pay per click management, Perth, Scotland

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is one of the key elements of e-Marketing. It has been so successful that it now gives Google over 95% of its revenue, and has helped turn it into the global force it is today. It is also incredibly successful at reaching new audiences of potential customers at a time when they are demonstrating a need you can satisfy. You only pay if someone clicks on your ad, so you only pay if someone is interested in what you have to offer.

PPC campaigns are particularly good for businesses that are part of a franchise and which have their own page on the main franchise website. This is because in many instances the franchisee has no control over how the content on ‘their’ page is optimised to help drive traffic. With PPC franchisees can invest in driving traffic to their specific webpage through a method that doesn’t require sign-off from the main franchise.

There are a few downsides to PPC. Once the budget is gone the advert disappears. There is no lasting legacy for the search engine optimisation of your website, and this makes it less effective in the long term than a proper search engine optimisation review. Read our pages ‘Search Engine Optimisation – On-Site’ and ‘Search Engine Optimisation – Off-Site’ to learn more about how to improve traffic on a more permanent basis.

So what actually happens in a PPC campaign? When we work with Google Adword, the basics are as follows:

• We plan and build your campaign with you (as below), then implement it;
• When a customer clicks on your advert as it appears in the ‘sponsored links’ (the ads that run horizontally along the top of the page or down the right-hand side of the Google search results),  Google debits your pre-paid budget based on an algorithm of nine signals that derive the final ‘cost per click’. It’s not as simple as bidding higher than a competitor for a keyword to get your advert ranked higher;
• When your budget runs out, your ad is removed from Google;
• We review and report on the results of the campaign together, based on:
  • impressions
  • the ‘click through ratio’ (CTR);
  • user actions on the ‘click through’ keyword
  • display network sites that sent traffic to you.

How do we tailor a PPC campaign for your business?  For a Google Adword campaign we work with you to:

• Establish what keywords your potential customers are interested in and searching for;
• Establish the daily budget;
• Establish what geographic location you want your adverts to be shown in. (We can target your ad to only be seen by potential clients searching for a key phrase within, say, a 30-mile radius around a given city, or a certain distance from your shop.)
• Confirm what format your advert should be: simple text, a static image or an interactive image (multi-purpose units [MPU]);
• Decide what languages you want your ad to be visible for, given that only 10% of the planet speaks English;
• Decide if you want your advert shown on both Google Search and their Display Network (that is, on YouTube and over a million display partners who monetise their website through Google Adsense); Determine when you can best convert a sale, and what time of day you expect your customers to be searching;
• Control your impressions. There is no cost attached to someone viewing your advert; you are only billed if they click. If you only want a certain number of impressions from the Display Network, we can agree this in advance;
• Review your client profile including:
  • Whether or not your potential clients are using iPhones, iPods, iPads or other smart mobile devices. If so, we will ensure your advert is to be included beyond traditional desktop and laptop computers
  • Whether or not your potential clients fit into a demographic. The Display Network can be managed so that your ad can be seen by, for instance, women aged 18–24 or people over 55, through a process called Demographic Bidding.

No matter what your budget, Google Adword campaigns with Inspire IT Services are always tailored to your needs. To help monitor the effectiveness of your campaign we also can set ‘Goals with Google Adwords’ to funnel traffic from specific ads and report on what journey the user took. We can see if a user travelled from your ad to the Confirmation Checkout page – and thus get proof that the PPC campaign has been successful.

Many of our clients can testify to the effectiveness of a PPC campaign. We recently set up a similar campaign for the Metro Rod franchise owner for Perthshire, Fife and Tayside. After expert planning, we tailored the campaign to suit the client’s specific needs. Within a day he had received three enquiries and converted two of them into sales. The cost of the Adword budget for three months plus Inspire’s fee was paid from the first converted job, demonstrating tremendous value.