Pay per click advertising

USING PAY-PER-CLICK ADVERTISING (PPC) TO TARGET YOUR MARKETING

PPC ads are the small classifieds that appear on the right of the Google page and at the top as ‘Sponsored Links’.

The big advantage of PPC is that you only pay when people click through to your site. Advertisers bid for each search term. On most search engines the highest bidder gets the top position but on Google the top position is a function of both the bid amount and the advertiser’s ability to attract clicks. In other words, with Google, smarter advertisers can get better positions and more business by paying less and writing more effective ads.

As with the optimisation (SEO), the first stage of a PPC campaign involves identifying the search phrases that people are using in your market. The big difference between SEO and PPC is that you must bid against other advertisers for top positions. It’s essential to have a PPC bidding strategy to ensure you don’t pay too much for a visitor - return on investment is critical. We can calculate the value of a visitor, and hence the maximum you should bid for a phrase, by using a formula involving your site’s sales conversion rates and your average net profit.

There are various PPC models but we suggest testing Google Adwords first because it rewards smarter advertisers and we can help you run a smart campaign. Most advertisers throw money at Google and walk away when the game goes against them. Our approach is methodical - it involves testing and measuring everything we do from keyphrase selection to campaign structure, copywriting, ‘landing page’ offers and tactics (the landing page is the one to which we direct prospects - it’s not usually the home page) and bidding strategy. It also allows us to target geographically and avoid wasting expenditure outside your market limits.

Google syndicates its search results to AOL, Ask Jeeves as well as to its own Product Search shopping Mall and Google Groups. It also syndicates ads by content so that your ads can be displayed to match the content on sites it identifies as relevant to your offer. All of which is fine but it’s essential to set up your campaign so that you can bid lower for ads appearing in content syndicated sites.

Another essential element of a successful PPC campaign is good copywriting. Your advertisements must attract minimum ‘click through’ rates or the engines will drop your ads - they only earn when your ad gets clicked. We can write ads which generate clicks, and set up testing matrices to evaluate which ads are most profitable.

Provided your advertisements are written to attract the right people and you are bidding for phrases that pre-qualify the visitors you want, you have a good chance of getting them to register, call or leave their details when they get to your site. The other proviso is that your landing page is written and designed to give visitors a compelling reason to act.

Measuring your campaign’s success

Before you start spending money on clicks, it’s essential that you identify your key objectives and have proper analytics software installed (Epicado clients who host their sites with us get basic Google Analytics software installed free of charge). There may be many metrics involved in evaluating your campaign. For example, do you know the lifetime value of a typical customer? Which are your top selling lines, products and brands? Which are most profitable? Do customers start by buying small and trading up? What do first time customers typically look for?

When you have identified your key objectives we can help you set up your campaign in such a way that we can identify how well your campaign and your website achieve your targets. We can identify the pinch points too - the parts of the sales process that may be failing.

For more information call Paul or Steffan on 0845 303 3001.