In many cases, we have to pay to play in today’s digital marketing world. If you want to be most effective with your money, however, it’s not wise to set up a campaign without knowing what works and what doesn’t. Especially because the process involves a lot of details:

“The fundamentals of a successful paid search campaign are 1) identifying the right searchers to advertise your business to, 2) precisely targeting only those searchers that are looking for what you offer, 3) and presenting them with an ad and landing page that grabs their attention, provides the information they are looking for, and convinces them to purchase from/contact your company,” according Adam Thompson, Director of Digital Strategies for 10XDigitalInc.com.

Keep these tips in mind as you set up your first paid search campaign to maximize ROI and brand impressions.

Choose Your Keywords

The goal with keywords is to get specific. Broad phrasing like, “fitness equipment” will attract to generic and audience, which means you’ll burn through your budget with not much to show for it. Instead of choosing a traditional and basic keyword, go for targeted, long-tail keywords, which are usually phrases or a string of related words.

For example, long-tail keywords for “fitness equipment” might be:

• Fitness equipment free

• Gym fitness equipment

• Home fitness equipment

• Used fitness equipment

These keywords better emulate the types of searches your audience is doing. You can use Google’s keyword tool to find the high volume, low competition phrases.

Below is an example of keyword suggestions from the Google Keyword Tool, which is accessible through Google Adwords accounts:

Don’t forget to research negative keywords as well. A negative keyword is: “A type of keyword that prevents your ad from being triggered by a certain word or phrase. It tells Google not to show your ad to anyone who is searching for that phrase,” according to Google AdWords. This ensures that your ad is only shown to the people who are most likely to convert or be interested.

For example, if you don’t sell free fitness equipment or home fitness equipment, you might add those as negative keywords so people searching for them don’t see your ad. You can find these terms within AdWords or use a tool like this from WordStream.

Structure Your Account

If you’re running campaigns for a number of products or services, you need to break them into ad groups. Sticking with the fitness example, ad groups could be broken up by product or type, like home vs. gym/commercial. It’s best to keep this at 4 to 6 groups, since each group with have multiple campaigns within it.

Each group has a variety of specific campaigns that speak to that particular audience.

This set up makes it easy to see how each area of your campaign is doing from top-level down, allowing you modify and be most efficient with your spending. If one ad group is tanking, remove it and put money into the others that are doing well. Or, revamp and try again.

Choose Your Time Wisely

You’ll quickly realize that your ads experience peaks in traffic during certain times of the year and even different days of the week or times of day. This may even mirror the trends you see with sales and traffic on your site.

It’s important to plan your campaigns with these details in mind so your well-targeted ads are reaching the people who care about them. Here are two timing factors to consider:

Peak times of year: Many products and services will be more popular at different times of the year—think seasons, holidays and major events. As such, it’s smart to plan your campaigns around this and increase your spend leading up to that high-demand time, advises Matt Lester of Search Engine Land.

Peak times of day and week: Set your campaign to run during peak user times, which will vary depending on your product and audience. “Within its ‘Edit Campaign Settings’ Google has a handy option called Ad Scheduling, which allows you to automatically turn your campaigns on and off at specific times. What’s more, if there is a peak time of day when your customers tend to search then you can even up the budget at that time and lower it at others,” says Lester.

Write and Modify Ad Text

Your text has one important goal: attract clicks. That’s easier said than done, and A/B testing will allow you to uncover the most effective text as you go along. So, for your first few campaigns, follow these best practices:

• Guess what the searcher is thinking when using that specific keyword or phrase. What do they want to ultimately do with your product? Those searching for “home fitness equipment” likely want to workout at home—and your headline and text should reflect that. They may also be concerned with space to store it, how much it costs, whether they can use it in their house or outside. This is why it’s important to run a number of ads for each group, track success, and modify as you go.

• Use “current” language, referring to the month, season, holiday or time of year. That will make your ad stick out more among a variety of other generic ones.

• Be as specific with your text as you are with keyword choice. For example, “Home Fitness Equipment // Foldable to fit in small spaces.” While that isn’t the strongest text to use, the phrasing is specific and targets a particular need the searcher might have.

• Speak to your audience, telling them what it can do for them. The best way to do this is to use “you” terminology in the headline and subtext.

With your keywords, timing and text figured out, it’s time to track, modify and maximize your efforts. Kissmetrics has a great beginner’s guide for A/B testing your paid ads; follow along with this while you learn what works and what doesn’t.  

With a little bit of planning, you can pay to play amongst your biggest competitors. Use these tips to set up your first campaign and then take insights from the data to modify for your specific audience. Slowly but surely, you’ll find the sweet spot.

Jessica Thiefels has been writing and editing for more than 10 years and spent the last five years in marketing. She recently stepped down from a senior marketing position to focus on growing her own startup and consulting for small businesses. She's been featured on Forbes and has written for sites such as Lifehack, Inman, Manta, StartupNation and more. When she's not working, she's enjoying sunny San Diego with her husband and friends or traveling somewhere new. Follow her on Twitter @Jlsander07.