Level up your PPC Strategy: The complete guide to setting up a PPC campaign

Defining your PPC campaign goals

Remember, a well-defined goal is the compass that will guide your PPC campaign. It's what will help you measure success, allocate your budget wisely, and create effective ads. Let's take a look at some common PPC goals and how you can tailor them to your business:

• Sales: If your primary goal is to boost revenue, you'll want to focus on creating ads that directly encourage purchases.

• Leads: Are you looking to generate interest and collect contact information from potential customers? A lead generation campaign is your best bet.

• Traffic: Perhaps you want to increase website visitors. A traffic-driven campaign can help you achieve this goal.

• Brand awareness: If your aim is to build brand recognition and visibility, a campaign focused on increasing brand impressions can be effective.

Choosing your PPC platform

Now you’ve selected your goals, the next step is selecting the right PPC platform. When choosing a platform, consider the following questions:

• Does the platform offer the targeting options and campaign types you need to achieve your objectives?

• What’s your ideal cost per click? Costs can vary significantly so choose a platform that aligns with your budget.

• Where does your target audience spend most of their time online?

Here are the most commonly used PPC platforms for eCommerce businesses:

Google Ads

Google Ads is an excellent choice for reaching a wide audience of potential customers who are actively searching for products similar to yours. You can use search ads to target specific keywords related to your product, display ads to showcase your product on relevant websites, and shopping ads to list your products at the top of search results.

Amazon Ads

If you sell products on Amazon, you can use Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display ads to promote your products to Amazon shoppers.

The most common ad format is Sponsored Products which are PPC ads that promote individual product listings. As they’re featured at the top of search results, they offer sellers increased visibility and higher conversion rates.

Check out our guide to Amazon Sponsored Products here.

Meta Ads

Whether it's through video ads, image ads, or carousel ads, PPC ads on Facebook and Instagram allow you to reach potential customers by targeting specific demographics or interests.

Meta Ads are ideal for reaching new audiences who are likely to be interested in your products or retargeting people who have visited your website but haven't converted.

How to structure a PPC campaign

Even though different PPC platforms might use slightly different terms, there's a basic structure that most campaigns follow. Let's break down the essential components of a well-structured PPC campaign:

Campaign

This is where you'll define the overall goals and targeting parameters. Here's what you need to consider:

• Advertising goals: Most PPC platforms will ask you to choose your campaign goal (e.g. conversions, traffic, awareness)

• Campaign type: Choose where you want your ads to be displayed and how they will appear (e.g. a Search Network campaign on Google or a Dynamic Product Ads campaign on Meta)

• Location targeting: Whether you ship domestically or internationally, target the geographical areas where you want your ads to appear.

• Language targeting: Select languages relevant to your target audience.

• Budget: Set a daily or monthly budget that aligns with your sales goals and average cost per acquisition (CPA).

Ad groups

Campaigns are composed of multiple ad groups, which are collections of ads targeting specific keywords. This helps you group related keywords and write ads with a consistent message. Each ad also includes the landing page where you want to direct users after they click.

For example, if you’re an online retailer specializing in electronics you might create ad groups for smartphones, laptops, gaming consoles, and wearables.

Keywords

Keywords are the words or phrases that people search for on search engines or marketplaces. So when someone searches for a keyword that matches your ad, it might appear in the search results.

Use tools like Google Keyword Planner to find relevant keywords, including their search volume, competition, and average CPC. A list of 15–20 keywords for each ad group is a good rule of thumb.

Additionally, most PPC platforms allow you to experiment with different keyword types, such as broad match, phrase match, and exact match, to control how your ads are triggered. It’s also wise to make use of negative keywords in your campaigns.

These are words or phrases that prevent your ads from showing up for irrelevant searches, so you don’t waste budget on product type mismatches like "boots" when you sell "hiking boots."

Ads

Once you have your campaign structure, ad groups, and keywords in place, it's time to create your ads. To optimize for conversions, consider these strategies:

Dynamic creative best practices

Most platforms now leverage dynamic creative, allowing you to upload multiple headlines, descriptions, images, and videos. The platform's algorithm will then automatically generate the most effective ads. While the platform does much of the heavy lifting, following these best practices can improve your results:

• Craft compelling headlines: Use target keywords and highlight clear benefits such as the unique selling points of your products. discounts or free shipping.

• Write informative descriptions: List the key features of your products, how it solves the customer’s problem, and any other benefits of buying from your store.

• Use high-quality images: and show people using your products.

• Grab the viewer’s attention: within the first 3 seconds of your video using creative transitions such as quick cuts, zoom-in or zoom-out effects, or wipe transitions.

Landing or product page optimization
Whether you’re sending people who click your ads to a dedicated landing page on your online store or to the product page on a marketplace, both play an important role in converting interested visitors into customers. Make sure your landing page has a clear call to action, the content aligns with the ad’s message, and loads quickly.

If you’re using PPC ads on Amazon or another marketplace, make sure you invest in high-quality product information, including detailed descriptions of your product’s features and benefits, high-resolution images, and customer reviews.

Setting a budget and managing bids for your PPC campaigns

The next big question is: how much are you willing to spend, and how do you make sure you're getting the most bang for your buck? If you’re running Google Ads, the Keyword Planner tool gives you an estimated cost-per-click, which can help you figure out how much money you'll need to spend to reach your goals.

Most PPC platforms offer two bidding strategies: cost-per-click and daily budget. With CPC, you can manually set a maximum price you're willing to pay per click. With a daily budget, the platform automatically adjusts your bids to stay within your spending limit.

Smart bidding strategies

These strategies leverage advanced algorithms to automatically adjust your bids in real time, maximizing performance based on your campaign goals. By allowing the platform to manage your budgets, you can focus on broader PPC strategy and ad creative while letting the AI optimize for results.

Here's a breakdown of some common smart bidding strategies:

• Target CPA (cost per acquisition): Specify how much you’re willing to spend for a conversion and the algorithm adjusts bids to achieve your target CPA.

• Target ROAS (return on ad spend): The algorithm bids to achieve your target ROAS, ensuring that every dollar spent generates a desired return.

• Maximize conversions: The algorithm bids to maximize the number of conversions, focusing on quality leads over quantity.

• Maximize conversion value: The algorithm considers the value of each conversion (e.g. purchase amount) and bids to maximize the total value of conversions achieved.

• Maximize clicks: The algorithm bids to get as many clicks as possible, helping you reach a wider audience.

• Dynamic bidding: Automatically adjusts bids based on real-time auction dynamics and the likelihood of a conversion.

Optimize your PPC campaigns with Channable’s PPC tool

Channable’s PPC tool allows you to easily create complete ad campaign structures for multiple products and languages at scale. Our tool also uses automation to maximize your return on investment and avoid overspending.

No matter your growth stage, Channable provides all the key solutions businesses need to successfully advertise on Google, Amazon and Bol. Find more information on our PPC Optimization page.