Think you're ready to launch a paid search campaign? Find out what it takes from Underscore Marketing's search leader.

Building a successful paid search campaign from the ground up requires creating the right conditions. In my last article I went into the foundation of a paid search campaign -- research, building out keywords/creative, tracking and QA. The next step is launching the campaign, which also involves benchmarking the initial results and collecting the data and trends.

Launch: How to set initial bids and positioning
From the research portion of the campaign when you used the Google or Yahoo tools to build out keywords you should have a general idea of CPCs and positions. Although these tools only give a ballpark figure, they are useful to use for the initial launch to gauge positioning.

The important thing to note here is that history (past performance of an account based on factors such as CTR) and max bids play a huge role in determining not only costs and positions, but also future cost and position, meaning that a good history in the beginning makes it easier and more cost effective to gain position later. The reverse -- bad history -- would make it very expensive to do the same.

With this in mind you need to identify and monitor your strategically important keywords -- such as brand words, high volume words and words that are high on the purchase cycle -- to ensure that your ads show at least above the fold so you stand a better chance of gaining good history. However, with the exception of brand terms or having a primary goal of branding and message association, you should never strive to be number one or two at launch. In fact, I try to avoid the top three because those keywords get syndicated into other engines, exposing us to a lot more traffic and potentially eating up a lot of budget.

Keeping above the fold but avoiding the top position is a good starting point to begin gaining data. Once we have enough to optimize, then we can know for sure if our offer, landing pages, etc. convert well enough to go for higher positions and are worth the added cost risk.

Launch: Creating benchmarks and collecting data
The initial launch of the campaign up until optimization phases represents the raw volume and costs (and conversions) to which your un-optimized, untested keyword and creative set can achieve if left alone. Thus, this represents the standard (or benchmark) to which you must improve in order to hit the campaign objectives. This also provides a chance to show early wins -- immediate improvements and efficiencies -- to your client as you work towards the greater goal.

Benchmarking doesn't only serve the purpose of a standard to measure against, but it also gives the true picture of costs and volume as well as competitor movements and possible tactics (such as day parting). Thus it is critical to benchmark a new campaign in order to truly know what we are optimizing and why. (Is it cost, competitors, volume, something else that is driving the marketplace?)

Collecting the data means more than just tracking keyword costs, volume and conversions. It means collecting data such that we know not only what individual keywords work, but also what types of words do (themes), how the creative is working and finally how the account itself is doing, with the ability to splice it anyway we wish so we can get many perspectives on the big picture as possible.

Collecting enough data to view trends will help us avoid myopic errors such as cyclical performance during the week in which some days naturally do a little worse than others but are actually doing well in the big picture. Discovering and combining where we are now (benchmarks) with how (data points) and where performance is going (trends) gives us powerful information to start the optimization process on the best path to maximize the key performance indicators and achieve campaign objectives.

David Singh is manager and search practice lead at Underscore Marketing LLC. Read full bio.