Search. Click. Find.

Keyword advertising on Google, Yahoo and other search engines is paid media. But I think new advertisers often fail to plan for this expense, particularly if they're planning to spend less than $1000/month. But even $50/month adds up - that's $600 after a year! (hooray for grade school math!!)

Why give Google any money at all if you don't plan to maximize your investment in the traffic you're paying for?

This is a classic case of "just because you can, doesn't mean you should." It's really easy to launch a paid search campaign, but NOW is not always the right time to do it.

So to ensure you're not just wasting money (and fattening up our Google overloards in the process) here's an essential list of ducks you should have in a row BEFORE launching your PPC campaign.

1. Have a decent landing page (and I don't mean your home page!).

   Look, I'm not criticizing your home page. I'm sure it's beautiful and well-thought out. Really - I'm not just saying that! But your home page isn't always the most appropriate place to link your ads to. Take some time to figure out the best place to link your ads so that the pages support the keywords you're bidding on AND the ad copy. It will make both Google and your potential customers happy.

2. Prepare your site, your staff and yourself for the potential onslaught of new traffic.

   Think about it. If you planned on dropping $1500 on a newspaper ad promoting a sale at one of your bricks and mortar retail locations, you'd prepare for the ad by ensuring that the sale was actually taking place. You'd likely put up signs throughout the store which promoted the sale and perhaps used the same images and language as your ad. You'd educate your sales people about the sale to make sure they were ready to help potential customers. You should absolutely take this approach when running PPC ads. Make sure that your web site reinforces whatever the ads are promoting. Make sure that the keywords you're buying (and people are using to find your site) appear on the landing page because this helps searchers realize they're in the right place. Educate your customer service folks (or receptionists or sales people) that there may be people coming in from the online ads that have questions. Otherwise you'll likely have more drop off than you want and that's just no way to maximize your ad dollars.

3. Figure out how you're going to track campaign results BEFORE you launch the campaign, then implement and test the tracking prior to launch.

   Google offers free conversion tracking to all advertisers - it's a simple piece of Javascript that can be placed on any page of your site (but true conversion tracking means the code is placed on the confirmation page a visitor receives after making a purchase, registering or filling out a form.) If you're already using analytics software, there's usually an easy way to track online campaigns - look into it and implement it. Otherwise you'll be operating your campaign in the dark.

4. Figure out what you're going to do with all that traffic.

   Okay, what I mean by this is that it's important to understand what your campaign goals are - whether leads, sales, sign ups or a combination of all three. Don't just throw a campaign up and hope for the best - really think about what you want to gain from this campaign. Traffic without a clear conversion goal is just an unnecessary expense. If you don't do something with that traffic, you're going to become discouraged with paid search and assume that it's failed. If you're selling something complicated or high ticket (e.g., $2000 training seminars, $3500 software packages, $10,000 vacation getaways), consider using search to generate leads and get people into the sales funnel, rather than to generate direct sales. Most people want to speak with someone before spending that kind of money. If you're selling lower cost items (e.g, an e-book, children's clothing, a DVD on knitting, etc.), then make sure your landing page communicates the value of your offering before flipping the switch to your campaign.

Well, that was kind of a short checklist. I may add to it, but for now I think if you can cross off all of the above before you launch, then you're in a great position to truly monetize your paid search advertising dollars. For more details about how to launch a campaign, visit my shiny new site www.searchmarketingtrainer.com.

I recently passed my Google Advertising Fundamentals Exam and this, along with a few other mandatory requirements, gains me status as a Qualified Individual in the Google Advertising Professionals Program.

I was fascinated with the whole process of qualifying this year - I'd taken the test a couple of years ago and it expired, so I was curious to see what was new for this year's exam and how much I did (or did not) know.

First I'll list the requirements needed to become an Adwords Qualified Individual (not to be confused with a qualified company, by the way).

1. Sign up for the program and be in good standing
2. Manage at least one Adwords account in a "My Client Center" (MCC)
3. Build/manage at least $1000 in ad spend over a 90 day period
4. Link your MCC account to your Google Advertising Professionals program account
5. Pass the Google Advertising Fundamentals Exam

I've abbreviated some of these in the interest of your sanity. You can read the requirements, in full, on the Adwords Help site.

I've listed all the requirements because I think some of them are really just technical mandates that don't require any actual skill to set up. The two important requirements are numbers 3 and 5. I think it's extremely important to actually manage an account over 90 days or more. The requirement of managing $1000 over 90 days may even be too low to develop significant expertise (in my opinion).

It's really difficult to learn the system and leverage the many different options that Adwords offers if you're managing an account that's averaging below $500/month. I came across a few blog posts and tutorials on how to cram for the Adwords exam, but no amount of reading and memorizing can replace hands on experience.

What is the Google Advertising Fundamentals Exam?

Google requires all qualified Adwords specialists to take a 120 question exam which they've recently renamed to the "Fundementals Exam." I think this means that there will likely be a more advanced exam down the road, but right now all they are offering is this one exam. All questions must be completed within 2 hours.

After taking the test, I felt that "fundamentals" was a misnomer because there were a lot of questions that, in my opinion, went way beyond the fundamentals of Adwords. Without getting too specific (woudln't want to give anything away), the test had many questions about some basic principals of online advertising (e.g., what does CPM mean?) but there were also many in-depth questions about the inner workings of Adwords including how Google serves ads geographically and across languages, which I feel is a pretty complex feature.

For more info on what you can expect from the Fundamentals Exam, visit the Adwords Learning center which provides exhaustive tutorials and lessons to help you study. This is also a great resource for new advertisers who want to gain an understanding of Adwords' capabilities.

