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Let us fix, optimise and/or manage your Pay Per Click accounts

Investing in an agency as your pay-per click partner isn't just wise - its often absolutely necessary if you're going to make it work. Out of all the accounts we have worked on, we have only come accross one campaign where no improvements or cost savings couldn't be made! 99.9% of the accounts we see could be improved and savings made, sometimes these savings add up to £thousands.

Most of the errors companies make are in the set up - which is where crucial variables need to be set right from the very start. Having set up a good campaign, it's essential to make sure it stays good and gets better through monitoring and adjustments. Our agency fees are very modest compared to the savings we make for online businesses.

Common mistakes people make with Pay Per Click management...

It is possible to easily waste lots of money on self Pay-Per-Click management, and many businesses do! Have you seen the PPC mistakes shown on our New to PPC page? That was the first search we did in our example of the keyword 'travel books'. Everytime we search for any keyword, we find massive errors in the PPC ads that appear. These are all from companies who probably have no idea they are wasting money on clicks - which is why it pays to let us manage your pay-per-click accounts!

Businesses continue to run costly campaigns mainly because they...

As your pay-per-click partner and Google AdWords management experts, we...

We are trained and qualified Google AdWord professionals, and successfully manage many campaigns for huge online players. The intuition that broad experience provides allows us to think creatively, spot room for improvement, and reach a great level of optimisation.

Most businesses over-simplify their keywords, take wild guesses and hope it works. They end up spending more than necessary because competitors are already paying for those generic words! Lots of wasteful clicks... For each campaign we do extensive research using complex software, online supply-and-demand resources and lots of maths! We also know the art of phrase-match, exact match, and using negative keywords to reduce wasted clicks.

Businesses often write sloppy ads that attract wasteful clicks, get disapproved by Google, or simply don’t attract. We write ads that optimise a good click-through rate. We also know how to continuously monitor and improve effective ads using multiple variations.

Statistics are useless unless you know what to do with them, and how to make the right adjustments. Using a constant control loop allows us to improve your click-through rates and conversions. We also report back to your with user-friendly campaign feedback.

The fees companies pay us are more than made back through cheaper clicks and better conversion rates. We want you to enjoy better profits, by providing greater exposure of your product or service to potential customers.

To find out how cost effective our Pay Per Click management solutions are click here.

If you're a small business and would prefer to go at it alone, here are some top tips to help you on your way. . .

Paul's Top Tips For Pay Per Click Success

Follow these simple guidelines and you could see your ads in higher positions than your competitors but you'll be paying less for the click! But remember, traffic is only one part of online success. To make this work, you need quality traffic landing on a good website that will convert those visitors into leads or sales. This is how you'll achieve click success - and this is a small part of what we do on a daily basis for our clients.

Do Your Research

Spend some time looking at the precise keywords people are using, don't just guess. People use some strange phrases sometimes when searching online so make sure you add these to your campaigns. Remember to also include misspellings as there may not be as much competition for these keywords.

Most advertisers who use Adwords fail because they end up with a keyword list of about 30-40 generic keywords to bid on that they thought of over lunch. The main problem with this is the competition has also thought of those words and you'll be bidding expensively for them.

Come up with a minimum of 200 keywords to start with. For some of our clients we have generated in excess of 13,000 keywords for just one adgroup. The actual phrases may mean the same thing, but change the words used to include singular and plural, hyphenations etc.

For example, an Adgroup for a toy shop selling Star Wars toys may focus on Lightsabers and contain keywords that cover all the different angles such as;

paddling pool
paddling-pool
Child paddling pool
Childs paddling pool
Child paddling pool
Childs paddling-pool
Child paddling-pool
Childrens paddling pool
Childrens paddling-pool
paddling pool for child
paddling pool for children
paddling pool child
kids paddling pool
kids paddling-pool
paddling pool for kids

(And even include some misspellings . . .)
Child padling pool
Etc, etc

(And a couple of negatives. . . )
-swimming
-cheap -ebay Etc, etc

. . . I'm sure you get the idea.

Trying and testing new keywords should be something you constantly do. The interesting thing is, on average 90% of your traffic will come from 10% of your keywords. And that 10% will probably be keywords that you think off after several months, not several minutes.

You most likely will not be able to predict beforehand which keywords will bring you the most traffic, and even more importantly, convert the best.

This is why we constantly monitor campaigns and keywords to further optimise their success.

Create Multiple Adgroups

Don't just shove all your keywords into one big campaign and one Adgroup. Split them up to make your ads more relevant. For example, if you own a sports shop, you would do better grouping all your boxing supplies into one Adgroup and your football shirts into another. This will give you greater control over your daily spend as you may decide that you want to spend more per day on Football T-Shirts during the season than snooker cues.

