The key issues that should have the most influence on the decision making process are the level of expertise that the agency is able to offer, the degree of transparency you will receive with the service and how accurate and reliable the agency can be in measuring the progress and success of campaigns.  Because PPC is such a complex form of advertising, obviously you will want to ensure that the agency you approach has a high level of expertise as well as a proven track record.  The level of visibility the agency will allow you is probably just as important.  The willingness to work closely with clients shows a willingness to fully understand the market; this is essential in developing the most effective strategy.  Finally, being able to accurately track the progress of a PPC campaign can help build trust between the client and the agency.  With these factors in mind, Click Consult have devised and answered a 10 Question package designed to help you select the best PPC agency.

1.    Experience: How long has your agency offered a PPC service?

Established in 2003, Click Consult have quickly built a reputation as one of Europe’s leading PPC Management agencies.

2.    Focus: How focused is your agency on PPC?

Click Consult have a team of dedicated pay-per click advertising experts, as well as having teams of professionals in other digital marketing disciplines such as search engine optimisation, web development and copywriting.  Each client is also assigned a designated account manager.  This system promotes effective communication between client and agency as well as endorsing transparency.

3.    Transparency: What level of transparency does your agency offer?

Click Consult offer complete transparency; the clients have access to all data.  By giving all clients access to our clickTELLIGENCE® software package – a unique online reporting suite – we are able to live up to the claim of offering an entirely transparent service.

4.    Specialisation: Does you PPC team specialise in anything else?

Click Consult’s team of PPC experts are dedicated to this particular element of internet marketing.  We also have teams of SEO programmers and web developers, ensuring that any clients who undertake out PPC service receive an approach that holistically encapsulates all aspects of digital marketing.  Click Consult’s PPC team also work closely with the clients to draw on industry knowledge in order to fine-tune and perfect their advertising strategies.  We are not dedicated to one particular niche, minimising the chances of managing campaigns for competitors.

5.    Capability: Does your agency offer a service capable of achieving results across multiple PPC platforms?

Click Consult do offer a service that incorporates all the major PPC Platforms, not just AdWords.  We can implement a PPC advertising campaign across Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, MSN AdCenter, Criteo and Facebook.

6.    Certification: Are your PPC team certified in Google AdWords?

Click Consult are one of the only agencies in the UK where all the PPC campaign managers are fully certified.  Each campaign manager has passed all four of the Google AdWords exams and also the rigorous Google Analytics exam.

7.    Reporting: How will I be able to track the progress of my PPC campaign?

Using our trademarked clickTELLIGENCE® reporting suite, all clients have access to reports that track every keyword and every penny spent.  As well as these standard reports, clients can specifically request a bespoke report to address any concerns they may have.  The Account Manager assigned to the client will also produce a monthly report on the progress of the client’s entire website, not just their PPC campaign.  Again, these reports are conducted in order to offer the clients complete transparency.

8.    Portability: What would happen if I decided to move PPC Management in-house?

Click Consult have a client retention rate of 90%, so portability issues are rarely an issue for us.  Our clickTELLIGENCE® reporting software was developed in-house, so leaving the company would mean losing the analytics data that Click Consult will have built up.

9.    Flexibility: How flexible is your agency for meeting specific requests of the clients?

Click Consult can adapt their approach to PPC campaigns in order to cater for the specific needs of the clients.  In the past we have managed non-brand campaigns while brand specific work is managed in-house and we have also managed the Yahoo! Search Marketing and MSN AdCenter platforms when Google AdWords has stayed in-house.  We understand that clients face a difficult decision when choosing a PPC agency to manage their campaigns, and we realise that there may be scenarios where it is necessary to win the trust of clients.  Click Consult will therefore do their utmost to support the needs of the clients while allowing the expertise of the PPC team to still get results.

10.    Measurable: How does your agency measure success?

One of the first procedures that Click Consult carry out with a client who pays for our PPC service is to agree a set of key performance indicators.  It is routine for us to ask the clients to help us establish these KPI’s, not the other way round.  Using these mutually established KPI’s, the clients has a clear standard by which they can measure the success of their PPC campaign accurately.