Does it Matter?

It took me a few hours to re-certify myself and it cost $50 for the privilege. In the grand scheme of things, does it really matter that I can display the Adwords Qualified Individual badge on my Web site? Yes, I believe it does. At the very least it demonstrates a fundamental knowledge of Adwords and ensures that those of us who take the test and pass it are up-to-date with all the latest Adwords bells and whistles. In order to pass the test, we need to 85% or above - no more slacking off with a passing grade of 75%, people!

I will say this - while certifications, badges and fancy logos can seem impressive and are definitely a good way to screen PPC agencies and consultants, nothing takes the place of experience. Always ask a prospective PPC manager how many campaigns they manage on a monthly basis, what the level of spend is that they manage and how they stay up to date with the latest trends and changes in the industry.

Also remember that PPC is more than just Google. Yeah, really! Other engines such as Yahoo and Bing are part of the industry too (whether we like it or not) and other venues such as eBay and Amazon.com are beginning to offer their own PPC products. These are search engines in their own right and shouldn't be ignored even if they don't offer up a fancy badge of glorified certification.

I've been sitting in a lot of marketing meetings lately. The kind where clients demand the "big idea" from agency participants and look to the online media team to come up with something magical.

Only I'm not really a full-fledged member of the online media team. I don't peddle banners, or Flash apps or ultra dynamic, mobile, viral, streaming, Web 2.0, wrap-a-round branded skins.

I peddle 95 character text ads which come in two flavors - bold and not bold. There's no way that I can claim these ads are sexy.

I know it. Everyone in the room knows it. So after I drop the enticing search statistics - the billions of searches conducted each month on the top three search engines, the highly influential nature of search marketing, the average clickthrough rate (over 2%) which is much better than most other forms of online media and the high ROI generated from search...well..the conversation passes me by.

What I really want to say, but never have time because I only ever have sixty seconds to present search

The search marketer never gets center stage in pitches that focus on the "big idea." I think this is a shame, because there's so much more to say on the subject of search.

A search campaign, if planned appropriately and managed correctly, can be the cornerstone of even the sexiest of online media campaigns. Search compliments all other initiatives. If you're running a campaign which touts a certain compelling feature of what ever you're selling (our widget is the shiniest!) then you can easily reinforce that issue with your keywords "shiniest widgets, shiny widgets, widgets that shine" and so forth.

Search is event-driven. It really is.

Banners take time to develop and traffic. Media that's purchased on a CPM basis is often tied to contracts and I/O's. Translation - it's not easy or quick to move media dollars around, even online media dollars. Not so with search. Advertisers aren't tied to a specific spend per month with search. You can dial the budget up or down depending on how the campaign is going.

You can launch new ads in seconds (assuming you don't have pesky regulatory issues to comply with, as is the case in some industries). You can easily traffic ads directly in the engines - even tools like Atlas and Dart are fairly easy to implement on the fly. The ability to launch ads in mere minutes in response to events that may be going on in real time (seminars, news releases, industry buzz, etc.) is one of the, dare I say it, sexiest features about the tactic of paid search. It's instant gratification. What's sexier than that??

Let search lead!

Paid search can be the foundation of your online marketing campaign - this is true. It's a pay-for-performance based tactic that people really respond to. But search also has the potential to lead your marketing initiatives. How? Well, for one thing, search results are available in real time (practically). This makes it the ideal tactic for testing campaign elements like landing page copy, ad copy, and messaging.

Google even provides a free tool to assist with A/B split testing of landing pages. It's called Website Optimizer

Search is not what it seems

I know search marketing has been around a long time. It's an old tactic, crowded in among all the pretty, shiny new Web 2.0 gadgets and gizmos and is easy to dismiss either because it's a given that search will be in your campaign or because search doesn't even make it into the media conversation at all.

But I have a strong sense that many companies are overlooking the true potential of paid search. There's a lot of information you can learn from what keywords your audience uses to find you, buy from you or abandon you. That information isn't available anywhere else - it's the start of the online conversation, the door to learning more about how your audience perceives you and how you can respond to their needs. And it's a dialogue that's happening with your without you.

There are many reasons why businesses outsource the management of paid search, but for small businesses with small budgets, the tools are there to create and launch a Google campaign within minutes (well, okay, I advise against launching a campaign in minutes - but you can easily launch something in a day or two).

At its root, Adwords is a self-serve application. Sure, there are a lot of moving parts, but that shouldn't stop you from diving right in.

Adwords provides some powerful free tools to facilitate to the process of launching a campaign.

Here are my top three favorites:

The Adwords Keyword Tool is a great keyword-building resource provided for the low-low price of FREE.

The Google Adwords Traffic Estimator (also free) lets you forecast estimated clicks and cost for a selection keywords using a selection of variables (e.g., maximum bid, geographic location and match type).

Google Trends is another interesting tool that Google reps like to use when submitting presentations to prospective advertisers. The tool gives you an instant sense for the seasonality of a term or group of terms across multiple years (assuming there's enough search volume). It ties peaks in traffic to news events and is a great way to hone in on organic terms worth targeting and expand a paid keyword list (particularly since the news articles contain a wealth of relevant keywords.

Is your content campaign taking over your budget? Here's a quick "best practice" tip - separate content targeting from keyword targeting. This is easiest to do in the Adwords editor.

Just copy the campaign you want to separate and paste it into the editor, then rename it. Turn off keyword targeting and leave content targeting alone. Be sure to set lower content bids!

Now you can manage your content ads as a separate campaign - which means you can apply a separate daily budget, customize geo-targeting and even develop unique ads.