B2B Pay-Per-Click Links for Beginners

Some of Marketo's customers have asked me where they can go to get basic information for optimizing their B2B pay-per-click campaigns. Here are some links I've found that provide practical tips for optimizing your campaigns.

If you know of any other great sources of information for beginners, please let me know!

AdWords Learning Center
One of the best sources for learning about PPC is the AdWords Learning Center. You don't need to look at everything, but spend an hour there and you'll be pretty well off. Some key links:

Basic Features of AdWords
AdWords Standard Edition Account Structure
Ad Groups and Keywords Overview
Creating a Text Ad
Cost Control
The Insider's Guide to AdWords (PDF)

Pay Per Click Management Tips
5 Tips For Stagnant PPC Ad Groups: The Lonely Marketer Pat Schaber shares five strategies he used to boost performance from his PPC ad groups. Things You Shouldn't Care About in PPC: Why things (like position) that you think matter in PPC don't matter.

Strategize your Pay per Click Campaign for Maximum Profits in 7 Easy Steps: Step-by-step article on how to optimize your search program (an oldie but goodie).
How to Lower Your AdWords Minimum Bid: How landing pages and ad group organization can lower your minimum bid and raise your quality score. Manage PPC Spending With Bids, Not Budget: Using the AdWords budget control to manage spending can result in fewer clicks and higher cost per click. In this post I explain why, and how to use your bids to manage spending.

Seven Habits Of Highly Effective Pay-Per-Click Advertisers
From John Ellis: Separate Content from Search, Control spending by adjusting bid amounts, Create a negative keyword list, Conversion matters (not click-through rate), Bid Exact (Avoid Broad), Good Analytics.

Landing Page Optimization Tips
Better B2B Landing Pages – A Case Study: An article I wrote that has practical strategies for improving your pay-per-click landing page conversion rates with targeted landing pages. 5 Steps to Pay Per Click Advertising That Works: Post from the excellent Copyblogger that focuses on what to do with the traffic once they click: build ultra-specific landing pages that offer quality-resources that help educate the prospective customer. How to Boost Your Landing Page Conversion Rate : Tips for improving B2B landing pages, from MarketingSherpa's Stefan Tornquist (another old article, but still relevant).

Industry-Specific Resources from Google:
Tech B2B Knowledge Center
Industrial Manufacturing
Financial Services
Real Estate
Automative