Setting PPC Campaign Management Milestones

Aiming High, Staying On Target, and Other Archery Metaphors!

Do you ever feel like a plastic bag? Drifting through the wind, wanting to start again?

I’m gonna have to agree with my girl Katy Perry here for a second. Sometimes it’s hard to not feel this way. Especially when you’re working in an AdWords account that needs better results and looks overwhelming! I’m here today to show you how to better set your priorities in an AdWords account.

1. Set Milestones

Setting priorities in our accounts is something that we take very seriously here at Disruptive Advertising. One system we’ve put into place to help us prioritize our time is to set milestone goals. These milestones help us to understand what we need to be focusing on and where we should be putting most of our time, energy and effort.

Here at Disruptive, we like to set about three milestones at a time. We typically set our milestones around a template like this:

• Milestone 1: Getting Traffic/Conversions
• Milestone 2: Hitting Target CPA
• Milestone 3: Profitability

To help keep us accountable, we always set out a “Target” date to have each of these milestones hit. It’s important to start with milestones that will push you, but are also attainable. Once you have reached all three of the milestones, you should create three more so that your account is continually improving and getting better results.

Every milestone set should also have a clear growth goal. For example, if you’re only getting 5 conversions a month and you want to double that, then your milestone should be to get 10 conversions a month by a certain date that you set.

Here is an example of how your milestones might look after you’ve set them for a specific client:

• Milestone 1: Get 25 clicks/day by Feb. 14
• Milestone 2: Get 10 conversions/week by Mar. 1
• Milestone 3: Lower CPA to $40 by Mar. 30

2. Decide What’s Most Important

When it comes to setting milestones, you first have to figure out what the main pain points are for your business. Is it getting more traffic? Is it exposing people to your brand? Is it reaching a certain cost per conversion so that you’re profitable? Once you figure out what is most important to your business, then you can set milestones accordingly.

[Tweet “Every milestone you set should also have a clear growth goal.”]

Keep in mind that it might require setting a few intermediate goals before you can reach your final goal. Your first and second milestones should help you attain the third one. We like setting out only three at a time so that we can just focus on individual tasks without getting too overwhelmed at how many steps it might take to get to our end goals. You have to find small wins along the way  🙂

3. Getting There

The work that you’re doing in an account should reflect the milestone that you’re currently working towards. There are many different strategies you can implement in order to reach the milestones that you’ve set out.

For example, if your first milestone is to get 25 clicks/day, then you should aim to increase traffic. Raise your bids, work on keyword expansion, create ad extensions, do ad testing. These are all things that you can be doing to help you reach that first milestone, so focus only on those until the milestone is hit.

[Tweet “The work that you’re doing in an account should reflect your current milestone.”]

One thing you want to make sure of is that you’re giving yourself enough time and budget to reach these milestones. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Sometimes you won’t hit your milestones on your target date, or you’ll realize your goal isn’t the best possible one. This is where you have to be realistic and reasses your milestones when needed.

Did you notice how I gave you three specific tasks (milestones!) to reach when setting out your milestones? In all seriousness, I hope that these suggestions will help you to better prioritize your time and energy in your ppc campaign management. You should have all you need now to jump in and get to setting some milestones and destroying them! Good luck!