PPC in 30 Days, Day 12: Understanding Minimum Bids

You must first know your ad and its targeted topic to understand minimum bids.

A PPC (pay-per-click) campaign allows a firm to create and place ads in specific places on the Internet so the ads will hopefully interest potential clients. When creating a PPC campaign, various sites will charge fees to organizations based on the composition of the ad that is placed. Understanding minimum bids is important because firms will typically want to monitor their advertising budget and avoid paying a lot of money for ads that are not generating traffic.

Understanding minimum bids starts with knowing the ad itself. Various Internet service providers will charge different amounts for their ads, but they do have similar protocols. In essence, a minimum bid is the lowest amount that a firm will pay for their ad to be clicked by a user. The service provider may dictate a pricing structure, but the firm can also work to minimize their cost.

As noted in “Minimum Bid—Learn About AdWords Minimum Bids,” firms must control various factors so the organization’s Quality Score is impacted in a positive way. The Quality Score is directly related to the minimum bid, and is influenced by click-through rate, the relevancy of keywords in Ad Groups, the appropriateness of ad text as it relates to the rest of the ad, and the material on the landing page. The search engine will evaluate these factors and present firms with a potential cost for running the ad.

What firms must keep in mind is that search engines want organizations to create good ads that will interest potential clients. Since firms will often pay for each click, it is in the best interest of Google and other providers to help professionals create ads that are focused and relevant to their products and services, such as an ad for a DuPage County foreclosure attorney. Therefore, ads that are too broad or try to solicit customers through popular but unrelated keywords will cost the firm more in terms of the minimum bid. In addition, they will not necessarily draw the desired traffic.

Interested in having multiple ads to target different aspects of your legal practice? Day 13 of PPC in 30 Days covers creating adgroups and ads.