Internet Marketing Blog » Pay Per Click (PPC) Management

Save Money with Good PPC Management

Alan — Thu, 19 May 2011 08:26:49 +0000

Poor PPC management can soon lead to loss of money and valuable resources though mounting CPC and lack of conversions. There are many ways this can show itself and when managing your pay per click campaigns there are certain things which can have a significant negative impact. Here are some typical examples of influences which can play a large part in that:

A website lacking clear definition

A poorly defined website will soon send visitors running. If the layout is confusing with illogical or poorly designed navigation you will fail to get the conversion rates you need. Creating a winning internet marketing strategy can take time and you can test a variety of website versions if time allows to maximise your conversions. It may be that a simple landing page is more effective than a complex 50 page website. The keywords, site and your ads need to be synchronised to ensure the user has a positive, simple and rewarding experience to help you achieve good conversion rates.

No Google Analytics and AdWords tracking

The great thing about pay per click is that most things are measureable. If you fail to track you won’t be able to identify those ads, landing pages and keywords that work…and those that definitely don’t. Never set up a campaign without setting up tracking and comprehensive analytics tools.

Traffic hitting broken pages

It is a complete waste of money to send traffic to broken pages. Always check back that all pay per click elements relating to a deleted or moved page have been fully removed or correctly forwarded. Not only will you find yourself spending your PPC budget unnecessarily if you allow this to happen but it also looks unprofessional. Users won’t hang around to try and find the right page on your site – you’ll simply try somewhere else.

At www.clickconsult.com we offer expert PPC management services and advice, and a comprehensive range of other internet marketing solutions.

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Get to Know Your Competitors

Dan — Mon, 02 May 2011 08:57:26 +0000

With all forms of website marketing building knowledge of the industry, your audience and the external environment is extremely important to developing strategies that are effective. Often in pay per click management this can be overlooked as this discipline is predominantly seen as a tactical method of boosting traffic. However it is just as critical to understand the wider market for PPC.

One of the areas that can be ignored with detrimental effects is that of the competitive landscape. Your rivals will often shape your chances of success and it is vital to understand your competitor’s product offering and pay per click management style. You can glean much information by analysing competitor ads and looking at how they set up their landing pages. It will also help you to understand more about your own product offering.

Here are some steps to take when analysing the competitive environment:

Using a search identify who your top rivals are. Look at the ads used and the landing pages. Identify at least five contenders in your field and research them thoroughly. If your market is very competitive with lot of competitors this will be extremely important to you campaign success.

Look at how they differentiate themselves and glean as much information as you can on each company.

Looking at your competition’s products, compare your own product’s features and benefits. This will come in handy when you start writing ad text.

At www.clickconsult.com we offer outstanding pay per click management to our clients and can support your website marketing efforts.

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Competitor Keyword Bidding

Susie — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 08:08:22 +0000

There are two inevitabilities when dealing with pay per click advertising – the first is the need to spend budget and the second is that there will be some form of competition to face at some point. In PPC management, the competition is often driven by the keyword selection.

Seek out the competition

When assessing competitors start by running a couple of searches. Whose results are returned on your key search terms? Who is returned for more than one of those terms? When averaging the positions out how do they compare to you? Also do these competitors bid on their own brands and products? If so, is there an opportunity to attract some of your competitor’s audience away? This latter question can be tricky to answer and there are ways of doing this:

NEVER:

Use dynamic keyword insertion to include the whole of the competitor keyword list. This will cause some angry responses and won’t create good relations with Google.

Make wild claims that can’t be justified. If you are putting in claims citing that you are better than a competitor then you’ll have to be able to back it up.

ALWAYS:

Differentiate. This is a fundamental principle in all marketing but is extremely pertinent to competitor keyword bidding. You can develop an attractive message this way without having to use your competitor’s name.

Display lower prices. You can always undercut as long as the price on the ad is repeated on the landing page.

Using competitor keywords can create a new stream of traffic but it needs to be done well. At Click Consult we offer expert advice on all areas of PPC including keyword bidding.

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SEO Boosters – To Ad Or Not To Ad?

