Building a Pay-Per-Click Strategy in Google's IPO Year

Google filed for its IPO in the spring of 2004 and went public that August, and the disclosures that came with going public gave the wider business world its first real look at how profitable search advertising had become. For businesses that had been putting off a serious pay-per-click strategy, 2004 was the year the case for starting became hard to ignore. Here’s how to build one from nothing.

Step 1: Pick your platforms deliberately

By 2004, Google AdWords and Yahoo’s search network, running on the Overture platform Yahoo had acquired the year before, were the two major destinations for pay-per-click budget. They ranked ads differently and reached overlapping but distinct audiences, so most serious advertisers ran both rather than choosing one. Starting with a single platform, learning it well, then expanding is a reasonable way to avoid spreading a small budget too thin on day one.

Step 2: Build your keyword list around what customers search

Resist the temptation to bid on broad, obvious terms first. Start by listing the specific questions and phrases a customer close to buying would type, not the generic category term everyone else is already bidding on. Specific keywords tend to cost less per click and convert at a higher rate, because the person searching them has a clearer idea of what they want.

Step 3: Organize keywords into tightly themed ad groups

Every ad group should represent one specific idea, with its own ad copy written for exactly those keywords. A single ad group covering ten loosely related keywords forces one generic ad to try to speak to all of them, which lowers relevance and raises cost. Smaller, tighter ad groups take more setup work but consistently outperform broad ones.

Step 4: Write ad copy that filters before it sells

Include the price, the specific product or a qualifying detail directly in the ad text. Someone who clicks after seeing that detail is more likely to be a real prospect; someone who would have bounced anyway is more likely to skip the click entirely. Every click costs money regardless of outcome, so filtering before the click saves more than trying to filter after it.

Step 5: Build a dedicated landing page for each offer

Never send paid traffic to a general homepage. Build (or at minimum designate) a landing page that matches the specific offer in the ad, with a clear next step and no unrelated navigation pulling the visitor away from converting. This single change routinely has a bigger impact on conversion rate than any amount of keyword or bid tweaking.

Step 6: Set a starting budget you can afford to learn from

Don’t commit your full intended budget on day one. Start with an amount small enough that early mistakes are cheap lessons rather than real losses, run it for a couple of weeks and use that data to decide where to expand. Pay-per-click rewards iteration far more than it rewards a perfect plan launched all at once.

Step 7: Review weekly and be willing to cut

Once live, check performance weekly rather than letting the campaign run untouched. Pause keywords that aren’t converting, raise bids modestly on ones that are and refine ad copy based on what’s pulling clicks. A strategy built from scratch in week one is never the strategy still running successfully in month three, it evolves as real data replaces assumptions.

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More from the Paid Advertising archive, everything published in 2004 or the Digital Business Marketing Awards.