Put Relevant Keywords into Your Ads

Following on from this, create different ads for different Adgroups. Don't be lazy and use a general one-ad-fits-all approach. To achieve click success you want a boxing gloves ad to appear to people searching for boxing gloves. If somebody types in a football t-shirt keyword, you want a relevant, powerful ad that talks about your football t-shirts. You can only do this if you set up multiple Adgroups.

Don't Send Users To Your Homepage!

Few businesses take the time to decide which page to land people on, also called your destination URL, so just have everybody turn up on the homepage. You must avoid this. If a user types in boxing gloves, you can safely assume that's what they want. If you land them on your homepage and make them search for the boxing category you run the risk of them giving up and clicking back and going to someone else site.

The great thing about online businesses is also the scariest thing. New customers are only a click away, but if you screw up you can lose them in a click.

It takes more effort to leave a shop and try somewhere else which is why most of us will ask an assistant if we can't find what we're looking for. Not so online! Can't find it? No worries, just click back and try another site. It only takes a nano second. If you want to prevent click backs and get click success you MUST make it easy for people.

This goes for any product or service. Make sure people looking to buy boxing gloves land on the boxing gloves page. People looking for a Magimix coffee maker land on the Magimix coffee makers page. People looking for a divorce solicitor land on the divorce solicitor page, not the home page, about us page or any other page. Think about your landing pages, they are key to your success in Pay Per Click.

Match Your Keywords

With Adwords you have 4 main choices how to set up your keywords. All of them can bring you success, all of them can bring you misery so you need to think about them carefully. Not enough clicks can be just as bad as too many when your survival in business depends on sales.

Below are the different keyword tools, how you write them into your Adgroups and what the outcome might be:

Keyword phrase - weight loss book

Broad Match: This is the default option. You would simply write this as weight loss book. This will show your ad to anybody typing in these keywords in any order, even if they typed in book on weight loss or book a hypnosis session on weight loss. You don't do hypnosis but your ad will still show. They may click on your ad out of interest but they are not a great potential customer.

Phrase Match: Surround the keyword in quotes "weight loss book". With phrase match your ad will only show if the keyword is typed in that particular order. For example, someone typing in buy weight loss book will see your ad whereas someone typing in book on weight loss wouldn't. Phrase match allows you to refine the search and show your ad to better targeted users. Remember though that someone looking for free weight loss book pdf will also see your ad so you would need to use negatives and/or qualify the users by putting the price of the book in the ad to make sure anybody clicking on it is aware there is a purchase price.

Exact Match: Surround the keyword in square brackets [weight loss book]. This will ensure your ad is only shown to users who type in that exact phrase in that exact order with nothing before it and nothing after it. This is for when you want to really narrow down your users.

Negative Match: Not a stand alone keyword tool but rather to accompany Broad or Phrase Match. Simply put "-" before the keyword that you want to prevent from triggering your ad. In this example we may decide to notch out the word free, session, cheap, like this:

-free
-session
-cheap

So if a user types in new weight loss book the ad will be shown. However, if they type in free weight loss book our settings will ignore this and the ad will not be shown. Likewise, a user trying to book a weight loss hypnosis session will also not see the ad.

We are a pay per click partner for a UK client who sell canvases for artists. When I took over the campaign, I noticed all the keywords were bunched into one Adgroup. The keyword canvas was on it but the client didn't realise that there were lots of people searching for canvas tents which was showing the ad! Making tents a negative word stopped this and kept his campaign lean.

The obvious benefits of using these different matches is to give you the best chance of attracting qualified users to click through to your site and eliminate the wasted clicks.

Optimise and Test Your Ads

Coming from a direct marketing background I am used to testing different ads with different headlines, different prices, different copy etc. One of the parts I love about Adwords is your ability to carry out true A/B split tests and see which ad performs better.

You simply write 2 ads and Google will alternate them automatically. As users click on them Google will work out which is the better ad due to the Click Through Rate (the % of people who click on the ad when it's shown). It will then give more weight to the ad with the highest CTR and display this more often then the lower performing ad.

At the end of a day, week or month you should re-write the bad ad and let them run head-to-head again. Google will repeat the process and give you back the performance figures. The trick is to ever be refining an ad until it cannot be beaten so you know your getting the absolute best performance from it.

Track Your Results

With Pay Per Click you can track your results down to the keyword. Get to know the reports and set them to run at the end of the week or month and spend some time getting to know your conversions.

With Adwords reports you'll be able to make informed decisions on which keywords to eliminate, which to invest more money into and which to leave as they are.

I have some clients whose individual Adgroups give back conversion costs regarding the products being sold. Some Adroups are performing better than the target conversion cost. Other Adgroups are slight above target.

