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Monday, May 14th, 2012
Paid search advertising can be a bit of a minefield – tactics which work on one PPC campaign aren’t always transferrable to another.
Managing profitable pay per click services involves a lot of foresight, analysis, and just a touch of guess-work. This experimentalism is absolutely imperative to ensure your paid ads are displaying to the right people at the right times, and getting the right results. Without experimenting, most PPC strategies will fail. Or, at least, fail to meet their potential.
Google’s always been acutely aware that the more tools it can give to search marketers, the more people are likely to spend on search marketing.
If you can analyse properly – to see where money is best spent and best avoided – you can afford to invest more in paid ads as you know you’re more likely to get the conversions you want.
As such, Google’s AdWords tool has, for some time, given search advertisers ways to project and forecast how a PPC ad may work at both the keyword and ad group level. Now Google’s improved its projection tools, allowing advertisers to forecast simulations at campaign level, too.
The change is designed to give advertisers a way to create reports on potential future campaigns even without the requisite level of data to do so at keyword or ad group level.
The tool allows advertisers to swap variables to check effects – such as lowering all bids by a certain percentage.
The system feeds back on how an advertiser can then use the data on a real campaign – with projections on potential necessary campaign budget and a downloadable summary. An AdWords Editor file is also available showing simulated bid amounts and applicable groups.
The changes have already gone live – check the Opportunities section of AdWords.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, Pay Per Click Services, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
Tags: ad group, advertising, adwords, campaign, display, Google, Keywords, Paid Ads, Pay Per Click (PPC), PPC, projection, search marketing, SEM, SEO, simulation, tools
Posted in Pay Per Click Marketing
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Friday, April 20th, 2012
Pay per click marketing strategies have been given a boost by a new Google tool which claims to show whether a paid ad has been viewed or not.
PPC, or paid search, involves a strategic approach to keywords and display. Unlike organic online marketing, known as search engine optimisation or SEO, which can take months to build, PPC provides a far quicker click journey directly to a sale.
Users searching for a specific products can be given a choice of paid ads – so if they’re searching because they know they want to buy, marketers give customers a direct avenue to the purchase the products they want.
It’s therefore important to ensure potential customers get the right information about right products when they click your PPC ads. Getting the correct landing page could mean the difference between a sale or a bounce.
Whilst strategies understandably focus on these important facets of paid-for internet marketing: like click rate, bounce rate, and conversions, it’s not always been possible to report on the actual visibility of an advert.
Now, Google has said a new tool will give marketers even more information about their PPC marketing campaigns.
The Active View addition is designed to show marketers when an ad has been viewed – meaning advertisers could only pay for adverts that users see. Of course, traditional marketing has always had a more “fish in barrel” approach: pay for advertising (on TV, in newspapers, on radio), and hope that interested customers see or hear your ad.
Online marketing provides a greater opportunity to measure ad engagement. The effectiveness of a full-page ad in a national newspaper could be measured by a spike in inquiries or sales following publication, but this is hardly hard and fast analysis.
If Google is able to program Active View to give a real statistical analysis of ad views – rather than an educated guess – it could become an invaluable way to cut spend and increase conversions at the same time.
Google’s quantification will use the Interactive Advertising Bureau standard: a “seen ad” will be seen on-screen for more than a second.
Even without the ability to track ad views, paid search marketing remains an incredibly effective form of internet marketing: one which can create incredible returns with the right strategic approach.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a provider of SEO Services & Pay Per Click strategies.
Tags: internet marketing, online marketing, Pay Per Click (PPC), PPC, search advertising, SEO
Posted in Pay Per Click Marketing
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Tuesday, August 16th, 2011
It is well known that pay per click marketing campaigns can be expensive and time-consuming. The ultimate reward of a fantastic ROI (return on investment), however, makes it all worth it.
Writing for American Express Open Forum, Stacey Politi has created a list; featuring ten steps that can be taken to improve pay per click marketing campaigns and, more importantly, ROI.
Here are just a few of the tips provided by Politi:
- Coax people in with an offer they can’t refuse – The PPC market is inundated with competition, therefore you need to make your ad different. Politi states: “Are you running a promotion? Is shipping free? Offer value and then capitalize on it with a call-to-action.” By including terms like ‘learn more’, searchers are more likely to act on the advert.
