Can PPC be successful?

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April 1st, 2008 by Click Consult

Many, like my Head of Search, say that PPC is the future, while others express a complete disbelief and suspicion.

So who is right?
If you do decide to take a part in online paid marketing think of three evils kings:
-Engines (Google, Yahoo & MSN)
-Competitors
-Fraud
You can fight back, but you must have an experience and understanding of how these factors are affecting your performance and costs.

Engines
It well known that Paid Search is a main source of income for all three engines and they wouldn’t miss a chance to make money out of you. Google Quality Score is mainly based on CTR and CPC which means nothing in terms of conversions and ROI. General keywords tend to have a higher quality score due to very high click through rates, hence more specific and less general keywords are ignored. The result is that general ads are displayed and a user is landed on a webpage which is not 100% relevant for his search.

Advice number 1: If you do have generic and specific keywords in your campaign- check your ads on the Google preview tool. From my experience, generic keywords can be a goldmine or a complete disaster. And if you do have a problem- use negatives and matching options.
Another trouble with search engines is a broad match, better to say too broad… Sometimes you even won’t recognise a connection between a keyword and a search term.
Advice number 2: Run Search Query reports on Google to identify problematic broad keywords and select standard match on Yahoo. MSN has a minimal exposure, so your budget won’t be wasted.
Advice number 3: Create unique and specific ads. If you missed a negative and got displayed for irrelevant search, a good ad will help users to identify a relevancy of your ad to search term.

Competitors
If you have a limited budget and huge ambition check first what your competitors do. Type the term that you intend to use in Google, and count how many people are running under the same keyword. If there are more than 5-6 pages, it means that in order to stay on a first page you will have to pay high CPCs.
Advice number 4: Be specific in your keywords choice, start with the small number and then broaden you selection. And always check.
Advice number 5: Create unique ads. It will help you to stand out and attract user’s attention.
Advice number 6: Register your name as a trademark- it will help to build your brand and run PPC ads on your own name with no competition aside.

Fraud
Click fraud is a big issue and its getting worth as PPC market is becoming more competitive and costly (especially if you are in high profit margin industry). By clicking on your ads, competitors burn your budget more quickly.
Advice number 7: You will never beat click fraud, but you can reduce its affects on your campaign by implementing simple software for identifying and averting unwanted traffic.

For conclusion:
PPC as anything else has its flaws as well as benefits. Your success will depend on type of industry you are in and your PPC experience. Choose the right keywords and negatives; create specific and unique ads together with relevant landing pages…. And Good Luck!

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