What is a cost-effective Pay-Per-Click campaign?

Right this second, there are many people searching on the internet who want to buy your product or service. But how are they going to find you? To get in the top ten of the natural search listings could take months if not years to achieve, with wooly results and no guarantees. You're competing for only a few common search terms with literally millions of other sites, so its no wonder that the traffic is not only thin on the ground but also poor quality.

Cost effective Pay-Per-Click advertising has revolutionised on-line marketing - now you can literally present your site to all of the potential customers who are searching for whatever it is you want them to see. You only pay when they click on the link to your site - with each click costing anything from pennies to pounds depending on the popularity of the keyword searched for. Once they are on your site - well then you just need to do a good job of selling to get the all-important conversion (i.e. sale, or whatever action you are after which could also be a download, a newsletter subscription, or simply seeing your important information).

An example of pay-per-click advertising...

Someone wants to buy a book for a friend who wants to go travelling.

They search for 'travel books' in Google.

The results page appears, with the natural search listings on the left, and the pay-per-click listings on the right hand side. These are listed according to both the price bidded for the keyword entered ('travel books') and the quality of the advert and site landing page (i.e. is it related to travel books? If not then Google will penalise with a higher click price).

Our shopper is attracted to the top PPC advert - promising Travel Books, a free newsletter, and a competition. So they click!

As soon as the shopper clicks, Google charges the site (we'll assume it was about 60p).

Rather than competing for natural search rankings with huge players such as RoughGuides, Amazon and The Guardian, MyTravelStore has bought an interested shopper who is looking for travel books for only 60p!

However... Our shopper isn't impressed with the site - there's just a sign-up box! No sign of travel books!

The click is wasted... because our shopper clicks 'back' to go to the search results. 'MyTravelStore' might get a high click through rate for 'travel books' costing them money, but they aren't likely to achieve many conversions with THAT landing page.

The shopper goes back and chooses the 4th advert down - promising Travel Books, free delivery and same-day dispatch from 'SameDayBooks'. Great!

Oh no! The advertiser has led the keen shopper to a page that says 'no results'!

Our shopper could search again with the site's search box, but they feel disappointed about seeing 'no results' and so immediately click back. Samedaybooks.co.uk just paid for the click, but they didn't impress our shopper!

Our shopper then clicks on 'Waterstones' thinking "at least I know they sell travel books!"

The Importance of Keywords

You might notice from the example that Waterstones and WHSmiths didn't specify 'travel books' anywhere in their ad. This is because they are likely to have paid for the keyword 'books' so that any search phrase containing that word shows their ad.

Because 'books' is such a general term, they are going to pay a lot more for those clicks.

For any product or service, there are many possible keywords or phrases that a person might search for who wants that particular thing. Companies frequently make the mistake of paying high amounts for general words, and missing out on other related words or phrases.

They also forget to use negative keywords to specify search terms they don't want leading to their paid ad. For example, someone selling used cars would be foolish to pay for 'cars' as a general keyword, because they will also display their high-click-priced advert to browsers who have searched for:

At Click-Success.co.uk, we know how to take advantage of your competitors common mistakes to get you cheaper prices, higher click-through rates, and more conversions.

Other Variables

Setting up a cost-effective pay-per-click campaign is a detailed, complicated process demanding much time and careful attention. In order to maximise your traffic and conversions with cost-effective ads, you need a campaign with a highly optimised set-up.

Factors which influence the results include the keywords, the competition, the advert, the landing page, the locations specified for the search results to be displayed, whether you advertised on the search engines or as ads within the content of other sites, whether you use text or image advertising, and much more.

Keywords alone are a vast area with the potential to harness quality traffic, or the wrong customers who increase your click-through rate but decrease your conversion rate. Which is why we use specialised software, dedicated keyword research, years of experience and thoughtful intelligence to optimise your pay-per-click success. We also write ads to attract your quality customers, and continually test and improve them to fine-tune your click success.

We work closely with our clients to recommend changes that we think may be necessary to your landing pages, to improve conversions and customer-satisfaction. Keeping Google happy keeps your cost-per-clicks low, so we'll also help you optimise your landing page for the keywords used.

"Should I run my own account or pay an agency to do it for me?"

Do whatever the most cost effective solution is to give you the highest return on investment.

It may be more cost effective to run your own campaign or at least get a professional to set it up for you.

Ask yourself a few honest questions:

What marketing experience do you have?
Do you have a good understanding of the internet and can you grasp the concept of pay per click?
How much time to you have available to manage your campaigns?
How simple or complicated is your services or product range?
How much are you planning to invest in clicks each month?

Click here to download our beginners guide
to successful Pay Per Click management -
"How to Use Google to Increase Your Profits"


Learn more about cost effective Pay-Per-Click management.	See our UK Google Adwords professional services.

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