Combining the right keywords and landing pages in pay-per-click campaigns can be fruitful, but not without laying the proper groundwork.

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a great way to get fast, targeted traffic to your website; however, there are a few requirements that should be in place before launching an aggressive campaign.

I also want to mention that I work for an interactive marketing agency based in Atlanta, Georgia, that happens to do quite a bit of pay-per-click advertising for our clients. We're a Google-qualified company and it may come as a surprise that we actually discourage some firms from launching PPC campaigns. Like any good marketing agency, we do not advocate initiatives that do not make sense. We can drive traffic to your site all day long, but if you're not getting enough sales or leads, then what's the point? 

That being said, we have a simple formula that serves as a Litmus test for determining if PPC is a worthy initiative for our perspective clients to undertake:

Good Landing Pages + Good Products + Targeted Traffic = Conversion

It seems simple and it is. However, in a world of nuance, many good firms can get off track. I will explore each of these a bit further below.

Good landing pages
Good landing pages encompass more than simply being visually appealing.  Strong landing pages are based on clearly defined web objectives that can be mapped back to clearly defined organizational objectives.

Each landing page should have a purpose, and that purpose should be to drive the web visitors to an action: online order, lead, phone call, et cetera.  By having a clearly defined strategy and objective, the creative process can begin.

Great creative isn't cheap or easy, but it's vital. To drive PPC traffic to a site or landing page with poor creative just isn't smart marketing. This often leads to the question of how to determine if the creative is good enough. This of course is never an easy answer since opinions vary, but data does not. The first place to look is at the conversion rate.

Conversion rates vary across industries, but if your conversion rate is low, the chances that driving additional traffic will create the impact you're looking for isn't very likely. Of course, there could be targeting or product issues, and we will address those in a bit, but the odds are that if you don't convert the traffic you currently receive, then you need to re-evaluate your website before a significant PPC campaign is launched.

Good products
This is one of the most difficult conversations to have with prospective clients. Bad products don't sell well. They can be over-priced, under-priced, not up to the competitions specs, or simply past their prime. No matter how one looks at it, bad products are just bad.

No amount of marketing can save a bad product. You can combine highly targeted website traffic with the right landing pages and the result over time will be failure if the products are inferior. As a marketing agency, we have had occasion to advise prospects to take their marketing dollars and reinvest them in product development and then come back to us.

Other quality interactive agencies have probably offered the same advice. Highly motivated and skilled PPC teams thrive on success. Bringing projects doomed to failure is in nobody's long-term interest. It tarnishes the company and the PPC agency, in addition to the enormous amount of cash burned.

Targeted traffic
This is obviously where PPC advertising comes in. This is the easy part, so to speak. Google, Yahoo!, MSN and others are getting better and better at delivering highly targeted web traffic. When you mix good products and good landing pages with a good SEM firm that can provide extensive keyword and competitive research, proper campaign strategy and execution, geo-targeting, bid management, day parting and ad scheduling, compelling ad copy, ongoing PPC optimization and reporting, you can start to see the formula come together.

Conversion
Conversion is not an accident. Everyone knows this, but too many firms don't embrace this. Conversion is simply the combination of the right products coupled with right traffic and creative. It's that simple.

So, if your firm lacks good creative, then be wary of launching an aggressive PPC campaign until this is in place. If your firm lacks good products, do not pour money into PPC or any other marketing campaign without heavily reinvesting in product development.

Conversion is what matters. PPC is not right for all firms. Good agencies want to work with clients that have products and services they believe in.  Good agencies want to drive PPC traffic that leads to conversions. Good agencies believe that when you combine the right keywords with the right landing pages and the right products, good things happen.

Carla Hunnicutt is the director of pay per click advertising at NeboWeb. Read full bio.