The PPC campaigns that we manage are conducted with the goal of combining profitability with a transparent and progressive approach to digital marketing.  We build profitable marketing campaigns, not just a few ads on Google.  Hopefully some of these questions will allay concerns about the authority of PPC agencies, and if you have an follow up queries don’t be afraid to get in touch with us.

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Competitor bidding is a touchy subject to most advertisers, with the majority agreeing that as well as being a costly exercise with relatively poor results, it increases the likelihood of competitors bidding on your Brand in retribution, leading to increased CPC and CPA on your own Brand Campaign from a vicious circle of bidding and counter bidding.

We have been approached by many Clients asking how we can prevent Competitors appearing on their brand terms. The short answer is, you can’t! There have been recent cases where some big names have fought to prevent competitors bidding on their brand and had slight success but realistically the best we can do is fight fire with fire.

Build efficient, relevant Brand and Competitor Campaigns and use unique, enticing ad text. Know how your USP’s compare to that of your Competitors and keep on your toes for any changes your Competitors make to their ads and bidding strategies, look for gaps in your competitor’s keyword strategy and exploit them with a Competitor Campaign Rampage. Creating ads that exploit your competitors’ brand names also helps.

If the main aim of your Campaign is to increase Brand Recognition then CPA and ROI targets should become irrelevant. If however ROI is your thing, then we recommend holding back for a month or so before including your Campaign in your Account, allow Quality Score to Build on other Campaigns first (most notably the Brand Campaign) and then you will receive a higher than average initial Quality Score on your Competitor Campaign. This will obviously then be effected by CTR and relevancy and the quality score will start to drop, so choose your keywords carefully, thinking how best to exploit the competition, and optimise consistently to improve the CTR. Good Luck!

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Advertisers have seen CTRs (Click Through Rate) increase by over 30% on average due to these site links. However, Google have now changed the way that site links are seen. Now, instead of appearing underneath the ad text, they will appear in the ad text. So if your ads contain the same text as your site links, then it will appear as a link in your Ad Text. According to Google, it was originally planned for ads that appear on the right hand side of search results, as a way of including the site link extensions, but without taking up so much room. However, it is now only going to affect PPC ads appearing above the natural search results (ie the top 3 positions).

The downside to this? The Site Links extension used to make ads stand out more and be more dominant in the sponsored ads. Well not any more. Advertisers may decide to opt into other ad extensions in AdWords in order to gain back this advantage, such as Product Extensions or Location Extensions.

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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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Bing and Yahoo have likely been waiting to see the legal precedents that are being set before changing the way they conduct their PPC management. Part of the new Microsoft policy, effective as of March 3, says:

‘Microsoft prohibits infringement of trademarks and other intellectual property by advertisers. Advertisers are responsible for ensuring that their ads do not violate the trademark or other intellectual property rights of others.’

Which puts any issues squarely on those who want to bid for trademarked keywords as part of their campaign, as underlined by:

‘Please note that Microsoft is not a mediator. As such, Microsoft encourages trademark owners to engage directly with advertisers who they believe are misusing their trademarks.’

A change from how they’ve previously operated, as Bing and Yahoo have usually been quite strict about how they handle trademarked terms in their PPC ads. Have they been waiting to see how Google fared from a legal point of view before making policy amendments? The change opens up a new window of opportunity to those who want to broaden their pay per click campaign across search engines other than Google, and pull in a lot more revenue for their targeted terms.

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But Google has noticed a quite obvious correlation. When temperatures were at their lowest during November 2010, Google noticed a massive increase in people doing their Christmas shopping online. Now, though we say it’s an obvious correlation, what we mean is that if people can’t venture outside to do their shopping then they’ll obviously choose the next best method – shopping online.

But Google are looking into the science behind it. Google’s advertising revenue accounts for a whopping 97 per cent of its total funds. They noticed a large jump of people making use of their AdWords platform at the same time that temperatures dropped and the number of in-store customers fell.

