How to Properly Setup an Adwords Campaign…Part III
April 30th, 2008 by 
Amit
If you’ve been following Part I & Part II at this point you should have :
- A Keyword list broken into different categories or themes
- 2 Ads (just the body copy) for each category of keywords
- Your Google Conversion Tracking code on the thank you page of the affiliate offer
The next step is to use EfficientPPC to quickly setup your campaign.
Before I talk about the how, I want to talk about the why - which is just as important.
As I mentioned before, here how your campaign structure will look like once we’re done building your campaign with EfficientPPC :
- One Unique Keyword per Adgroup - broad, phrase, and exact match types of one keyword
- One Campaign per Keyword Category - with a different landing page for each category
- 2 Ads per Adgroup - with the keyword in the headline
So why do I structure my campaigns this way? There’s a bunch of reasons :
- Adwords highly rewards you for relevancy, and by structuring your campaign to have one keyoword PER adgroup and the keyword in the headline, you’re super relevant right off the bat. Just by structuring your campaign this way your quality score will immediately go up vs the alternative of throwing 20-50 keywords per adgroup.
- By having a seperate landing page for each keyword category you are, again, giving your quality score a big boost. Google’s algo checks to see how relevant your keywords are to the theme of the content on your landing page.
- Building a seperate campaign for each keyword category allows you to quickly glance at your campaign stats and immediately see which keyword categories are producing the most sales and conversions - so you know where to focus your efforts. This is the 20/80 principle in action. Don’t ignore this step, it’s VERY important.
- 2 Ads per Adgroup - This will set you up so you can immediately start split testing your ads for maximum CTR. Once you start finding winner, replace the losing ads with another ad and continue to test. NEVER stop testing, this is the KEY to long term success!
BUILDING YOUR CAMPAIGN WITH EFFICIENT PPC
We’re going to use dog training for this example.
The first step is to setup a keyword token list for each keyword category, be sure to appropriately label each list :
As you make and save each keyword list (one for each category) you should see them appear on the sidebar :
Just as a simple example I’ve setup two keyword categories for our example : Dog - General and House Training
The second step is to setup your adgroup structure and bid prices :
Don’t worry about the destination url on this part, that’s only if your want to specify a unique destination url for each keyword.
Also, notice how I set the broad match bid 33% lower than the phrase and exact match bid. I always set my broad match bid 25%-33% lower, since it usually doesn’t convert as well as phrase or exact match.
Third step is to write your ads :
To put your keyword in the headline use : {Result: Default Headline} where ‘Default Headline’ is the headline to use if your keyword is above 25 characters. The capital R in Result will capitalize the first letter of each word in your headline.
I only wrote one ad for this example, be sure to ALWAYS write two!
Next Step is to duplicate this first campaign and just change the name and the keyword list to create the campaign for the second keyword segment, House Training.
The next step is to edit the ads for your second campaign so they correspond to the two unique body copies you made for the second keyword segment (remember? I talked about writing 2 unique body copies for each keyword segment).
The last step is to create your campaign and upload it into Adwords editor!
Yes, it’s REALLY that easy.
Few last points:
- Set your campaign daily budget to something within your risk tolerance, which could be anywhere between $25-$200. I set my daily budget at $200 when I first launch a campaign. After I let it run a day and am confident that 1) it converts and 2) I won’t get a flood of targeted traffic, I increase the daily budget to $1000 or higher.
- Turn off the content network, if you want to test the content network make a duplicate campaign using EfficientPPC and add -Content to the campaign name. Set this campaign for content network traffic only. I also recommend lowering the bid on the content campaign by at least 25%.
- Countries : For offers that work worldwide DO NOT turn on all countries. Outside of the US I would add the following countries ONLY : Canada, UK, New Zealand, and Australia.
By properly setting up your Adwords campaign, you’ve laid a SOLID foundation - which in my opinion is the MOST IMPORTANT PART. You’ve now dramatically increased your chances of success, now all you have to do if find an affiliate offer that consistently converts and optimize it for profitability. 
Posted in Google™ AdWords, Super Affiliate Mindset | 
Hi Amit,
In the future, I predict that we will see the convergeance of natural search and paid search as well as thinning profit margins for PPC. Competion and bid prices will increase. I project that only the authority sites with real content will survive. Google’s quality score algorithms will evolve and become more aggressive towards thin sites.
I feel that the best bet for a *newby* like me is to develop a solid SEO optimized blog and to climb up the natural search ranks. This approach has the advantage of being very low risk as opposed to the high risk-high reward proposition of dabbling with PPC (when your a newb).
So let’s say I can create a decent blog and get between 100 to 200 visitors a day, all from free traffic. I promote some affiliate programs on my site and obviously don’t make a lot of income.
