PPC Advertising
PPC advertising is a great tool for driving traffic to your website, especially in the short-term. When and how to use it, however, is key to maximising success.
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PPC Advertising as a standalone service
PPC Adverising effectively boosts website traffic, particularly in the short term. Strategically timing and applying it is crucial for optimal success.
At AlphaQuad, we generally recommend PPC Advertising as a strategy to be used alongside SEO. This is because it can be a more expensive route (you pay for every visitor with PPC regardless of how well-established your website is, whereas with SEO, the only cost is the time taken to build and maintain rankings; visitors then flood in for no additional cost to you).
However, for some companies, PPC Advertising as a standalone service is a good option, for example:
- If you have something time-sensitive to promote and don’t have time for SEO to take effect
- If your budget is very small – SEO needs a decent budget in order to generate rankings initially, so if the monthly allocated spend is very small, SEO could take a long time to see results
- If you have good rankings already, but others are advertising on your terms and therefore appearing above you in search results – you need to join them and advertise too
In the right hands, PPC advertising can be one of the most effective forms of digital advertising available.
Effective pay per click campaigns
Google pay per click and other forms of online advertising are some of the most controllable and effective marketing investments that you can make.
Unlike traditional advertising models (print, radio & TV), the cost of digital advertising is typically based on engagement rates, hence – “Pay Per Click” and if they don’t click you don’t pay.
The beauty of this approach is that the adverts need to be effective and measurable for both the publisher and the advertiser.
However, you may have heard whispers that PPC digital marketing can be expensive?
Like anything, digital advertising is only as effective as the people who understand and implement it. Without care and skill, any advertising can prove costly and inefficient, but in the right hands, PPC advertising can be one of the most effective forms available.
Google PPC
The Google advertising network includes a variety of different advertising platforms, including Search Ads; Display Ads; Video Ads; Shopping Ads and more… As Google Partners, we use these tools on a daily basis and can determine the best tools for your unique needs.
Search Ads are run through Google Adwords, which you will see as the paid adverts that appear above the organic search results on Google and are marked with an ‘Ad’ symbol. These adverts are bought in real-time bidding auctions through Google’s ad network. However, the most expensive adverts don’t always win; Google uses a metric called AdRank to determine paid positions on Google search results.
AdRank combines the bid price with a quality score, which measures the quality of the advert and landing page. Our team are fantastic at creating great ads and landing pages, improving the quality scores and lowering advertising costs.
We are big advocates of using PPC and SEO marketing alongside each other as together can bring about the best results for your website.
PPC Strategy
Here at Alphaquad, we are big advocates of using PPC and SEO marketing alongside each other as they both offer different benefits and together can bring about the best results for your website. Ask yourself – why do you need pay per click advertising? Some of the most common answers are:
To bridge the gap while an SEO campaign is taking effect
If you or your company are running SEO campaigns already, then you may want to consider paid advertising in the meantime to encourage enquiries while you are working on achieving organic positions. Over time as your organic (SEO) rankings improve the PPC budget can then be reduced.
To rank for competitive terms
If you want to rank for highly competitive terms that are occupied by global brands for example, then often the only way to achieve this is by paying for positions. Take care to measure the cost per click carefully to ensure you can still make a sufficient profit – competitive terms usually come with big price tags.
Brand protection
If other people are bidding on your target phrases – or even your brand name – then you may need to consider an advertising campaign regardless of your SEO positions. One of our clients occupied 8 of the top 10 positions on Google for a specific branded search, yet 75% of people weren’t landing on their site (based on Google’s data of how many people were searching for this phrase).
On investigation, we discovered that several other companies were bidding on their branded terms; these adverts are appearing above the organic listings and so the majority of the 75% of visitors going elsewhere are likely to be clicking on them. This should be combated with a branded advert, putting the client back into position 1 on the page.
PPC Management
Although PPC is quick to implement, it should be considered first. PPC works on an auction premise and so it pays to invest some time first in ensuring that you have the best chance of winning. The key to this is quality.
Visitors search → Your advert → Your landing page
All three of these elements need to be related and relevant to each other for your advert to have a good quality score, and this is key to both winning the auction and the costs being lower.
Once you have set up your campaign, refinement is key. PPC will guarantee you extra traffic, but it needs refinement to ensure that it is the right traffic – this is the most common reason that people think PPC doesn’t work for them.
Tasks should include:
- Monitoring and adding negative keywords (don’t waste that budget!)
- Look at search terms report for any keywords driving traffic to your ads that should be added as exact match targets
- Look at GDN placements and pause any that are attracting clicks but not converting
- Ensure bids (where reasonable) are high enough to be top of page
- Look at any keywords that are attracting clicks but not converting – pause them so they don’t drag down account quality or improve the landing page
- Check on keyword quality score and address any that are under 5/10
- Keyword research to find new terms to target
- Check ad schedule to make sure you are still advertising at the right times
- Review ad copy
- Report/check on targets
AlphaQuad have extensive experience in PPC Management so call us now on 01789 491610 to see how we could help you.
