Pay-per-click advertising is a great way to get more sales. In this article our BT expert Cheryl Bloomfield tells you how to make your campaigns measurable, cost-effective and successful.
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is simple enough for any company to do, no matter what their size. But making sure that your ads are doing the best possible job for your business is more tricky.
What is PPC?
On search engine results you generally have two areas. You have the natural search element, which is usually down the left hand side. Then on the right hand side, you have the paid for, sponsored links – and this is the PPC part.
PPC works by companies bidding on keywords which users search for. So you might bid on the keyword “holidays” and say that you’re willing to pay up to 20p when someone who searches for holiday and sees your ad clicks on it. Depending on various factors, including the amount you’re prepared to pay, you might end up with your ad listed on the first page of results.
Working out the keywords to bid on
You might already know some of the keywords you want, because they are about the business you’re in. You can also use tools provided by search engines like Google to find other relevant keywords.
Depending on the market you’re in, there might be some competitors there already, and remember you need to be on the first page - so if you can’t buy your way onto the first page, it’s not really worth it.
You can bid on single word terms – like holidays – but you can also bid on what’s known as “long tail terms”, things which are more specific, attract less traffic, but might actually be more relevant to your business.
For example, bidding on “holidays” will be very expensive, as the competition will be great. But “holidays in Carcassone” which could cost you less. This also reflects how people are starting to use search engines, too, as they are tending to put in longer, more specific search terms as shorter ones tend to come back with too many generic responses. The same applies to regional search, by applying search terms such as "flowers in Colchester" rather than "flowers" you could bring down the cost of your search terms. If your key terms are specific, that will be cheaper and may be more effective.
The importance of relevancy
Google and the others are all very secretive about what you have to do to get in the top rankings, but it’s basically the relevancy of your site, and quality score, which is based on how many people click through to you and how long they spend on your site once they click through.
Too many people coming back from a site shows you’re not relevant – and search engines will move irrelevant ads off the front pages, even if they are the highest bidder. Search engines know they need to produce relevant results, otherwise people won’t use their service to find things. So make sure your ad is relevant to the keywords, and that the page you link to is likely to keep people on it rather than sending them straight back to Google.
Measure it to manage it
If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it – so if you can’t see what those clicks are driving in terms of sales, you don’t actually know if they’re working. PPC is incredibly measurable – in fact you can go the wrong way and measure it too much, spending all day every day looking at it. You should mostly be concerned with your cost per click, cost per acquisition, conversion rate (how many people are actually converting).
If a click is costing you £10 but lots of people are “converting” and paying £100 for your product you might be happy to pay the money. But if it’s cost you £5 and no one converts on it, it’s not worth it. So you need to know on a keyword basis what your conversion rate is, which is completely possible with PPC. Different keywords will convert better for you, so make sure you look at the conversion rates on a keyword-by-keyword basis, not just as the overall campaign.
Don’t forget the time!
One of the great things about PPC is its flexibility. For example, you can do things like bid by the hour, so you can say “well, I’m only actually converting sales between 12-4pm, so I’ll just bid between 12-4pm”. And people do that all the time, especially with the more expensive keywords.
If you’re going to do this, make sure you test. Look at the click through rate – how many people see your ad and click through – so you can see if your ad is relevant. That’s how to monitor the success of the campaign.
Don’t just look at PPC
PPC can fit well into other marketing campaigns, if you’re smart about how you use it.
One good example is Cadbury. When it did its television ad campaign with the gorilla, terms like “gorilla” and “Phil Collins” started to drive traffic for Cadbury. So if you’re advertising and playing on a buzz word, remember to bid on it as it’s usually going to be much cheaper than other words might be because they’re generic – although a lot of people search on it, not that many will be bidding.
But make sure your terms are relevant otherwise Google won’t let you stay on the first page. If people are likely to be looking for an online version of an ad you’ve done, taking them to a page that doesn’t feature that ad isn’t a good idea.
If you want help with your pay-per-click campaign, visit our BT SearchSmart page.
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