Pay Per Click Management - increase your ROI - use an ad manager

We've heard this statement many times:

"Pay per click advertising simply doesn't work - we've tried it previously and we wasted our time and money".

The unfortunate thing for these people is that they are wrong - PPC advertising DOES work - in fact, when you stack it up against other forms of advertising, it is probably one of the best as far as ROI (return on investment) is concerned, and by far the best as far as flexibility and measurability goes.

So, if we believe this to be true, why do so many people fail at PPC, or at best, are only able to manage a "so-so" pay per click ad campaign?

That's because pay per click ad management is not as easy as 1,2,3 - throw some words together, pay some money, and the customers will flood in.

For your ads to work there are quite a few factors that come into play. For example, quite obviously your ad MUST be visible - that's a given - but it must be either at or close to the top to be effective.

If you are out of Google's "golden triangle", your ad just isn't making the grade.

In order for you to achieve a higher position, as well as run your ad campaign to maximise your ROI, you really need an ad management professional.

The following are just a few of the mistakes people make when running their own ad campaigns - how many of these techniques do you use in your campaign - or even know about?

Keywords

How many keyword phrases do you use in your campaigns? 10? 20? 30? Try starting at 1000 plus - and that's just for small to medium sized campaigns. Let me give you an example: each month more than 6000 keyword phrases are used to find justweb^® organically (the non-paid results). Now, imagine if we ran an ad campaign in which we used only 30 or 40 keywords?

Because not everyone searches for your products and/or services using the same word strings, you have to cover as many variations as possible.

Keyword targeting

Did you know that if you use keywords in your ads that do not match keywords in your landing page (the page you direct people who click your ads), your average CPC (cost per click) can increase, thus affecting your ROI?

Ad structure

Improving how your ad is written will improve your CTR (click through rate), as well as improve your quality score, and, as a result, your average CPC will decrease.

Geo-targeting

If you service customers solely in the Sydney area (for example), you do not want to attract customers from (eg) Perth. By doing so, you waste clicks and your ROI decreases. Further, if you are a local area business only, serving a certain number of suburbs, again, geo-targeting needs to be used.

Management consistency

A professional ad manager will monitor your keyword phrases and determine which ones are worth gold, and which ones are mere tin. This is an ongoing process that, if ignored, is detrimental to the all important ROI.

Conversion tracking

Your ad appears, a viewer clicks on it, and they land on your website. Once there, you don't have long to convert them to a sale. But if you do manage to convert them, how do you know if they have come by way of your PPC ad? Many people, when I ask them "what is your conversion rate", have no clue. You MUST track your conversion to ensure your ROI is being delivered.

Summary

Another neat trick a PPC ad manager will do is what is called "split testing". This is where you create two ads with different content, and measure which combination of words returns the best CTR.

Something you need to be aware of is that as online advertising becomes more competitive, more and more people will use professionals who know all the "tricks of the trade". This will no doubt see you languishing behind your competitors if you continue to run "so-so" ad campaigns.

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For more information about how our PPC partner can help to grow your business, please visit our Pay Per Click Advertising page, or simply complete our enquiry form.