Google Display Network
Display Ads are served through the Google Display Network, which can place image, text and media banner ads across any websites using Google’s far-reaching Adsense. These can be used to target new prospective customers or remarket (see below) to existing prospects who have already visited your website.
The key with GDN campaigns is getting your targeting right, and at AlphaQuad there are three main options we recommend, depending on what you want to achieve:
- Keyword targeting – this allows you to show adverts to people who have visited websites with content containing or related to a set of target keywords.
- Custom affinity – this allows you to show adverts to people who have visited specific websites, in this case we usually recommend a mix of competitors and sites that rank organically for your key phrases.
- Managed placements – this allows you to specifically choose websites on the GDN network that you want to appear on. For example, if you want to direct your adverts towards a specific audience (business owners for example) you can choose to target websites that this audience may visit. Although they may not have the need to purchase as they aren’t showing intent as in the first two options, we know they should be within target market so this should make enquiries more qualified, although probably fewer.
Remarketing
Remarketing is a method of targeting people who have already visited your site but not converted; the diagram to the left demonstrates how this works.
Through remarketing, you can target two groups of potential customers – those who came to your website previously but left without converting and those who did convert but you can encourage to become repeat customers.
Remarketing allows visitors who have previously landed on your website to be encouraged back by communicating a relevant, targeted message. These potential customers will be much more likely to convert than visitors who come from other forms of advertising because they were already sufficiently interested in the website to visit it in the first place.
Google research has shown that a remarketing campaign can have a 450% higher clickthrough rate than standard display advertising and has a lower cost per click. Plus, it will also have a positive impact on a site’s overall conversion rate due to the engaged visitor’s being encouraged back to the site.
Remarketing works simply by adding a special cookie to your visitor’s web browser, so you can target your potential customers without the need to capture any personal data, meaning that you do not require any personal details about your prospect in order to communicate with them. It then displays your advert to visitors as they travel around the web (you can choose to opt of appearing on certain website categories if you want to).
There are two forms of remarketing available:
- Display – this makes use of website visitor data to create a list of potential customers who have visited certain pages on a site but have not made a purchase and shows ads to these visitors across the Google Display Network.
- Search – this allows text ads targeted to website visitors to appear in Google search result pages, in a similar way to standard PPC ads but using your remarketing list
Google research has shown a remarketing campaign can have a 450% higher clickthrough rate than standard display advertising.
Facebook advertising
Facebook ads are delivered to people’s news feeds and use a combination of image, text and calls to action.
Facebook offers excellent targeting options, which allows you to ensure that the advertising is being seen by highly-targeted and relevant individuals. Filters are placed on the Facebook adverts could include:
- Gender
- Age
- Target accounts within specific locations
- Income
- People who have children
- Interests
Ready to improve your PPC campaigns?
Talk to us about managing and maintaining your campaigns to ensure that they are performing as well as possible, not wasting budget and bringing the right type of people to your site.
What makes AlphaQuad different from any other PPC Agency?
Often at AlphaQuad we hear of clients who have tried PPC before but ‘it didn’t work’. PPC will guarantee you extra traffic, but it needs refinement to ensure that it is the right traffic – traffic that will engage and convert on your website.
A common issue when using a PPC Agency is that they see PPC as an easy route to making profit – they take a regular fee from clients but once the campaigns are set up they just leave them running. This is a mistake: accounts need regular maintenance to ensure that they are performing as well as possible, not wasting budget and bringing the right type of people to your site. These tasks should include:
Monitoring and adding negative keywords (don’t waste that budget!)
Look at search terms report for any keywords driving traffic to your ads that should be added as exact match targets
Look at GDN placements and pause any that are attracting clicks but not converting
Ensure bids (where reasonable) are high enough to be top of page
Look at any keywords that are attracting clicks but not converting – pause them so they don’t drag down account quality or improve the landing page
Check on keyword quality score and address any that are under 5/10
Keyword research to find new terms to target
Check ad schedule to make sure you are still advertising at the right times
Review ad copy
Report/check on targets
The second approach some agencies take is to sell PPC Marketing to clients by making it as cheap as possible – i.e. we’ll lower your CPC and get more clicks for your budget. At AlphaQuad we prefer to optimise for conversions rather than clicks; sometimes it is better to pay slightly more for better quality traffic that actually converts. For most companies it is sales and leads that they really want, rather than simply more traffic, so at AlphaQuad we measure the success of a campaign on a combination of cost per click, volume of traffic and the number of sales/leads being generated.
AlphaQuad have extensive experience in PPC Marketing services so call us now on 01789 491610 or request your free PPC and Digital Advertising Audit to see how we could help you.
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