Pay Per Click Advertising
They can provide instant traffic and allow you to test the effectiveness of your business in real time.
However, pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is not as simple to use as some of the search engines would promote. You should be prepared to undertake some substantial research on keywords, headlines, content, and establishing a budget for your campaign. You should also be prepared to test a number of ads so you can track your results, otherwise, you could just be losing a lot of money very quickly with no real result.
If you are prepared and do some research, pay-per-click can be a very effective mode of advertising.
How does Pay Per Click work?
- Choose the search keywords that will return you ad a result.
- Write the ad.
- Nominate your bid for the keyword/s that you select.
Keywords
You need to know the keywords that you will target to produce an effective PPC campaign. For example, if you sell office products, you might want your ad to appear when someone searches on the words 'photocopier' or 'printer'. However, if you specialise in, and make more profit from Canon Printers, then that would be a better keyword selection to use.
It is best to run different ads for different keywords so that each ad is specific for the particular words you have chosen. To take that a little further, you might test the keywords 'printer' and 'Canon Printer', but then you might also really want to target more specifically 'Canon Printer Sales' or 'Canon Printer Sales in Brisbane' or 'Cheapest Price Canon Printers'. This can get tricky but Aspedia Australia is happy to help you determine which keywords will work best for your business.
Writing the Pay-Per-Click Ad
Probably the most important aspect is the content of the ad. It is extremely important because it needs to capture the attention of the person searching. Therefore, you need to write a concise ad with a compelling heading and content that highlights the benefits and advantages of your products.
To get the best results you should write a very specific ad for the particular keywords that you have chosen. For example, with Canon Printer your heading might be: Largest Range of Canon Printers in Brisbane.
This narrows down the search and attracts the exact market of people who are searching for printers but haven't decided exactly to look at your site. Once the consumer has decided on a product, they might now type in the 'Best Prices for Canon Printers', when your heading might change to: Cheapest Prices on Canon Printers in Brisbane.
Submitting a number of varying ads will benefit your advertising campaign and you will be able to test which ads are getting the best results and being clicked on and which are achieving conversions.
The body of the ad is not as important as the heading, because consumers won't even read the ad unless the heading has captured their attention, but it should still be concise and compelling with specific information about the products or special you are offering.
Aspedia Australia recommends that you use your keyword in the heading to assist with results and increase the click-through rates. Also, we recommend that you don't use the word Free if you want to sell something, otherwise you'll be paying for clicks with people on the lookout for free stuff. If you would like more advice on writing good headlines, please contact us.
Bidding
When bidding you are required to nominate the amount you are willing to pay each time a potential customer clicks on your ad (usually in US dollars). The larger search engines tend not to charge you your maximum bid amount, rather they charge just one cent more than the bid lower than yours. With Google, you don't get to see what the other bids are whereas with Yahoo and MSN you can see the bids of your competitors for the specific words or phrases, which helps in setting a budget and understanding what costs you are up for.
You also have the ability to limit the amount of money you want to spend each day or even each hour, and the search engine will then remove your ad until the specified timeframe has expired, and then it will allow your ad to appear again. You also have the ability to nominate how often you would like your ad to appear per thousand ads displayed.
Aspedia Australia recommends that you bid less on words where potential customers are simply surfing the net and browsing for information, then put more emphasis on the ads you've been able to test and you know that the consumer converts on your site either by purchasing, signing up, booking an appointment or other methods relevant to your business.
Page Placement
You should note that by having the highest bid does not necessarily mean you will appear first. You would think that if you are willing to pay more you should appear first, but search engines place ads in order of what will earn them the most money. However, if you have written an ad that doesn't attract click through, you will continue to be dropped in ranking down the page. So as you can see, we must emphasise the importance of your heading as you really need to ensure that it is captivating and that people are interested enough to click on your ad. This will ensure that you then stay high up on the list.
Publishing
Generally, when you place an ad with Google it should go live within a matter of minutes. Yahoo, MSN and other search engines actually have a person checking the ad before publishing it, so because of the manual approval process, it can take up to two days before it goes live. You should keep this in mind if you are planning to run an ad for that has to be visible for a promotion of a special day/time period.
It is clear that there is a definite balancing act between how much you are willing to pay per click, being aware of what your competitors are doing and updating your headings to be more attractive if you are not getting the desired results.
Aspedia Australia is happy to manage your Pay-Per-Click Campaign for you. You can contact us on 1800 677 656 or
