

The more specific you can keep your selected phrases the more targeted the results will be. Try and select phrases with 3 words in them as this will help greatly with cost and targeting. Often just using one word will result in a far too broad term and a lot of people will see your advert when it does not apply to them. This is really important as if you have a daily budget, Google will spread out the appearance of your ad throughout the day and if some of those are wasted your click through rate will be reduced.

5. Keep Bidding Low

If you have a fixed budget and you want to get as many clicks as possible then you want to be paying the minimum you can per click. We would normally recommend aiming to appear at position 6 for broad phrases. So start with a bid and then monitor your positions on a daily basis at first. You will then be able to adjust your bid up or down so that you appear in position 6. Once you have got your campaigns on an even keel then you should regularly monitor your positions and costing as your competitors adjust their bidding. Remember to leave the top 3 positions to the big companies who have huge advertising budgets and bid these positions up purely for branding.

These tips are a starting block for your campaign. Do your research, ask your clients, friends and colleagues about the terms they would use for searching and use these if possible. Don't be afraid to drop terms that have a poor click through rate or poor conversion rate after all you don't want to throw money away. Keep up to date with the industry, read up on what the professionals are doing and incorporate these tactics into your campaign wherever possible. Paid advertising can be very effective but it needs time spending on it, so make sure you budget for this when starting a campaign.