However, we still run the above target Adgroups because the overall average conversion across all campaigns is lower then the target so it still remains profitable. Without running reports we wouldn't know which Adgroups were doing what.

You must run reports to make sure you are making a profit.

As you have seen from this short introduction to pay per click, there is more to it than simply chucking a bunch of keywords and a wedge of cash into a pot. Google has all sorts of secret algorithms that apply to PPC as they do natural Search Engine Optimisation.

Even though you don't pay for an ad until a user clicks on it, Google is counting how many times (impressions) your ad is being shown Vs how many clicks it gets. If the click through rate is low then you may find your ad falling down the position chart and your competitor who has a better pulling ad may be higher than you but paying less once a user does click on the ad.

So take the time to make sure your keywords match your ad, that matches your product or service that matches your landing page. Invest the time or hire a professional agency to help you set this up right from the beginning.

The great thing about pay per click is you can test and tweak as you go, but I firmly believe that your future success is built upon your early foundations. Get the foundations right and your success will be progressive.

If you would like Paul as your UK Pay Per Click partner call Click Success on 0845 4677683.

Is Your Pay Per Click Agency Costing You More Than It Should?

UK Google Consultant shares frightening insider knowledge...

If you're already with an agency or Google consultant in the UK, you need to know they are giving you their best. The chances are, if you are reading this, you have your doubts. Having worked with other agencies before, we know what really goes on behind closed doors and we're not afraid to reveal a few dirty secrets that may be costing you a lot of money right now.

For example, not all agencies look after your account in house. Your campaigns can be worked on by other agencies in other countries where the labour rate is cheaper. At Click-Success we personally work on your campaigns and never outsource anything.

Are You Being "Fleeced"?

I would really like to portray a positive image of UK marketing companies but I'm about to paint you a different picture. I want you to understand that not all marketing companies are dishonest, and out to rip you off. They're not. Most agencies are honest and have your best intentions in mind. Others however, have their own intentions in mind.

If you are considering changing agencies for any reason, I want you to be aware of the big fleece so you are better prepared to prevent the financial wool being pulled over your eyes.

We despise unethical fleecing - it makes our blood boil. We know of agencies who charge a management fee but who also add on a percentage to the clicks without you knowing. Right now there are companies who are paying a £900 - £1,500 a month management fee plus £9,000 a month in click fees to Google. The only problem is, only £7,000 is actually getting to Google. The other £3,000 is being sucked in by the agency.

How do they do this?

It's very simple. They set up your Adwords account that they then manage on your behalf. They sell you on the merits of paying on invoice once a month. Each month your reports are run and then modified. A 30-40% extra is added to the cost of clicks and as you'll never see the actual Google account you'll never know. So each month you'll receive an invoice for;

Total Clicks= £9,000
Management Fee= £995

TOTAL= £9,995

The agency will do "it's best" to manage your account and keep your click prices low. It's all there in the report what you're paying Google, in black and white, clear as crystal. The agency may even have the nerve to put the Google logo on the top of the report. And who are you to question?

But the reality is this:

Total Clicks= £6,000
Click Bunce= £3,000
Management Fee= £995

TOTAL= £9,995

Now you see that in fact you're paying £4,000 a month in management fees! These above figures are a REAL and TRUE account for a REAL company right now that I'm aware of.

And this particular company even called the agency recently for more information on click fraud and what steps were being taken to prevent this. Click fraud? Click fraud is a small concern these days thanks to the safety measures put in place by Google. The real fraud was the fleecing done every month by the agency. The agency that was being trusted to manage the account.

We HATE this dishonest practice by these corporate parasites that only exist by fleecing other companies and bleeding them month to month. This is such a sensitive and never-talked about subject that I was almost hesitant to write about it. But as I have run many businesses myself, and having spent my own money on advertising, I understand and appreciate what you're doing and going through. And I know exactly how I would feel if I found out that out of my £9,000 spend only £6,000 was actually being spent where I thought it was while £3,000 was paying for these parasites to take exotic holidays, drive new cars and allowing them to play computer games all day at work. As far as I'm concerned, an agency is there to help you grow your business. It's fair for an agency to make a profit from you but by giving you value in return. It's an age old practice of buying a product at one price only to sell it for a higher price. That's business. But to charge for a management fee, telling the client that the prices are transparent, to pay for clicks at one price whilst selling to the client at a higher price without indicating that you are charging in between - is outright THEFT!

So if you're currently being managed by another Google Consultant UK agency I would suggest a surprise visit and ask to see your account. Then compare the reports with the reports you have been sent. If there is an awkward shuffling, red faces and shady explanations, you can safely assume you are being fleeced. And you should be MAD AS HELL. This is serious stuff.

If you believe this is happening to you, I would suggest terminating any contacts and finding yourself another Google Consultant UK agency FAST.

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