Once you start running your highly optimized pay per click campaign, is it really important to manage it?

Let us first assume you have an excellent pay per click campaign, before we go into whether or not you should worry about managing it.

When building your AdWords campaign, if your strategy was to use your imagination by guessing what people typed into the search engines to find your product or service, and then added these keywords to your list, you have hurt your chances of getting any business.

Moreover, you will pay the highest cost per click, and only if you are among the very lucky, will you convert these types of keywords into sales.

Even if you used the free keyword research tools available on the Internet to grab slightly more targeted keywords, you will still pay the most and get the least.

But again, we are basing this article on whether or not you should actually worry about managing your pay per click campaigns after they start running.

A great analogy to help us better understand the concept of pay per click management would be purchasing a brand new car. We enjoy the perks of a new car because it comes with a great warranty; meaning, we do not have to worry about maintaining it for a while.

But what happens when the service light comes on at 30,000 miles, and then again at 60,000 miles? You drove all those miles without a care, knowing you had a great vehicle that would get you exactly where you needed to go.

Whether you personally took your vehicle in for that first check-up, or had someone else manage it for you, it was time to make sure your car continued to drive at its peak performance. Otherwise, you would pay more later, because you did not optimize your vehicle and its features.

How much can this cost you over the years if you ignore this type of critical maintenance? Thousands.

Does this seem like a dramatic analogy in relation to pay per click management? Unfortunately, it is not. Actually, not managing your pay per click campaigns can prove to be more costly than ignoring your vehicle's service call.

So what should be managed? How should it be managed?

Almost every single market, product, and service has competition popping up on the Internet every day. Perhaps they word their product or service just a bit differently than yours. Consumers become familiar with these words, and now begin searching for them.

If you do not continue to research your past, current, and new competition on a monthly basis, you will no longer be competing, because you will not even be listed. Without knowing what these new keywords are and adding them to your pay per click campaigns, your product or service will never show up when consumers search.

If you notice you are receiving less clicks on certain keywords than before (unless you have a seasonal campaign), and you do not add new competitive keywords to your campaign on a regular basis, it is easy to see how this will hurt your business. But what about your costs per click?

Hopefully you have either hired someone to manage your pay per click campaigns, or you are doing it yourself with the best paid tools. Regardless, make sure you are continually testing and tracking new text ads, conversions, and deleting inadequate keywords with minimal or no returns.

The final step must be updating the search engine optimization (SEO) of your web site landing page with the new keywords, which will help reduce your costs per click. But you must be very careful not to add too many, or you will be spamming the search engines, and that will hinder your organic (free) traffic growth.

If all of this sounds too confusing, then you might consider hiring a pay per click management expert, or spend quite a bit of money for the manuals and expensive tools to do it yourself. Just make sure you have many hours to do the research needed to complete this task on an ongoing basis, because it is essential to keep up with the competition, and keep your pay per click costs down.

It is always wise to consult an expert for pay per click services, because this is their expertise and niche, and finding one who has proven themselves with superb testimonials is a good start.