PPC advertising allows you to pay to have your ad listed on the major search engines. They are the sponsored links you find at the top or right side of the search engine results page in for example Google.

The common idea about PPC is that it is so easy – easy to get started, quick and flexible. This is true, however I often experience the lack of strategic thinking and the actual forming of goals for the campaigns. What is the primary intent, the gain and the outcome we want or expect? In my mind you have to look beyond driving traffic and focusing on communicating correctly with your audience in order for your PPC campaigns to be successful. Therefore I would like to give some pointers on issues that is rarely carried out or taken into count when running a PPC campaign.

Landing pages
Relevance and originality are two characteristics that define high-quality Landing Page content. If visitors to your landing pages have clicked through from your ad, then they will have a specific goal in mind, so you need to convince them that your landing page is relevant to that. For example make sure to offer a short and easy path for a user to purchase or receive the product or offer in your ad. . There is little point in spending money attracting people to your site if your pages aren’t doing the job properly. Also be transparent. Your landing page should tie up with the ad that sent customers there in the first place. It is all about the keywords, the message, meeting expectations and making it easy for the visitor to convert.

Testing
Testing performance is a pretty simple piece of advice, but it’s surprising how many advertisers simply do not do this. Even though it sounds like it, testing does not have to be difficult or time consuming at all. Testing a landing page’s effectiveness can be as simple as trying two different titles and snippets or as complicated as changing the design, moving forms around in the layout or trying out different copy texts. Testing is the only sure fire way to ensure that the right elements are available to convert your specific audience of consumers into buyers.

Sending the right message
You may be advertising in the right place at the right time, however, without the right message, you will have a problem. Also, if the copy in your ad is not related to the ongoing debate the result will be bad will for your brand and your invested money will be down the drain! An ad encouraging you to invest more in times of financial crisis, to fly to Bangkok for vacation during the airport strike or to use a selling-argument when advertising on your brands not so nice nickname is not going to be effective!

Cost effectiveness
Always remember to make sure your campaign is cost effective and that you get a good return on investment on your ads. Let me present a really easy to understand example. Your brand name is often one of the best converting keyword phrases in your PPC campaign. Good. However, what will happen if you turn these ads off? Your brand name will, as long as you have a web site that search spiders can crawl and index, rank number one in the organic result. Will the conversions drop or will they stay the same since the searcher is obviously determined to find a service or a product from your brand? If they stay the same, how cost effective was your PPC campaign? My advice is to take a week or two and test this – just to make sure!

Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year from Search Integration!

/Linn

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