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PPC - Where to start?
Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is a good method of driving targeted visitors to your site immediately.
CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA, June 16, 2010 /Online Marketing - SEO PR News/ -- Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is a good method of driving targeted visitors to your site immediately. Its application is probably most effective for specific promotions or when advertising specific products or services.
Note that I used the word "specific" twice. This is because when you're paying for clicks, it makes sense to target your campaigns as acutely as possible to maximise your conversions and keep your cost per acquisition as low as possible. This is what really boosts the ROI of a PPC campaign.
You need to have a very clear idea of what you want to achieve with your PPC campaign. This is why it's vital to define your goals early first and foremost in the planning stage. Think about what you want users to do when they click on your ad.
At a basic level, there are a couple of factors that will influence the cost and ROI of your campaign. These include carefully identifying keywords and your bids, writing effective ad copy and well-targeted landing pages.
PPC, like its cousin SEO, should start with keyword research. You should have a clear idea about what you're trying to advertise and what you want to achieve through your campaign. I find a good place to start with keyword research is some basic brainstorming.
Once you've developed an idea about the "theme" of your campaign, you can expand this list of keywords using keyword research and keyword suggestion tools. Google has a pretty nifty free keyword research tool which indicates the competition on each phrase as well as its popularity and local search trends. This information is invaluable when deciding which key-phrases to bid on and utilise in your ad copy.
Next, I find it best to make keyword lists by grouping keywords into either topical themes or similar/stemmed keywords. This will enable you to write targeted ads that contain the keywords for which you are bidding. This has been shown to significantly increase click-throughs and will help you to target your ads and landing pages more accurately.
Once you've done this, you can start writing a couple of versions of your ad. It's highly recommended that you test several versions of the ad copy. Google Adwords allows you to do this quite easily, and you can even set up the campaign so that it will display better performing ads more frequently.
You'll need to assign keywords to each Ad Group and set your maximum bid per keyword. We recommend setting separate bids for the content network (if you chose to display your ads here). Google Adwords will give you a rough indication of the approximate position of your advert based on your bid per keyword. You can adjust your bids to move your ad up or down the page, but it's advisable to give the ad a few days so that you have some data to work with before you start making major changes to the campaign.
You need to keep an eye on your CPC as well as your conversion rates. You may notice that certain keywords convert consistently better than others, in which case it makes more sense to spend more of your budget there. Of vital importance is knowing the value of each conversion - this will prevent you from spending too much on your clicks.
This is only part of the exercise. Because once the user has clicked on your advert, they will be directed to a landing page on your website. Optimising a landing page is an equally crucial part of ensuring you maximise conversions and get the most out of your PPC advertising spend. We'll cover landing page optimisation in our next PPC post.
AlterSage, a full service online marketing agency, offers tailored online marketing solutions that achieve targeted exposure for your website. Goal focussed and driven by return on investment, services include search engine optimisation, pay per click advertising, web design and development, persuasive web copywriting, brand building, conversion analysis and many more.
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