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Below is a picture of a typical Search Engine Results Page that is a site that is familiar to everyone in this day and age. The results highlighted in red are paid adverts and research shows that around 1/3 of users will click these for a typical search. Appearing high in the natural search is extremely valuable but can be a time consuming endeavour, the Google adverts or Adwords (also known as ‘Pay Per Click’ or ’Cost Per Click’ advertising) allow you to appear almost instantaneously on page 1 of Google.

How does it work?
To begin a PPC campaign, you need to write a catchy and concise advert and decide on your bid price. This is the price you pay every time someone clicks on your PPC ad in the search engines.
Once you choose the keywords you wish to target, the higher you bid, the higher the spot in those sponsored results spaces you will be. Then when some one searches for those keywords, if you bid high enough, your ad will appear first in the sponsored results and then every time a customer clicks through that ad to get to your site, you will pay the price you bid for the visitor.

Which Keywords?
If you ran a shop selling cheese, it wouldn’t be sensible to target the keyword “cheese” as the cost per click (CPC) for this generic keyword/ phrase would be amazingly high when compared to a more descriptive and relevant keyword/phrase, such as “shropshire blue.”
When choosing your keywords it is important to identify and understand your specific internet business niche, so that you can market directly to people who want the products or services that your business offers. Be careful not to use broad search terms as these are likely to cost more and have a lower rate of converting visitors to business.

Evaluating the Return on Investment (ROI)  
The most important thing to focus on in any PPC campaign is return on investment (ROI). This requires an fastidious approach to costing and a close investigation of the value that the clicks are bringing.

1.  Managing costs – When running a PPC campaign, you need to pay close attention to the various elements that make up the cost. The trick is to manage these costs and ensure that all of the factors work together in order to make outgoing spending much lower than revenues.

It is an error to just throw more money at a campaign and expect there to be more clicks and more quality leads. You have to repeatedly test the campaign time in order to find more ways of optimising it to generate success.

2.  Investigating the value of a click -the important question to ask when aiming to better your ROI is what is the value of a click from the campaign. It can be difficult to work out but it is vital to know.

To calculate the value of a click, the best thing to do is to start with the value of a customer and then work backwards. Work this out and then work your way backwards to see how much you could possibly risk spending on a PPC click in order to eventually acquire a life-long customer like this and how many visitors you need to get to acquire a customer.

A successful pay-per-click campaign has great potential ROI when done correctly. For advice on whether a PPC campaign could be right for your business and an initial ROI forecast, please get in touch with AMJ.