With the internet being so competitive on both the organic and paid fronts, many webmasters and business owners find it difficult to break through in the modern era of the World Wide Web. The road to success is paved with the failures of millions, and you certainly don’t want to follow in their footsteps. PPC campaigns are a popular way to increase engagement and boost traffic in niches that otherwise would be lacklustre performers. Not all PPC campaigns succeed as intended, and in fact, many fail due to some pretty common mistakes. Having a sense of the backbone and mechanics of PPC campaigns, your target market and other elements related to your site’s products/services is crucial for success. We’ll discuss below what you need to know before you deploy your next PPC campaigns, helping you to get the most bang for your buck.

Know Your Goals

What exactly do you want from your PPC campaign? Are you looking for more sales, higher subscription rates or increased traffic? Do you need all three to survive? Without being aware of your campaign’s goals, how can you achieve what you need? All too many people simply throw together what they believe to be snazzy ads, and pray for the best. This is a failed tactic and a great way to waste money – do you have money to waste these days? Having concrete goals for your PPC campaigns will ensure that your messaging, ad copy, images, keywords and budget all stay on track. It is quite unarguably the basis of your marketing strategy, so don’t proceed with knowing yours.

Engage Multiple Platforms

If you have found success with Google AdWords or some other equivalent, then congratulations! Now, why haven’t you attempted to achieve similar results on multiple platforms? Whether it be search, social media or even niche websites, you need to be running PPC efforts across multiple entities in order to be truly successful. There are a number of affiliate programs out there that can get you in front of your target audiences across multiple markets, so there is simply no excuse in this day and age to confine yourself to one market or medium. While added costs are certainly a consideration, you knew going in that pinging for SEO and marketing effectively wasn’t cheap nor easy.

Monitor Your Results

The meat and potatoes of your PPC campaign revolves around proper planning and targeting, but how can you be sure this is working as intended if you do not monitor the results? A variety of custom and built-in metric and analytic systems are available for use with PPC campaigns; in some cases, all the data you need will be available via the affiliate’s tracking software. In other cases, you may need to configure some add-ons and trackers to find out what you need to know. At the end of the day, your PPC campaign can only be successful if you know for a fact that it is achieving the proper goals and engaging people across multiple platforms. Analytics programs that allow you to monitor these results will provide the answers to your questions.