I’ve written a multitude of posts recently about the various methods of online marketing that you should be utilizing in your marketing arsenal, but one up-and-comer that I seem to have neglected is the process of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – more specifically Pay Per Click (PPC).

PPC is a pretty simple concept, but not simple in its execution … with poor management you can end up spending a fortune and end up with nothing to show for it (more about this later). One thing to remember, though, is that people click on paid search ads more often than any other form of digital advertising if done right.

So, in a nutshell, PPC is a marketing formula used to price online advertisements where search engines like Google and Bing allow businesses and individuals to buy listings in their search results that appear alongside the organic (non-paid) results. Users, or online advertisers, are offered a unique means of putting their message in front of an audience who is actively seeking their product. Advertisers agree to pay these Internet Publishers the agreed upon PPC rate when an ad is clicked on, regardless if a sale is made or not. So, the advertiser typically bids on what they want to pay for a click on the ad – bid the most and you have a chance of ranking number 1 in the sponsored results. If a user clicks on your advertisement, they arrive at your website, and you are charged the amount you bid. So, for example, if you bid $.50 per click on ‘internet marketing,’ and that’s the highest bid, you’ll most likely show up first in the paid search results. If 100 users click on your PPC listing, then the search engine (Google, Bing) will charge you $50.00. So you may be asking why you should invest the money in paid search versus Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Well, organic SEO practices are a long-term attempt to grow your brand or image whereas PPC advertising offers advertisers a clear, quick and quantifiable short-term solution where one can generate traffic to their website right away. If you spend enough you will get top placement, potential customers will see you first and you can get clicks the moment the ad is activated. With some systems, such as Google AdWords, you can generate targeted traffic within a few minutes of opening an account. While SEO can take weeks or months to change audience behavior, you can adjust pay per click campaigns in hours to adjust to the market conditions.

While you don’t want to solely rely on PPC advertising to accomplish your marketing goals, integrating it strategically into your advertising mix can provide quantifiable results. For example, if you have a short-term campaign for a new product, service or special issue, PPC can be a great way to generate the buzz that you are looking for during this finite amount of time. In addition, PPC is great for online stores that offer a service or product that users can purchase the moment they arrive at your website – you know that each click generated is a potential customer.

So, with all this in mind, how do you engineer a successful PPC campaign? The first rule of thumb is to pay more attention to conversions and less attention to clicks. Any time a visitor to your website takes a desired action, this is considered a conversion, and you want to be able to track these conversions. Conversions are going to depend on the nature of your business, but some popular examples might include visitors making a purchase, completing a sales inquiry form or downloading a white paper/register. It is important to note that a conversion doesn’t necessarily have to be a sale … it just has to be worth something to you. If you cannot think of any measurable outcome of a visit to your site, then don’t spend the money on pay per click advertising.

The second rule of thumb for creating a successful PPC campaign is to set a sensible budget. While there is no “right” amount, a good formula is “cost per click is less than: conversion rate*total clicks*profit per conversion.” In other words, the amount you spend per click should always be less than the total profit earned per click. This is not a rigid rule, if you notice that your sales, leads or other desired visitor actions increased right after you began your campaign, chances are you’re doing something right.

Next, make sure to find your niche keywords. Don’t make the mistake of aiming your ads at the broadest possible terms such as “fishing rods.” Since these general terms get far more searches, it’s a strong temptation, but since everyone bids on the broad terms the cost per click is generally quite high, and the chances of conversion is lower. Make sure to focus instead on narrow, focused keywords: “Scott fly rods,” or “Sage fly rods” for example. These terms will cost less and will provide searchers with exactly what they are looking for. If you are using Google or Bing, they will show you an estimated cost per click and searches per day for your desired terms – use these tools to test your cost and clickthrough combination.

As with everything that you use to promote your business, make sure that your grammar, spelling and overall language in your text is correct and appropriate for your audience. Most PPC advertising requires that you write a couple of short, descriptive phrases about your service or product, so take advantage of this space by being specific and paying attention to why the reader would want to click on this ad.

And finally, go for quality. While you may be outbidding your competitors for the top spot, there is a thing called quality score that can impact your ranking too. Quality score takes into account your ad, your ad performance and the quality of the page to which the ad points. Based on these factors, search engines will either increase or decrease the bid amount necessary for you to gain a specific position. So, if you want to build your quality score, you need to (1) Build your history … the longer you’ve run a specific campaign, ad group and ad without changes, the better your history will be; (2) Never stop testing ad copy – constantly test your copy for the best clickthrough rate … a higher clickthrough rate will most likely give you a better quality score; (3) Put keywords in your ads – make sure your niche keywords show up in the headline and body of your ad; (4) Put keywords in your landing page – make sure the page to which your pointing your ad has those keywords as well; (5) Focus – focus your campaign by time of day, geography, search network etc. … You quality score has the ability to reduce costs by 20-30%, if not more. Converseley, a bad quality score can knock you completely out of the rankings as well.

So, now that you have your PPC campaign set up with your targeted keywords, budget and ads, and have finally implemented it, you are off to a good start, but do not set up your ads and forget about them. You need to continually manage your campaign or someone might outbid you or search patterns may have changed. For our Imagine That clients’ PPC campaigns, we are manipulating their campaigns multiple times a week. Things are constantly changing and evolving and you want to make sure you don’t miss the boat and spend unnecessary money.

Pay per click is now a basic online marketing tool, but you have to avoid the more-clicks-is-better mentality. Focus on conversions and return on investment (ROI) and you will ultimately build a profitable campaign. The goal, as with any other digital marketing avenue, is to drive traffic to your website to increase conversions. But, you want to make sure it is the pertinent traffic or else you are wasting your money. If done right, PPC can be a diamond in the rough, but there are reasons why people pay professional marketing companies like Imagine That to manage their campaigns … there is much more that goes into creating successful PPC advertisements than meets the eye. The aforementioned tips are just the tip of the iceberg and it is well worth it to let the professionals take the guesswork out of creating a successful campaign. We are here to help with all of your digital marketing needs … just give us a call (970-224-1930) or shoot us an email () for your free consultation today! Until then, as always, dream bigger!

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