A PPC advert is most likely to get clicked on if it clearly matches with the keywords that the user searched on. If for example a user searches on ‘Cheap Sony TVs’ and your advert had the title ‘Cheap Sony TVs’ and the description ‘Buy Cheap Sony TVs at the lowest prices - Buy today and get free delivery’ then this would certainly match the search and would get a high click-through rate.
The problem with this is that on PPC adverts you only pay if the person clicks the advert, so to maximize your budget you would need to pre-qualify clicks to know whether the potential customer was really interested in what you advertised. This is often done by adding prices and clarifying the advertisement. For example, the above Sony advert may change to ‘Buy Cheap Sony TVs’ with the full text to ‘Buy Cheap Sony TVs from only $150 for a 21″ widescreen.’ This advert would get fewer clicks as people would only click on it if they were prepared to pay $150 for the lowest end TV. This would ensure that only serious shoppers clicked and therefore increase your post-click conversion and ROI. Most adverts can easily be optimized through a process of A/B testing where different adverts are created and tested against each other to see which one performs the best. This process is repeated to make sure that the adverts are as effective as possible.
Landing Page
After someone clicks an advert it should take them to a page that clearly reflects the content of the advert they selected. For example, a ‘Sony TV Ad’ should click-through to a page that clearly displays the different range of Sony TVs and their prices with strong buying incentives like ‘Free Shipping’. PPC adverts often link to a product page from a PPC advert but this page may not be as effective as a specially created landing page. This is often due to compromises in layout and design to either make product pages more search engine friendly or limitations with ecommerce systems, whereas a landing page can be completely customized to convert customers with a more compelling magazine style layout. A specially designed landing page creates a much better conversion than forcing someone to a home page and then making them search for the products on the site again with the obvious risk of them giving up. It is also important that similar to PPC adverts landing pages should be tested through A/B testing to ensure that they are as effective as possible.
Optimization
A/B Testing or multi-variant testing is currently the best way of optimizing a campaign. Here multiple versions of the campaign are run. Each time a single variable is changed to see which campaign works the best. The more favorable campaign is kept and then another variable changed. The variables could be anything from advertising copy to a bid amount.
Contextual Advertising
PPC click adverts can be delivered on sites other than the search engine itself. These adverts appear on web pages and are automatically selected to best reflect the content of the page where they are run. These contextual adverts have been a boon for developers of smaller web sites and have generated considerable amounts of revenue for them and PPC search engine programs. When setting up adverts on PPC engines there are normally options to enable your adverts to appear on other sites (contextually) or not. Depending on the kind of adverts you have and where they run, it may or may not be effective, so it is essential to track contextual advertising separately.
Bidding Tools
A number of bidding tools are available that let you manage keywords across multiple PPC providers as well as implement more advanced bidding strategies like timed bids. These tools can integrate to the site and make it easier to base your bidding on set ROI or a specific cost per sale.
Bidding Strategies
Advertisers should focus on a strategy that meets with their goal. Often bidding becomes a game based on averages and therefore some keywords are overbid to reach an overall target. For example, a company could set a target of 1,000 orders but it may be easier to sell an inexpensive low value item compared to higher margin items, as a result bids would increase on the low value item to improve the average. This is the main reason that goals need to be clearly defined. There needs to be more than a set revenue or number of orders/bookings but rather a more comprehensive ROI strategy based on profit.
API Integration
The major PPC engines have an Application Programming Interface (API) that enables your systems to directly use the PPC systems. You can normally create new adverts, check keywords, change bids or report on click-throughs. For instance, API integration into your e-commerce system could allow you to disable an advert when stock levels are depleted. It could also be as clever as knowing that someone is about to complete an order for the last stock of an item and switch off adverts to stop traffic in advance of stock running out. Management of bid campaigns can become very time consuming so API integration can take some of the work out of running multiple campaigns across multiple PPC companies, and can allow easier A/B testing to perform continuous campaign optimization.
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