Let’s take another look at PPC

Posted on the 23rd November 2011

In any e-business strategy or e-commerce campaign you are more than likely going to find a use for PPC or pay-per-click advertising with Google. And while I am sure that many of us have been using it for a while it never does any harm to revisit the basics.

In the old days it used to be that you simply picked a bunch of keywords, wrote a quick ad, put in your credit card details and watched the hits pour in. Nice, wasn’t it. Well that’s all changed. Nowadays, though, PPC has become a complex science. It’s become a robust program full of useful features for advertisers to maximize ROI and achieve business objectives. It’s certainly more complicated than picking keywords and entering a credit card.

Okay, firstly; you should try to write your ad copy so it includes as many of your chosen keywords as possible (while still getting your message across). You’ll have a much better chance of establishing good Quality Scores, which is important to the success of your campaign. This does mean that you need to keep your keyword groups down to 10 or 15 not 100’s.

I’m constantly amazed by how many PPC advertisers don’t test ad copy at all. This is one of the most valuable characteristics of PPC advertising: the facility to test ad copy messaging and see what resonates best with your audience (and better yet, gets the most conversions). So write a couple of ads and compare their performance.

And finally – track your conversions. This is really important if, over time, you want to trim your keywords down so that only the best are left. Both Google and adCenter offer free conversion tracking: it’s a simple script that goes on the “check out” or other page that indicates a visitor has taken a desired action.

By working through these tips, you’ll be on your way to getting the best results you can from your PPC campaign.