In recent years, online advertising has grown to be a billion-dollar industry and counts for more than one-quarter of total media spending.

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is not only one of the most popular forms of advertising, but it also helps you reach people who are probably interested in your product or service. And, you pay only when someone clicks on your ad.

You also gain free brand exposure when someone sees your business name, even if they don't click on your ad.

And, the best part, analytics show that consumers who click on paid ads are 50 percent more likely to purchase a product or a service than those who come from organic search.

To help you get started with your own paid search campaign, follow these simple steps.

Create a Paid Advertising Checklist

When you’re first getting started, take time to thoroughly walk through your campaign. You will want to plan your strategy, your goals, your spending budget, the tracking software that you want to use and your finances so you can allow yourself a risk budget.

This probably sounds like a lot of work, but putting in a little extra time in the beginning will help you kick off a better campaign.

Build Your Advertising Keyword List

Establishing a keyword list that effectively describes your business will take a lot of time and effort, but it’s extremely valuable to your campaign. Your chosen keywords should be relevant, expansive and exhaustive.

Keep in mind, as your campaign grows, you will want to continue monitoring your list so you can make effective changes by adding additional keywords and adding negative keywords so you can improve relevancy and control expenses.

Test and Evaluate Your Online Ads

It’s perfectly normal to feel nervous when starting your online advertising campaign. Luckily, everything in PPC is measurable. Once your ads have been live the first month, measure the results, evaluate and change your campaign where needed and then try it again.

Remember to stay positive and don’t get discouraged if you aren’t seeing the best results during the first few months.

These months will be trial and error periods, as you will have to funnel through to get to the strategy that will be best for your business.

Don't Forget About Your Ad Campaigns

When you're busy running a business, it's easy to forget that you even set up a new campaign.

But, you'll need to keep an eye on your ads. If you forget about your campaign, you risk losing a lot of money and you won’t achieve the results that you need or expect to see from your online advertising campaigns.

Set a calendar reminder to review your campaign performance a few times a week. It will help you stay on track.

And with RevLocal's paid advertising plans, you can take the weight off of monitoring your campaigns off your shoulders by gaining a dedicated team of advertising experts. We outline our paid advertising services and everything that comes with them here. 

Don't Forget to Optimize Your Ads

When you are tracking your measurements, make sure you are adjusting your campaign accordingly. But, online advertising can be difficult. If your ads aren't performing well but you're not sure how to improve them, it's time to get help from an online advertising expert. 

We know that paid advertising is a proven marketing tactic for driving results, but just like any marketing effort, mastering a strategy takes time and lots of practice. But, once conversions start coming in, you’ll see that your efforts are time well spent!