There are many reasons to do Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising through internet search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo, when compared with established advertising systems, but the main one is that almost all established advertising and marketing methods are dumb broadcast methods to consumers who have shown little or no interest in buying your service. I’m thinking of magazine ads, bill board posters, radio ads etc etc. They are all broadcast ads. It is probably fair to say that some are more targeted than others, if you are selling funky car parts, you put adverts in a car modders magazine, but that’s a course technique these days.
Search Google for “beds” and on the right hand side, you’ll see links by websites who are paying Google to have their advert and site shown on the first page of results for people who are searching for beds. This is PPC Advertising and this is why Google now leads the search engines with a multi $Billion turnover.
What about someone searching Yahoo for “What’s the best marketing company in Manchester?” That’s a user that right at that moment in time is interested in learning a very specific thing. If you sell marketing services in Manchester, and expect to offer a service that can help that potential client, you’d better hope that you’re on the first page of Yahoo or which ever Search Engine you prefer. How much is it worth to you to have that user visit your website within three seconds of typing that into the search engine?
You might search engine optimise your website to make sure you have first page rankings for your search term, but it takes time usually measured in months and a reasonable investment in cash (whether that’s to pay someone who knows what they are talking about, or to learn how to do it yourself). This is where paid internet marketing really is most effective, and is not used enough as far as I’m concerned. Your site could be on the first page of Google, MSN and Yahoo the same day for your search term, and all for a relatively low budget. In a week (maybe less) you’d have some idea of the quantity of consumers that are definately searching for that term, browsing your website, and purchasing your product or service. This is real time research into your specific market for a very small budget that it is simply not possible to get any other way.
Lets say that the campaign costs you 20p (or 40 cents if you prefer dollars) per click, and 500 people click your ad making a total spend of £100 ($200). And say your conversion rate is a reasonable one percent, so you’ve got 5 new sales and more importantly 5 new customers that you can now up sell to. All this for £100 spent ($200) or just £20 ($40 each)! How much is your average consumer worth in total? What’s a new customer worth to your business? Isn’t this worth it?
A fundamental thing to comprehend is how the Search Engine ranks the sponsored PPC marketing ads. In essence it’s a real time auction. The highest bidder wins. If you bid 20p and someone else bids 25p, they will rank higher than yours. It is in fact definitely more involved than that: if you have a better quality PPC ads, it’s likely for you to rank higher than the 25p advert because the search engine will give boosts to better performing PPC ads. The point is that if your Pay Per Click expert knows what (s)he’s doing with PPC bid management, it’s probably you will achieve higher rankings (read more traffic) for less money. So your limited online website promotion budget is stretched and you save budget. Conversely, if your AdWords ad campaign is administered by someone who has no idea their job, it will cost you real money.
Some of the tasks an expert Google Advertising Professional should be doing whilst administering your account, and if yours isn’t, we strongly advise you get a review of your online Pay Per Click Advertising campaign today:
Be in it to Win It – The whole point of PPC bid campaigns is to get on the very first page of your Yahoo, search engine, MSN etc fast. However, where there is in excess of eight (typically) even PPC ads can drop off the 1st page. Where there is competition like this, there is absolutely no point doing a PPC marketing campaign if you’re not on the first page, so either boost your Cost Per Click (CPC) settings, or forget it.
Landing Page Optimisation – A common issue is not matching the webpage that people land on when they click your advert, to the words found in your advert; which definitely should be targeted at what the consumer searched for. This just means that when the consumer clicks your Advert, they get to see what they want to. Did you know that internet users are lazy? Would you believe that did you know that half of all internet browsers leave a website in under eight seconds because they don’t find what they expected!
Broad / Phrase / Exact Matching – Google PPC Advertising allow 3 alternative ways to match search terms to your keywords, but many online marketers just go for the default matching option. You could double your traffic from intelligent use of the other options which many careless Google Advertising Professionals do not even bother with.
Split Testing your Ads – This is good PPC technique and simply means having more than one advert and testing which works the best. Here is one example, we had 2 adverts which were the same in every way except the start of the title. One started “Learn to Prevent…” and the other started with “Stop…”. Split testing determined that 5 percent of the people who saw the “Learn to Prevent….” clicked it. BUT 8 percent of the people who saw the “Stop…” advert clicked that one. It will not surprise you to learn that, we dropped the first advert and got a better quality advert which ultimately Google promoted to the top ad position on the page, for the same CPC!
Have Many Ad Groups – The elementary amateur mistake is to group all your keywords together to supply a single advert. This is usually bad. Keywords should be divided into separate groups with advert text that accurately show the keywords searched for.
Tracking for Better Website ROI – This is modern marketing, this is not traditional marketing, so use that to your advantage. The technology exists to monitor every sale and where it comes from. You will learn definitely which advert converts to sales and which do not. Remember, it’s one thing to get significant traffic, it’s another to have lots of sales. What would you prefer to have for PPC internet advertising: an advert that generates one thousand clicks and one percent sales, or one that generates 100 leads and ten% sales? For both you gain the same sales, but the 1st costs you ten times as much in PPC advertising budget.
If you would like to talk to a Google AdWords Qualified Individual about a Pay Per Click review or if you’re interested in outsourcing the whole setup and running of your PPC campaign to a Pay Per Click Management Company, or if you just want to find out how you can get Better Website Return on Investment (ROI), then visit www.Intrinsic-Marketing.co.uk a Pay Per Click and Search Engine Optimization Firm.
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