I’ve encountered many clients who say “I need a new PPC campaign yesterday!” They may have just launched a new website or their PPC (Pay-Per-Click) may be bleeding money and so they want a professionally built, brand spanking new campaign ASAP. Even while I was writing this blog on a Friday afternoon, I was interrupted by a phone call from someone who wanted a PPC campaign live by the end of the day (the computer game GTA 4 is released on Tuesday and this particular client wanted something live on Google by close of business). The industry standard for any PPC build worth its salt is around 7 to 10 days. Any old hack can knock out a couple of keywords and ad text in a few minutes, but unless you take the time to build a comprehensive, well structured and well researched PPC campaign, you may as well tip the contents of your wallet down the nearest storm drain.

The time it takes to build a PPC campaign is eaten up by (1) conducting thorough keyword and negative keyword research using a variety of specialist tools, (2) segregating the keywords as much as humanly possible into distinct ad groups and (3) writing several ad text variations per ad group. If a company has an extensive product range or is targeting numerous towns, cities or regions, then it’s not uncommon for a PPC build to exceed the 66,536 row limit in an Excel spreadsheet.

Size isn’t the only reason why you should take your time over a new PPC build. If you launch a campaign that is incomplete, poorly structured or doesn’t obey the fundamental principles of a good PPC campaign, you’re simply putting a variety of problems in the post. It is much easier to get a PPC campaign 100% correct from the outset rather than continuously fix problems once you’re live on the search engines and your ads have been exposed to your customers. The best performing campaigns with the best returns are always the ones that have hit the ground running because they have been immaculately built before going live.

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