Back to Basic on PPC

We all work in the PPC advertising world, and of course we are ll looking at stats every day and night.  After a little while of the same repetitive actions, we start losing our focus on fundamentals, and the basics of PPC Marketing.  We are going to go over some of the most fundamental and basic, yet important parts of managing a performing and planned PPC campaign.
 
Ad Testing
Always perform ad testing. Always perform ad testing ALWAYS PERFORM AD TESTING.  Get it? This will not be a singular even, but something that you keep doing over and over. Split testing always, on all ads at all times, if you can.  There are no acceptable excuses to not do this simple but important thing.
We sit and dream up ads that we can knock people into tomorrow with 60 words or less, but then we forget to test out the ads and see how they are doing, and if you need improvement in your processes.  There is a reason this was first, so pay attention.
Landing pages, please
This is another one that we shouldn’t have to go over, but specifically I am talking about making sure you have relevant landing pages to the product.  This obviously, will increase your conversion rates, but many forget this lesson all the time.  Whenever you implement a landing page the is perfectly relevant to your ads and keywords, you will always have a well performing page.
Please, please, please do not point all of your PPC ads to some generic homepage.  NO, send them to the order, or conversion page.  They already had to do work to get to your site, now don’t make them wander through your website trying to figure out how to give you money.  Let’s make it easy for them to spend money on your product you are promoting, yes?    Please send your people to a landing page that is optimized to convert traffic.
Keyword Research
We have been over this multiple times now, but I feel the need to throw it in here, because it is indeed a basic.  Low cost per click+high converting traffic=win.  Try and find that combination.  If I was hiring a PPC guy, the first thing I would make sure he was doing is keyword research, nad if the answer was no, I would find a guy that makes that answer yes.  This is comparable to driving a car without having oil in the car.  You may be able to turn it on and drive a block or two, but pretty soon you are gonna wreck your ride.  Rather than just roll the dice, do a little research, please. this is the basics, remember.
Budgeting
Setup campaign budgets, so that you can handle clients that have limited marketing dollars to spend.  Tread carefully with these clients, and see everything across the board perform well.  You don’t want your heavy-traffic keywords performing well, but nothing else.  If you have those few keywords in your account that drive the most clicks, they will shut off your account long before the other long-tail keywords even get the chance to perform!
Plan carefully with your budget, and set your budget with those people that are tightwad’s so to speak.
While there is a lot to managing a PPC campaign, just make sure not to forget about these basics.