Alan — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:47:52 +0000

One of the things a business has to think about during search engine optimisation planning is whether or not to add PPC management or other search marketing campaign to the mix. This is a difficult decision, and there is no correct answer. Talking to your internet marketing company can help, and you can discuss your options with us at clickconsult.com to consider the pros and cons.

In favour of advertising

Many SEO professionals are in favour of combining SEO with another, more traditional and direct, form of marketing. This is because adding search advertising or similar tactics to your main plan can help give your SEO an initial boost. Appearing in more than one area of the search engine results pages is also an advantage.

There is a down side to this, of course. Most companies can’t afford two forms of marketing campaigns. When faced with a choice between search marketing and SEO, many opt for the short-term gains of ads. This can be a long-term mistake, as the traffic lasts only as long as the campaign.

In favour of not advertising

Subtlety is the name of the game with internet marketing. Although a good online plan usually includes some of the more traditional marketing methods, such as search advertising or ads on web pages, this isn’t always going to fit into the budget. If you want marketing methods that are both effective and cost-effective, the smaller, subtler moves are going to be your best bet. A lot of these moves are the ones that you’re already making as part of your SEO.

Small and subtle moves can help your general internet plan along as well as your search engine optimisation plan. Things like article marketing, guest blogging and reviews are all great methods of developing grass-roots support.

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Identifying Ways To Meet Your Monthly Budget

Laura — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 11:07:47 +0000

If you had the chance to work with an unlimited PPC budget wouldn’t it be just wonderful? Yet as all pay per click campaigners know this is just a daydream and working to budgets is a fact of life. If you are projected to stray over your budget at the end of the month here are some tips to keep you on track:

Tip 1 – Find the search engine causing an ‘issue’

Most PPC campaigns are run on Google, MSN and Yahoo and it can be a common mistake to focus solely on the top spending account, which will invariably be Google. However, by focusing on Google you could overlook a bigger issue elsewhere. If a search engine is taking up just 10 per cent of your budget, it is a significant amount of money to lose if there are no leads being generated, and that account should be tackled first.

Tip 2 – Drop daily campaign budgets

Look at all your pay per click campaigns and highlight those that are reaching their daily limit. Tackle the ones that are converting least and slash the daily budgets. You don’t want to cut them too much so take time to work out the savings you are likely to make.

Tip 3 – Analyse by Cost Per Lead

By looking at the top CPL level you can identify the big problems that are eating into your budget first. Use the interface to search for campaigns that have a large monthly CPL.

At Click Consult we can help you get the best out of your PPC campaigns.

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Dig Into Your PPC Account

Alan — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:13:33 +0000

Search marketing is a dynamic thing and the behaviours of users is a constantly evolving process. They are influenced by trends, new technologies and the seasons. For a PPC manager one of the most important elements of account management is keeping ahead of the changes and putting strategies in place to balance negative repercussions of these changes. Understanding the trends in your traffic is imperative to success.

Understanding your account

When looking at traffic patterns there are plenty of tools available but the first port of call is to look at the pay per click account. The best place to start is by running a campaign account covering a long period. Access settings and select ‘monthly’ as the measurement of time. Another approach is to choose graphical representation of impressions and clicks. Both these reports will highlight peaks and troughs and you can analyse the data for patterns.

Once you highlight patterns or a drop or spike in traffic think about what happened at that time. Perhaps you made changes to the account. Check out the ‘View Change History’ tool. On the other hand was there a change in the industry as a whole that could have affected traffic? Or is it simply a seasonal influence due to the type of product or service?

You can dig further by looking at your keyword placement reports. There may be certain keywords that work better at certain times. You may find some keywords that have been top performers for some time but seem to be slipping now.

At Click Consult we can help you to get the most from your pay per click advertising.

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Communicate PPC Results In Plain English

Alan — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 07:58:43 +0000

If you are an experienced PPC account manager you will know all the pay per click jargon. However to report this data to other people within the business you need to ensure that you deliver those results in a language everyone can understand. It’s important to publish PPC results to other parties and partners within your company so they can appreciate how well this form of internet marketing performs for the business.

