PPC Terminology
PPC Search Marketing and the words that we use
PPC Search Marketing is a highly effective, cheap and extremely cost effective form of advertising. The chief advantages of PPC Search Marketing are that it is:-
- Immediate - Your campaign could be live within hours, whereas the other two options could take weeks or months to bear fruit
- Controllable – you decide how much you want to spend and/or how much traffic you want and that is what you get. Other activities cannot guarantee this
- Targeted – you need only advertise to people who are in the market for your offer, e.g., people looking to sell widgets to widget distrubutors in South Yorkshire
- Measurable – You only pay for people who click through to your website. You can measure exactly how many of those go on to buy, and refine your activity accordingly.
- Cheap – A lot of the relevant terms that potential customers may search under will cost you pennies.
- Flexible – Because of all the above features, different phrases/terms and advertising messages can be tried out and tested and the best ones developed both for Pay Per Click and Natural Search Activity.
To achieve optimum results, however, requires a considerable amount of work, understanding of your marketing proposition,
understanding of search engine marketing and thorough understanding of the whole online experience that awaits your customers
and prospective customers.
The Terminology Behind PPC Strategy
PPC search marketing relies on a number of factors and it is important to understand the terms and their interrelationship:-
- Bid Price The maximum amount of money you are willing to bid for a search terms
- CPC The amount of Money you actually pay for someone clicking through from an ad displayed for one of your search terms (this relates to competition, CTR and Quality Score).
- Impressions The number of times your advertisement is shown in response to a search term
- Clicks The amount of times somebody clicks through to your site
- Click Through Rate (CTR) The percentage of times somebody clicks through to your site from an advertisement (clicks/impressions)
- Conversion Rate The percentage of times a visitor buys something from your site
- Keyword The word or phrase somebody uses in a search that you bid for
- Ad Copy The headline, descriptive text and display URL used in your advert to persuade people to visit your site and/or qualify that visitor
- Landing Page/Destination URL The web page that a visitor 'lands' on from an Ad
- Daily Budget The maximum amount of money you are will to spend on AdWords each day
- Geographical Targeting The geographical areas you choose to advertise to
- Relevancy The relevancy of your search term/advertisement/landing page to what someone is actually looking for
- Quality Score Google or Yahoo's scoring of your keyword according to the relevancy of your advertisement and landing page, quality and load factor of your landing page, CTR and various other factors
- Position/Rank Your rank amongst paid listings on a Google/Yahoo search page (1 is at the top)
Successful PPC activity relies on having an understanding of the importance of all these factors and their interrelationship, for example your position/rank and the amount of times your advert is shown relates to your bid price, quality score and daily budget. To appear at the top always cannot be guaranteed but to ensure you have the greatest chance of this you need the highest bid price, quality score and daily budget or the best combination of these factors.
Appearing as the top ranked site is not a guarantee of sales, as online shoppers are becoming increasingly savvy and will compare sites to find the best value offer. Research has shown that in certain businesses, a lower rank can actually increase the conversion rate as consumers that visit lower rated sites are more serious.
To achieve the highest conversion rates you need to:-
You need to get the lowest possible CPC for terms that are more closely related to people researching a purchase whilst retaining visibility and exposure for your site and brand.
Advertising copy needs to be constructed for each search term which emphasise the benefits of your offer and why prospective customers should choose to either buy from you or visit your site which relates to their search term.
These need to direct to appropriate landing pages that answer each customer's questions and points them down a structured and straightforward buying and payment process.
Geographical targeting needs to be used to identify the areas you wish to sell to and those that you don't.
These and a number of other factors are then measured analysed and the campaign is continually and progressively optimised to achieve optimum results and maximise the return on your marketing investment.
To find out if Specialist Online Marketing can help your business. Call us now on 0845 6212068 or ask us to contact you!
