Planning Your SEM Campaign

Before you start an SEM campaign, you should take some time to plan it. You should break down your campaign by various ad groups. Ad groups are groups of SEM ads that run at the same time on the same search engine for the same products.

For example, if you are selling shoes online, you may have two SEM ads for the same pair of shoes, each with a different offer. You may have a “50% off one pair of shoes” ad and a “Buy one pair, get a second pair free” ad. Both ads will run on the same search engine (e.g., Google) during the same time period (e.g., the first two weeks of your campaign). By running two or more ads simultaneously, you have the opportunity to do various forms of testing, such as A/B split testing, to see which ad gets the better response. (More on testing later in this chapter.)