Paid Search Engine Advertising Optimisation Explained
By: ColinMcNulty
The benefits of Pay Per Click (PPC) Google AdWords compared with normal techniques is simply this: almost all normal techniques are broadcast methods to users who have demonstrated little interest in purchasing your product. Think of radio ads, magazine ads, bill board posters etc etc. They are all broadcast adverts. Sure there some targeted than others, if you are selling marketing services to companies, you advertise in a Marketing magazine, but that's a crude method these days.
Search MSN for "software" and down the right hand side, you'll see ads by websites who are paying them to have their link and site listed there on the main page of results. This is Paid Advertising on the Search Engines and this is why Google now turns over more than $6 Billion per year!
Compare that to someone searching MSN for " online marketing for solicitors"? That's a potential customer that right at that absolute moment in time is interested in finding out a very specific thing. If you expect to sell a product that can helpthem, you'd better hope that you're on the first page of MSN or other. What's its value to you to have that potential customer visit your website within 3 seconds of typing that into the search engine?
You might search engine optimize your website to make sure you have top positions for your keyphrase, but it takes time and a sizeable investment in cash. This is where Pay Per Click marketing really is most effective, and is not used enough as far as I'm concerned. Your website might be on the first page of MSN the same day for the search term for a relatively low budget. In a few days you'd have some inclination of the quantity of users that will positively search for that term, visit your site, and buy your product. This is up to date, research into your niche market for a bargain budget that can't be got get any other way.
Lets say that you are paying 20p per click, and 500 people click your ad making a combined total spend of £100. Lets say the conversion rate is a reasonable one percent, so you've got five new purchases and more importantly 5 extra customers that you can now up sell to. All this for just £100 spent! What is your typical user worth in total? Doesn't this look like something you should be doing?
One important thing to know is how the Search Engine ranks the sponsored PPC marketing Adverts. In essence it's an auction in real time. The highest bidder wins. If you bid 20p and some other company bids 25p, they will rank above yours. It is in fact considerably more complicated than that: if you have a better quality PPC ads, it's definitely possible for you to rank higher than the 25p ad because the search engine will give boosts to higher performing PPC ads. What this means is that if your advertising expert knows what (s)he is doing with PPC bid management, it's likely you will get higher rankings (read additional traffic) for less money. So your valuable online internet marketing budget works harder and you save money. Equally, if your AdWords ad campaign is administered by someone who does not know their job, it will cost you real cash.
Here is a list of the things a specialist Google Advertising Professional should perform whilst managing your campaign, if yours isn't, we strongly suggest you get a review of your online marketing campaign today:
Be in it to Win It - The whole point of PPC advertising administration is to get on the absolute first page of your MSN, Google etc quickly. However, where there is in excess of eight (normally) even PPC Adverts can drop off the 1st page. Where there is competition like this, there is absolutely little point doing a PPC marketing campaign if you are not on the 1st page, so either boost your Cost Per Click (CPC) values, or forget it.
Better Website ROI through Tracking Conversions - This is high technology marketing, this is not normal marketing, so use that to your benefit. The technology exists to track every sale and from where it comes. You can learn exactly which ad converts to sales and which don't. It's one thing to have lots of traffic, it's another to have lots of sales. What would you rather have for PPC paid advertising: an ad that generates 1,000 clicks and 1% sales, or one that generates one hundred leads but ten percent sales? In each you gain the same sales, but the 1st costs you 10x as much in PPC advertising budget.
Landing Page Optimisation - A common issue is not matching the webpage that consumers land on when they click your ad, to the actual content of your ad; which definitely should be aimed at what the consumer searched for. This just means that when the consumer clicks your Ad, they get to see what they want to. Internet users are lazy! Would you believe that did you know that half of all internet searchers leave a website in under eight seconds just because they do not find what they expected!
A/B Splt Testing your Ads - This is good PPC technique and simply involves having more than one ad and testing which works best. Let me give you one example, we had 2 ads which were identical in every way except the start of the top title. One began "Learn to Prevent..." and the other began with "Stop...". Split testing determined that 5 percent of the consumers who saw the "Learn to Prevent...." clicked it. BUT 8% of the consumers who saw the "Stop..." advert clicked that one. Guess what, we dropped the first advert and got a better quality advert which in the end Google promoted to the premium ad position on the page, for the same Cost Per Click!
Several Ad Groups - The first rookie failing is to group all your keywords together to feed a single advert. This is very bad. Keywords must be split up into groups with advert text that accurately show the keywords searched for.
Phrase / Broad / Exact Matching - Google AdWords allow 3 alternative ways to match search terms to your keywords, but most advertisers just go for the broad matching option. You could double your Click Through Rate from clever use of the other options which most careless Google Advertising Professionals don't bother with.
Article Source: http://www.ezarticles.info
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