It’s always handy to know the advantages and disadvantages of your chosen advertising medium - especially when the MD asks why you’ve done it that way. With that in mind here are 5 cons closely followed by 5 pros. Yes the title is “The Pros and Cons” but we like to finish on a positive:
Con - Requires some technical knowledge
Despite all of the search engines declaring PPC as simple as sliced bread, it does require some technical knowledge to ensure the tracking is functional, landing pages are optimised etc etc.
Con - Requires constant monitoring
To ensure value for money campaigns require almost constant monitoring. Competitors change their bid values daily, search volumes change daily, and businesses change daily. Your campaigns needs to reflect the needs of your business - often on a daily or weekly basis.
Con - There are no guarantees
Pay Per Click does not guarantee you sales. It does guarantee to give you traffic but that assumes there are sufficient searches to give you that traffic - which is not guaranteed!
Con - Increasing competition means increasing budget
As you can imagine when you start to bid on a keyword/phrase that is popular most people will simple increase the value of their bid to gain the top positions. This leads to increasing costs.
Con - Belief PPC is a pancea for all ills..
Scraping the barrel but we had to have a fifth one! Still there is the belief out there that PPC will deliver all the promises that search engine optimisation failed to - high rankings and lots of traffic. Pay per click should be one part of your internet strategy, SEO should be another.
Pro - You only pay for what you get
Pay per click is exactly that - you pay when someone clicks on your ad.
Pro - You only spend what you can afford
Pay Per Click is cheap to setup and your expense is limited to the daily budgets you set. Campaigns can be paused and resumed, allowing you time to evaluate your results.
Pro - Accurate targeting
Unlike other forms of advertings, such as newspapers and magazines, PPC is targetted by its nature. A search for hotels in Manchester returns relevant Hotel sites because that is what they are looking for. Averts can also be targetted by countries, cities, time slots and languages.
Pro - Fast set up and immediate results
It is widely known that SEO takes a while to generate decent rankings. Pay Per Click is immediate to set up and can start delivering within days. For this reason many people temporarily increase their PPC budgets until the natural listings start to provide traffic.
Pro - Accurate Trackability
As you would expect you can track keywords/phrases to determine which are the most cost effective and which contribute most to your objectives. Accurate tracking is vital to get the most from your Pay Per Click campaign.
Whilst we have manipulated the pros and cons to give us and equal list, there are far more pros than cons. PPC is another route to market and a value tool for driving qualified traffic.
Pay Per Click - So what is it?
Pay Per Click (PPC) is an advertising system offered by search engines in which the advertiser pays every time someone clicks on their advert - hence the term. PPC adverts appear along side natural listings within search engine results, most commonly at the top, bottom and right hand side of the page.
Where will my ad appear?
Advertiser bid on keywords or phrases. In general the higher the bid, the higher the position. Some search engines, including Google Adwords, use additional factors:
- The Click Through Rate (CTR) which is a measure of how popular your ad is
- The relevance of your ad to the keywords you are bidding on.
- The relevance of your landing page to the keywords you are bidding on - the landing page is the page I get on your website when I click on your ad.
These factors help determine the amount you pay - the cost per click (CPC). The less relevant your ad and content, the higher you will have to pay to obtain the higher positions. Better, more relevant ads and content, will cost less for the same position.
How do I make my Pay Per Click campaign successful?
Success has to be measured. Before you start any PPC campaign you need complete 2 tasks:
A) Clearly define what the objective of your campaign is
Are you trying to increase awareness; launch a new product; increase turnover or increase profit. Your overall objective will drive the rest of your campaign.
B) Clearly define what success looks like to you
Clear measures of success before you start will help you review your progress. Examples include increase traffic by 100%; increase enquiries by 20 per week; grow newsletter subscribers by 5 per day.
PPC - Setting up the Campaign
Regardless of the objective all campaigns follow the same generic process:
- Campaign Structure - structuring your campaign around products or brands will reviewing performance and future bidding easier. Subdivide into geographical regions if necessary.
- Keyword Selection - keywords/phrases should be selected according to budget and relevance. Choose keywords that people are actually using rather than what you believe they should be.
- Ad Copy - use enticing copy that gets your message across. The more revevant the copy the less your cost per click (CPC) will be.
- Landing Pages - create landing pages specifically for the search term. Not only does this ensure your pages are relevant, it reassures your potential customers they have come to the right page. Give them all the information they need here and overcome the common objectives in your copy.
- Tracking - tracking performance is essential to determine if the campaign is on target. Tracking also highlights areas where improvement is possible.
PPC - Running and Evaluating Campaign Performance
There are 3 main elements which will affect the performance of your campaign. Small changes can produce dramatic results.
- Keywords - identify the keywords which lead to the highest conversion and focus on these. Don’t forget to review the poor performers each time you change the ad copy or landing page.
- Ad Copy - continually test new copy. Adopt an attitude of continuous improvement using a champion/challenger approach. Run new copy against the existing ones. If the new copy outperforms the old, then out with the old.
- Landing Page - again continually test new copy. Ensure common objections are handled and that the customer is given clear instructions on what to do next. Optimise your landing pages to improve their relevance.
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