PPC in the UK - Why You Need A PPC Professional More Than Ever

It’s been two years since I started work as a Pay Per Click (PPC) Account Manager and a lot has changed in that time. With Google celebrating its 10th birthday a few months back, PPC is just a kid, really. It is a very new, very young industry that has changed a lot in the past and will continue to change a lot in the future.

On the 4th of August 2008, I gave some musings on the life of a PPC Campaign Manager. A lot of the issues I mentioned then still linger – PPC campaign managers live and die by their cost per conversion, clients still don’t use the ad preview tool and some people are still unrealistic about their budget.

Budget, in particular, is a big one. The UK has always been a hotbed for PPC and the market in our country has always been more saturated than most. In 2007, 15% of Google’s revenue came from the UK and with every day that passes those companies who haven’t yet got a sponsored links ad in Google search results are starting to do so. As a result, it becomes harder and harder to get PPC ads in a good position on the first page, as more and more companies bid for those positions. Google something that you can buy on Google.co.uk … the sponsored links pages go on forever and add a lot of O’s to Gooooooooooooogle. With more competition, Cost Per Clicks (CPC) increase and this makes a good ROI harder to achieve. Even Google’s much vaunted quality score isn’t reducing CPCs much anymore because companies are cranking their bids up so much to get high up on the first page.

So PPC in the UK is becoming more difficult, but certainly not impossible. PPC campaigns still generate huge volumes and cheap sales/leads, but perhaps now more than ever, it is crucial that your PPC campaign is built and managed by professionals.