Columnit Jeff Baum shares his approach to creating a search marketing strategy that will keep your tactics focused and tied to larger business goals.
Throughout my digital marketing career, I’ve had the good fortune to audit numerous paid search accounts. Many of these accounts are missing one critical component: a coherent strategy.
Without a solid strategy, how can we ever employ the correct set of tactics to effect positive outcomes for our PPC accounts?
Today, I’m going share a process for creating winning strategy that will lead to strong, sustainable results for your paid search program.
What Is Strategy, And How Is It Created?
In order to create strategy, it’s important to understand what it is. According to the dictionary, strategy is defined as “a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim.”
One thing is certain: strategy is not tactics.
In conversations with account managers and clients, I’ve heard things such as, “My strategy is to begin ad testing,” or “My strategy is to restructure the account.” Strategy is bigger than that. It’s the path you’re going to take in order to reach goals.
Below is a three-step process I use for building an effective PPC strategy.
- Assess the overall situation. The assessment process will help uncover the biggest challenge(s) your business faces, what the competitive landscape looks like and what the goals are for PPC.
- Develop a policy. Based on a rigorous assessment of the overall situation, you will craft a principle that will guide you in determining how PPC advertising will be used to reach goals and solve the biggest problems.
- Create an action plan. Develop a coordinated set of initiatives and optimizations that directly supports the policy you’ve created.
Let’s get into each of these areas in more detail so you can put this methodology into practice.
[Read the full article on Search Engine Land.]
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.
