No, it’s not if, but how and when you start mastering PPC? Let me explain why:
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PPC gives you immediate results
When you set up a PPC campaign and click go, the visitors begin almost instantly.
I once started a campaign and had a customer in the shopping cart paying for her purchase 8 seconds later. No that’s not the norm, but it happens often enough. The point is that the 63,000 searches per second are not a myth when you start to run a PPC advert, they start hitting your site straight away. If you are the impatient sort like I am, you’ll love this aspect.
Again, don’t misread my message. Some ads start piling in the profits instantly, but other times they bounce along at break-even, improving gradually as the adverts, targeting, and especially landing pages improve based on feedback and then go on to grow and improve even more as quality score increases and costs reduce further. It’s not the same for every campaign.
PPC is Measurable and visible, no “hokey poky”.
Ever run TV or News adverts and been dismayed by the lack of feedback. What went wrong? What should I change? No answers available. PPC is precisely the opposite.
As long as you know how to structure your account and add a few codes and tags here and there, or if you have a professional Automated Marketing Framework, then you have instant high quality data available to tell you exactly which bits work well, which don’t and which can be improved. We use these tools to build detailed and very accurate profiles of our users based on their reading and interactions and our conversion rates are now five time what they were when we implemented our current system two years ago.
Not only that, you can monitor the ROI of an advert minute by minute and shut it down if it falls below your minimum expectations. Likewise you can switch budget to higher performing adverts and even to higher performing combinations of advert, time and day or many other combinations to squeeze a little more from your budget.
Strong returns on your PPC investment.
Although there are other channels that too can give a strong ROI, they often don’t provide high ROI at any kind of volume. Once you have matured your PPC campaign you can achieve very strong ROI and combine that with very good Volumes and indeed you can play around with what-if scenarios to optimise the balance of volume and ROI to maximise your revenue. Using the data intelligently can be critical, because things don’t always go the way you might expect. For example running pilot campaigns is an area where we learned that starting slow and ramping up was actually the more expensive approach and instead, starting fast and slowing down delivered much better results. That was simply about getting enough data in hand as early as possible to make good decisions that save money.
Pay for results only with PPC
With CPC ( the most commonly used model) you pay Google AdWords for visitors when they visit your website. Other models include CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and others for video etc, but CPC is the mainstay.
The key to all sales operations is to establish your baseline conversion rates e.g. CTR ( impressions to clicks though) and conversions (visits to required actions such as buy , or register). Once you have these base figures the mathematics is very simple and you can say sale valued at 1000 costs me 11 visits * £22 . Cost of a sale = £220 or 22%. Now you know exactly where you stand and small improvements can yield big benefits. Imagine the impact on that example of increasing your conversion rate by 5 times?
Total budgetary control
This is the best bit. You are totally in control. Switch any budget on or off as you will. Control your spend by day or month and use scripts to manage spend and bids on a minute by minute basis.
Totally trackable and measurable
It’s now possible via numerous platforms, some of them free, but none of them easy, to get all your data from all of your marketing and selling activities into one place and get a full 360 degree view of all your engagement across all your channels.
Failing that you can quickly integrate PPC with Google analytics and see how your visitors behaved after they visited and whether they returned etc.
It’s even possible with very affordable tools to track their interaction with individual landing pages and learn about what wins their attention and what does not.
We often use clickable tabs and accordions to learn more about their concerns and interest so we can improve our understanding both of an individual customer and the market overall.
Customer focused
As changes pour in from Google, it becomes easier and easier, granted with a little scripting here and there, to provide perfect targeted adverts and landing pages to your customer, right down to repeating their search term in your headline.
For some of our campaigns we run versions of the advert appealing to different emotions and then match the same style to the landing page, we have seen response double in some cases.
Imagine if you become worried that there is a gas leak when you saw certain indicators and searched google for a certain tool, then the advert said “Its natural to worry about gas leaks. Don’t worry get a XYZ”
Location focused
Location and timing has become so powerful that it is possible to target adverts at people within a mile of your restaurant an hour before lunch. Local businesses don’t have to worry about paying for clicks from Australians and Americans.
Combining different networks to squeeze out the max from a PPC campaign
Although I have focused on Google for this piece, the same messages apply equally to Bing and many other platforms. In fact It is very simple to apply the same campaign to both Bing and Google thus saving considerable effort. Bing provides a simple tool to assist with this transfer and often the same keywords will cost less on Bing.
For business to Business campaigns Linkedin Ads can be very affective, but for this reason, they are also expensive in terms of CPC. A favourite strategy of ours is to make first contact via Linkedin and then use re-marketing on other cheaper platforms to show the same or similar advert again shortly afterwards thus reducing costs and improving Brand through a strong illusion of “Share Of Voice”
Using different styles or channels
Google AdWords has five styles or channels to choose from: Search, Display, Shopping, Video and Apps. Social Media Channels include paid or Boosted posts and other methods and depending on your specific goals, there is an ideal approach for you.
Impact of PPC on website ranking
PPC increases your traffic, which of itself is good for your site and ranking, but a more important benefit is that it improves dwell time significantly. Whether pricing your advert in the auction, or ranking your site on the SERPs, Google is very keen to see that visitors are arriving and remaining for a reasonable time. It is the only way they have of guessing that the user probably found what they were looking for.
PPC Increases brand awareness.
PPC adverts for the purpose of Brand Awareness is not an idea I usually agree with very much simply because I believe there are better ways to achieve that via the internet, however every PPC campaign that is aimed at winning customers or other commercial activity is indeed driving Brand awareness and this is a benefit not to be dismissed lightly.
What you can do to improve your return from PPC
PPC is sometimes thought of as “Google Adwords”, but in reality there is a whole host of platforms out there offering PPC advertising opportunities with some outstanding targeting opportunities and great value. What delivers best value for your business is not something you will read in a blog.
You need an experienced helper or a year or two of careful experimentation and then build out the opportunity that works best for you.
If you would like a free chat with no obligations implied and definitely no pestering afterwards, call 0844 8842310
Do you have a current Google PPC Campaign
If you have even a festering doubt that despite that flash agency you used to set it up and all the effort you have put into it, there just might be a bit more to be got out of it with the right approach, then this is your chance.
Let us analyse how your account has been running what has gone well and what could do better. Many clients are chocked at the opportunities they have been missing right before their eyes.
Ready to get your feet wet with PPC, don’t want to lose your shirt?
The best way and perhaps the only sensible way to begin with PPC is t run a controlled Pilot campaign where you risk a relatively small sum and in return you learn how well it works for you, how much improvement you can likely achieve in returns, what the competition is really like and exactly what to do next.