- It needs testing – You can’t just expect to start up a PPC campaign and expect the best results, it just doesn’t work like that. Intricate testing and in-depth analysis are necessary. Testing a number of adverts at the same time is also important, however remember to run just one variable per time and ensure that the testing phase is long enough to gather good data – this will only help in the long run.
- Be aware of your Google quality score – Google Quality Score is the overall determiner of your AdWords account ranking, and this is vastly important as it helps to determine where on the search page your ad will feature. If you stick to the rules set by Google AdWords on a consistent basis, your score is more likely to be higher. A sudden drop in the score should set the alarm bells ringing and shouldn’t be ignored.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, Pay Per Click Services, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
Tags: adwords, Google Quality Score, marketing, Pay Per Click (PPC)
Posted in Pay Per Click Marketing
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Monday, July 18th, 2011
As far as pay per click services on the Internet go, Google AdWords is the dominant force.
But bidding for keywords at a higher price on the service doesn’t always provide a greater advantage however.
Founder of ROI Advisors, Frank Rumbauskas, states that: “Unlike other pay-per-click engines where the bid price is the sole factor in determining ad position, Adwords includes many factors that really give a small business a chance against bigger players.”
He goes on to suggest three ways in which a high click-through rate can be achieved:
Include Keyword Macros: A common feature in AdWords, this allows for adverts to be created so that a user’s search phrase features as your ad headline.
By using keyword macros, adverts will appear to be more relevant to the end user, thus resulting in a better click-through rate.
Make use of Small Ad Groups: Small Ad Groups with similarly relevant keywords and ad copy will usually result in a high click-through rate.
Rambauskas says that keyword lists should have “tightly common themes” and that the main keywords of that theme should be included in the ad body.
Disable adverts that aren’t performing well: Although you might wish to test ad variations, if an ad is activated and you see it’s not performing, disable it “before it throws your entire campaign off.”
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, PPC, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
Tags: Google AdWords, internet advertising, Pay Per Click (PPC)
Posted in Pay Per Click Marketing
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Thursday, July 14th, 2011
A recent report by Efficient Frontier has shown that pay per click advert prices on Facebook are rising.
According to the Global Digital Marketing Performance Report for Q2 of 2011, the average cost of purchasing a PPC advert increased by 22 per cent.
In terms of the effect the rise will have on pay per click marketing, the report states, “the longer brands wait to engage with consumers on Facebook, the more expensive it will become to acquire fans.”
Other interesting statistics that could be taken from the report included that for every 17,000 new fans that a brand achieved, on average they saw an additional one extra comment on their Facebook posts.
While the amount spent on Facebook advertising might be increasing, generally only 5 per cent of a search-marketing budget is invested – though the report notes that during promotions of a time-sensitive nature this can increase to around 25 per cent.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a provider of SEO Services & Pay Per Click strategies.
Tags: facebook, Pay Per Click (PPC)
Posted in Pay Per Click Marketing
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Friday, May 6th, 2011
Today comes the release of AdWords Editor Version 9.0, with a number of new features designed to help you make changes across accounts more efficiently and manage new ad features, such as Ad Sitelinks and high-end mobile targeting, at scale.
For companies utilising pay per click marketing the development comes with added features such as:
Scalably manage Ad Sitelinks
Version 9.0 provides full support for Ad Sitelinks, including downloading and uploading to your account, making edits, checking changes, and importing and exporting.
Improved Add/Update Multiple and Import CSV tools
When entering new data using the Add/Update Multiple tool, you can now enter your data with the columns in any order, assign the appropriate headers to each column, select the option to remember the order of your columns for your next import, and approve or cancel the changes in the account in one click.
Set high-end mobile targeting options
AdWords Editor now supports the ability to set campaigns to target high-end mobile devices (including Android, iPhone, iPad, and Palm) and carriers in Campaign Settings.
Better manage multiple accounts and MCCs
To help you better manage multiple accounts, AdWords Editor now offers sort and search for accounts, select and remove multiple accounts, and a new dropdown menu above the Account tree in AdWords Editor that displays recently accessed accounts, so you can quickly switch to any one of them.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a provider of SEO Services & Pay Per Click strategies.
Tags: adwords, Pay Per Click (PPC)
Posted in Pay Per Click Marketing
