Most Internet Managers bite off more than they can chew, including managing a PPC campaign.  Paid search can be an effective way to increase revenue, but the actual process of managing PPC campaigns can also be very labor intensive. Using software to automate some of the overall effort is one way to help manage and track paid search.

Know that keyword expansion and bid and budget management are kind of the two priorities in paid search management.  Understand the manual process will not meet long-term goals. Maintaining a healthy score for non-branded keywords is an ongoing challenge, even though budgets are not always an issue because paid search should be providing a strong ROI.

Select a paid search vendor that can improve the entire process and remove some of the burden from the person maintaining the campaigns.

During the selection process, a number of criteria should be examined:

•Algorithms with intelligence in bidding up or down

•Robust data analysis

•Efficient in day-to-day campaign management

•Ability to expand campaigns

•Ability to apply bid rules to thousands of keywords on an automated basis

•Automated ad up loader tool

Test and continue to optimize your strategy. Regularly conduct simple A/B split tests on different elements of your paid search program, including ad copy and landing pages.

Some of the results you could expect are:

•22% increase in paid search revenue

•500% increase in managed keywords

•14% reduction in cost-per-click

•30% reduction in time spent on reporting and bidding