At this point, do I absolutely need PPC to take my traffic to the next level? Let’s say to 500-1000 visitors a day?
If so, would you use a different landing page for each adwords group and go from there.
Thanks dude, you rock!
PS: I’m 2 weeks old in the field of AF. I graduated from Caltech last year and now work in a start-up in Silicon Valley now. I found your blog and really like it being interested in online marketing. I’ll be part of your webinar with Blogclassroom.
Hi Amit & readers of Amit’s blog,
Amit, you said on your previous post that EficientPPC is much better from SpeedPPC and it has lower price.
I’ve got an offer(time limited offer) from my friend for SpeedPPC at much reduced price. Apparently SpeedPPC give away 1 copy of the software free to their affiliate who manage to sell at least a copy. I heard that from my friend so I don’t know if it’s true or not. So he wants to sell that free copy off to me for cheap.
Anyway there’s a SpeedPPC v3 which claims that it’s much better than EfficientPPC at http://www.speedppc.com/comparison-guide/
What’s your take on this? Do aff marketer really need this kind of software? Do I need this now as I’m relatively a newb in ppc aff marketing.
Hey Amit,
Great Posts on setting up the campaigns.
Two Questions i have though:
1) When you say 1 keyword/phrase per adgroup,… every time i set up a campaign i end up with at least 5-10 keywords per group. For Example:
Lets say my adgroup is ‘cheap dog training books’ so the keywords i probably would put in would be:
‘cheap dog training books’
‘cheap dog training book’
‘cheap books for dog training’
‘cheap book for dog training’….
And sometimes i would also put synonymous in the same group:
‘low cost dog training books’
‘low cost dog training book’
‘low cost books for dog training’
‘low cost book for dog training’
(i’m not sure if that is the best idea, but it saves time at least at the beginning when i test keywords)
Either way i won’t have 1 keyphrase in my adgroup.
What are your thoughts on that?
2) What does EfficiantPPC Gives me that Adwords Editor Doesn’t?
Thanks.
Hi Amit
Great post. I’ve actually recently cancelled a subscription to an adwords training program since I found your blog. Better quality content and free. Doesn’t get much better than that!
One question, why are you now using Efficient PPC as opposed to just using Excel? With the right set up, Excel does everything Efficient PPC does, but its free.
Also, if I have a keyword say dog training book and the plural dog training books, do I still need to set up 2 separate adgroups for them?
Thanks for your help
Simon
Does anyone know what the maximum number of campaigns and ad groups are for a single adwords account?
I thought there was a limit on the # of adgroups you could have 100/campaign? Maybe they changed this …
Yes, you can group tightly related keywords into one adgroup, and I add those in AFTER I launch and have some click data.
In the beginning I start with a board keyword list of a few 100 keywords. After 2 weeks I add in 1000s of keywords, still one keywords per adgroup. For high traffic high converting adgroups I go in and use google keywords tool to add variations and long tails directly into the adgroup.
-Amit
Amit, how many adgroups per landing page do you have, on average?
Jeeze Amit, great post. Probably the most detail I’ve seen in a post about how to setup campaigns ever.
No questions, just kudos. Thank you!
hi amit, really appreciate you posting the 3 parts on adwords campaign.. definitely prove useful to us…
i guess i shld stop whinning and start working… results dont happen for nothing.
zhenyao
@Zulkef - you really don’t need any high end software when starting out. Give yourself some time to learn the ropes and get your feet wet. (Amit made his millions with a simple little Excel software!) You can ALWAYS buy (and you should buy) the tools after you get going and gain some momentum. However, if you’ve got some crazy special limited time discount (and it aint some BS gimmick) on SPPC v.3 then take it.
@Clix99 - EPPC and SPPC give you the ability to quickly expand your keyword list based on expansion words. Adwords editor is more of a management and organization software.
@Simon - Does Excel do everything these software do???? you asked??? AMAN brother. I love Excel. In fact I use Excel and macros to do 99% of everything these high priced software do… Even though I own SPPC. In fact, Amit himself is a huge fan and a frequent user of Excel to set up his campaigns.
If you missed his Super Affiliate training, then you can find video tutorial by a couple of guys over at Attraction Marketing Formula who teach the use of Excel to expand your keywords. Its real easy and saves you so much time.
-Ed
Several very bright light bulbs just lit up in my head. You make sure the initial small set of keywords has breadth. You find out which Adgroups are generating the best initial clickthrough / ROI, then you optimize and drive depth in those groups.
Great series, Amit.
Amit, thanks for posting this 3 part article. Excellent info.
Hi Amir,
First off, great site - one of the best for affiliate marketing advice.
However I’m trying to figure out EfficientPPC at the moment and I have a question… if you’re making a dynamic landing page for use with the software, how do you split test 2 or more different landing pages without wrecking the whole system?
Many thanks,
Richard