When you receive reports and summaries, make sure they are in plain English. This can mean avoiding a submission listing campaigns and conversion rates and instead providing an analysis that groups campaigns under headings such as ‘Top Performers’, ‘Rising Stars’, and ‘Slow and Steady’ for example. This will help to provide some background to the numbers and offer helpful insights.

Whoever writes your PPC reports should tailor the insights alongside the data to appeal to the target audience. They should bear in mind it is essential to paint a picture when presenting results to people who are not as closely involved as themselves. This can mean literally, by using graphs and visuals to bring the data to life. For example, when illustrating your target audience, use an image of a middle aged man if the target audience for a category is made up of this age range of men.

At Click Consult we offer return on investment reporting for PPC campaigns as part of our account management solution and all our reports are in plain English.

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How To Spot Errors In Your PPC Campaign

Laura — Mon, 31 May 2010 14:30:48 +0000

It can happen to any PPC manager. You make some amends to your pay per click account and a few days later notice the leads or clicks have plummeted and you’ve no idea why. Here are some ways you can identify what has gone wrong:

Keep a log – it is highly recommended that you keep a log of all the activities and amends that you make to the account from the start. Although you can view the change history in Google, in MSN and Yahoo you will have to refer back to manual notes to identify what happened a few weeks ago that could be impacting the account today. There is also an online program called Basecamp that will allow you to create lists, messages, milestones and track time plus much more. You can use this or another program to track any changes on the account so when you do hit a problem you can identify the cause much quicker and put things in place to remedy it.

Time is important – your first step when identifying an issue is to look at the time it occurred. Reports can be run in MSN, Yahoo and Google to pinpoint when the drop in clicks or leads started. This will let you know whether it spans over just an hour or a number of weeks. Once you know when it began you can start looking for the cause.

At Click Consult we are experts in PPC campaign management and can ensure your PPC accounts run smoothly.

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Redefine Your Target Audience

Alan — Wed, 26 May 2010 12:17:13 +0000

You can quite easily drown in the detail of keywords and bids when managing a PPC campaign but you need to question on a regular basis what you want to achieve. It may seem an obvious question but take time to consider your goals. If your answer is that you want to achieve a certain amount of clicks or cost per lead then you really need to sit up and think again. Take time out to think about who your audience is and the goals for your pay per click campaign.

Think about the elementary questions – who, what, when, where, why, how. Use them to define who you want to reach. Who is the ideal target? When do they go online and how would they use the internet? How old are they? What is their lifestyle, values and mindset? What do they think about the products you sell and your company?

You can get some great information from analytics to understand who you attract now – however this might not be the type of customer you want. You will need to research hard to understand the best audience for your products and it is imperative to understand their behaviours and way of buying.

You can become so focused on the conversion funnels that you forget what the real people you are trying to attract look like. Collecting insight into consumers can provide you will a more balanced well rounded pay per click campaign.

At Click Consult we have an expert team of people to help with PPC management.

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Freshen Up Your PPC Campaigns

Alan — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 08:10:31 +0000

To keep your PPC campaigns fresh and up to date it’s important to keep updating and adding keywords. This will keep you ahead of the game in your market place but a word of warning – it sounds easier to do than it actually is and maintaining momentum can be a challenge. Very quickly you can find that you are duplicating keywords and losing focus on your services and products. It's easy to wander away from relevant keywords so here are some ways you can maintain concentration:

Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool

The Keyword Suggestion Tool can be found in the AdWords Tool section.

The suggested keywords are generated from data that has been built up from past Google searches. They are just suggestions so keep your website and its products and services in mind at all times so you don’t include something needlessly. The aim should be converting leads so needless amounts of traffic with low conversion rates should be avoided.

Search Query Reports in Adwords

A search query report shows which searches led to a minimum of one click on an advert. If your campaign is heavy in broad matching they can be useful. Aim to have your top keywords exactly matched to reduce the CPC and increase the Quality Score. You can also identify irrelevant traffic and also reduce irrelevant impressions.

Google Insights

This tool allows you to examine trends in your keywords and also provides extra information such as breakout keywords and the percentage number of searches carried out over a month.

At Click Consult, we help keep our client’s pay per click campaigns ahead of the competition.

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