Optimising Pay Per Click Marketing With An Ear To The Ground

December 23rd, 2009

The debate on ‘PPC versus SEO’ is as heated as ever. According to UK Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Report 2009, there has been a noteworthy increase in the number of businesses shifting to PPC as their sole internet marketing strategy. Since 2008, this figure has increased from 12% to 22%. Obviously, despite its copious benefits, SEO loses out to PPC on the following grounds:

• PPC optimises a specific page, this enables more focused conversations.
• PPC helps to define a specific entry points to a website, thus keeping track of optimal resource sites.

Pay Per Click: Getting Value for Your Money

Flexibility is inherent to pay per click advertising. Besides, one can track the return on investment (ROI) more effectively as this advertising mechanism offers unparalleled, explicit results. However, what seals the deal, is the fact that fact that payment is made according to the amount of clicks. This makes pay per click is an irrefutable source of advertising where one gets exact value for their money.

However, since more and more companies are jumping on the PPC and SEO bandwagon to optimise their internet marketing, there is a great need to do more. So how does one stand out in a crowded room? Read on…

PPC Targeting Options: Hitting Bull’s Eye

’Target audience,’ similar to traditional marketing, is the underlying principle of internet marketing as well. The need to target an audience is inevitable for maximising returns and minimising effort and overheads. One can select from several customer targeting options, sorted by:

• Location, such as a city, region or country.
• Language.
• Demography, such as an age-group or gender.
• Time; also known as ad-scheduling; to define the time of the day when the ad must be placed.

The importance and efficacy of targeting options is abundantly clear from the reaction of respondents of the UK SEM Report 2009. Of the 400 respondents, an astonishing 43 % claimed that their ROI has increased significantly due to the precise targeting capability of pay per click strategy.

Split Testing Ads: Multiply Profits by Dividing Ads

Pay per click advertising, like any marketing platform, is vulnerable to failure. Split testing ads helps to ensure optimisation of the internet advertising campaign. This strategy enables one to create a series of diverse ads, which target the same keywords within the same timeframe. The diversity of the ads, with other parameters held constant, enables to judge what works and what doesn’t.

Negative Keywords: Who Needs Unwanted Guests!

Conventional or brick-and-mortar selling is primarily about increasing the foot traffic and thereafter converting them to the product offered. Effective PPC marketing, in opposition, is about luring high-quality consumer traffic in the first place. Quantity is almost immaterial in case of pay per click marketing but the million dollar question here is what is ’high-quality’ customer traffic?

The answer is customers who actually wish to purchase the product being offered. Often, due the reliance of PPC on keywords, un-interested non-customers visit a website by mistake. A high number of such clicks drive up the overhead cost of a business. To avoid such drag on resources, one can specify certain negative keywords, which on being typed by someone averts them from entering the website.

Internet marketing is as intricate as any other form of marketing. While a need for cleaner databases will always exist, in terms of the direct marketing capabilities of the medium, advertising online and showcasing your technological competence can be tricky without knowledge of the latest trends.

Tags: pay per click, pay per click advertising, pay per click management, ppc.