Article by Roy Dovaston

Search engine optimisation (SEO) and the Pay Per Click (PPC) model are both great ways to get your business recognised and in competition with the big names. These two types of advertising your web site are both very powerful and there are some major differences but one thing is for certain if you’re trying to sell a product or service on the internet, it’s a very congested place to be and good practices will be required along with an abundance of patience and effort.

Assuming you’re a new startup business, Pay Per Click will most probably be your first port of call because you can literally have a campaign running within a few minutes. Simply create your PPC account with one of the search engines, create your first campaign and ‘you have lift off’!

Unfortunately for most, the reality that this slap-dash approach generally does not work. There’s no doubt if you throw money at PPC you’ll see your advert but where it really counts in the sales department, will you see exceptional results you were hoping for or even expecting? The harsh reality of PPC is that your bidding against your competitors for keywords which you think are valuable for drawing in visitors to your web site which you hope to convert into a lead or a sale. Some people have described PPC as ‘an art’ which takes time to perfect. Campaigns are broken down into adgroups and with these adgroups you choose a set of keywords which trigger text ads. These little text adverts appear at the top or along the side of the organic search results which we will discuss later. Position of these adverts is critical as not being in a predominant position can affect technical aspects of your campaign. For each keyword you bid on you will be competing with your nearest competitors so it’s wise to track the success of the campaign. There are a couple of ways to do this but if you’re using a well known Pay Per Click model such as Google Adwords then you can obtain tracking code which cleverly reports back when a certain keyword has triggered an event such as a lead or a sale. This little snippet of code is added to the page which ultimately means the desired lead or sale has occurred typically known as your ‘Thank You’ page. The difference between those who track their results and those that do not, separate the amateurs from the professional advertisers. Conversion tracking allows you to make informed decisions. There maybe a keyword which you think is critical to the campaign which in reality might just waste you daily budget away! Pay Per Click can be one of your most effective marketing tools used correctly. On the flipside, Pay Per Click can be your worst enemy if you don’t spend time learning how the model works. With any PPC campaign, tweak the results periodically in line with the conversions and data being reported and eventually you will have a formula tailored specifically to your business.

Many people make the mistake of thinking position one is the only position worth having but this is not necessarily correct. When bidding on keywords to position them higher or lower, this is determined by more than one factor. A keyword which gets a huge amount of impressions may not be the perfect keyword for your business as it may be too broad. For example if you sell personalised wedding gifts then the word personalised wedding gifts springs to mind as a good phrase. However, whilst only testing can tell you whether or not this is genuinely going to drive sales it’d be worth considering a more granular approach. Think, what exact personalised wedding gifts does the shop sell. Maybe you sell personalised compact mirrors for bridesmaids or personalised champagne toasting glasses. If you took the granular keyword approach you’d be able to advertise to people looking specifically looking for a certain product rather than hoping you have a wide enough selection of gifts that the broader keyword ‘personalised wedding gifts’ would work.

One thing is for certain with Pay Per Click, anyone can use it whatever size business you own but managing a successful campaign takes time, effort and skill.

About the Author

Roy Dovaston works at Aimee’s Boutique, an online wedding shop offering a variety of wedding favours as well as gifts and wedding finishing touches.

Tagged with: click • From • Owner's • Perspective • Shop

Filed under: Pay Per Click Tools

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