So Google are looking to maximise this as much as possible, using weather trends to help increase revenue. Not just for themselves, but for retailers up and down the country, according to Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist: “We saw a dramatic increase in the number of clicks during the two week period [from 20 November], then we see them falling, and then we see another big increase during the second period of bad weather. When we get a streak of dreary weather the ad clicks go through the ceiling. It used to be that bad weather was an unmitigated disaster for retailers, but now they have a way to hedge themselves with an online and offline presence that allows them to benefit whether rain or shine.”

The potential for AdWords to develop is certainly there, according to Varian, which should hearten all those looking to improve their PPC campaign: “An advertiser could set an ad campaign that says if the weather is cold and rainy for four days in a row, increase my budget for [ads for] get-away vacations by 10%.”

It’ll be interesting to see how AdWords develops, and if Google can relay PPC management campaigns around the weather in the future.

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So how on earth do you get the crux of your business across to potential traffic whilst also managing to fit some keywords in there? That mountain doesn’t sound as tough to climb as you may think – simplicity is the key.

You don’t have to condense your company into 130 characters, list all your products and services. You just need to create something eye-catching revolving around your current keywords and what you’re looking to offer your target traffic. That sounds more complicated than it actually is, and people find it difficult to simplify their PPC campaign because they are worried it won’t look professional enough.

Let’s say, for example sake, that you’re an auto shop looking to sell ‘cheap tyres’:

Need solid, cheap tyres?

Our tyres are new and affordable.

Cheap tyres in your local area!

(URL to page with cheap tyres)

The above follows the rules set for a standard PPC campaign (headline of 25 characters, 2 description lines with 35 characters and a 35-character URL), but as we can see, the auto shop is able to provide cheap, solid, new tyres that are affordable to the local area, whilst also managing to slip in a couple of instances of the ‘cheap tyres’ keyword.

You don’t have to sell your company and go into great depth. You just need to highlight the best parts of the products and services you offer to encourage people to click and explore more. As shown above, the simpler and more positive you are in your PPC campaign, the easier it is to get the message across!

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Via GeoEye, Google took aerial pictures of the Pétionville golf course – Haiti’s only golf course – as it filled up with tents occupied by the homeless and became a relief site. The progression of how the site developed can be viewed on Google Maps, and it’s astonishing to see the progression over time as people flock to the area.

Instant, visual representations through Google Maps helped to keep the global population updated about the human devastation caused by the quake, and offered a window into the troubles in the area on a consistent basis.

Google though went one step further, sending out a small team to help restore the area’s internet connectivity, and put a landing page on Google.org to keep people updated with the latest news and information on how to help. Google also asked their web development team to build a small tool from the People Finder Interchange Format to help the public try and locate missing loved ones. Within three days records of over 50,000 people were built up.

The Google database project, Resource finder, which helped people to find medical centres and more as the crisis lengthened. Crisis project leader, Prem Ramaswami, said recently: “The 82nd Airborne was using Google Maps because it’s a tool they know and understand. We just wanted to find something Google could do, to use its strengths to help the NGOs. Ushahidi, Doctors Without Borders and lots of other organisations were doing amazing things on the ground, and we wanted to use engineering to solve problems.”

It’s small touches like this that show Google is trying to be more than a company that offers pay per click and a wonderful seach service, and though Google Maps can be great for SEO, it showed an infinitely more useful purpose by helping save those in need.

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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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You will also be able to recruit affiliates globally, which will give a viral effect with your brand being advertised widely all over the world. The global reach of affiliate marketing is huge with positive consequences for you, the merchant, all at very low cost.

Creating an affiliate web marketing program is akin to having your very own sales team, but instead of you employing them and the sales team only working certain hours, your team will be actively advertising your merchandise twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. You don’t have any of the employment issues that a regular employer would face as the affiliates are responsible for their own tax liabilities, with no extra work for you.

Of course, the affiliate program will have to be managed to some extent, making sure the affiliates are paid promptly and other routine tasks which can take up a large proportion of your time. Outsourcing to a professional company such as here at Click Consult will enable you to reap the rewards of affiliate marketing while we take care of the affiliate program for you.

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