PPC in 30 Days, Day 2: Setting Financial Targets and Advertising Budgets

Assembling a budget is key to a campaign.

Budgeting a PPC (pay-per-click) campaign should be your first step after you set your goals. When you set up a budget, you should attempt to balance best-case desires and worst-case possibilities. No budget is guaranteed and resources that are allocated to a particular strategy may not generate additional revenue. The Internet is a powerful marketing tool, but there is also a level of saturation. Therefore, companies cannot simply build a website and then sit back and wait for the sales to come rolling in.

How much are you willing to spend?

For a PPC (pay-per-click) campaign, companies must decide how much they are willing to spend in order to hopefully generate new sales. For example, budgets for bidding on keywords are not unlimited. This is why Igor Mordkovich, in his article “17 Most Common PPC Mistakes Web Marketers Make,” reminds marketers that they cannot be lazy with their campaign but should instead put some thought into their keyword selection. Sometimes the best keyword for a Houston work injury attorney may not be worth the money, and assembling a group of more affordable keywords may broaden the impact of the campaign.

Dollars and sense

When putting together a budget, organizations must decide on a reasonable return on their investment. Obviously nothing is guaranteed in business, but a company must assemble a budget that reflects the estimated cost of a new sale. The old adage is that organizations need to spend money to make money. Are entities willing to spend $20 to make $100? How about $50? Each company must experiment so that they can come up with a reasonable and hopefully consistent ratio.

Time is money

One other budgeting aspect to consider is employee time. This may be a bit difficult to assess, since marketing professionals may spread their time over a variety of tasks. However, it is important to estimate how much time people may spend on a specific PPC campaign as opposed to other marketing strategies. Using the Internet is obviously a tempting use of time, but in some cases leadership must look at the balance of company resources between various marketing strategies.

We’ll be discussing keyword research in Day 3 of PPC in 30 days, so get ready to learn more about choosing the right keywords for your campaign.