Pay Per Click Management (PPC) Services
Paid search or pay per click (PPC) advertising is text ads that show up on the very top and right hand side (and sometimes at the bottom) of the search engine results pages under the label Sponsored Links. In contrast to search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click is the other side of search engine marketing. All of the big three search engines—Google, Yahoo, and Bing (MSN), have paid search programs.
Paid search is an auction-based system of advertising in which the advertiser bids or specifies the maximum amount of money they are willing to pay for a click on their ad for a certain keyword or phrase.
What makes paid search such an effective way to advertise is that, as opposed to traditional interruptive media such as newspapers, magazines, radio, and television, you are positioning your ad to be seen by someone who is actively searching for what you have to offer.
Paid search also allows you more control over which terms your site shows for than organic search. With organic search (SEO), it is the search engine algorithms that determine where your site ranks. Thus, you may rank very well for some of your keywords but not for others. While it’s certainly true that you can use SEO to optimize your pages to rank well for particular core terms, there are no guarantees that your site will show up high in the organic search rankings—or stay there if they are already there.
We have managed PPC campaigns with monthly spends from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars and everything in between. Our comprehensive pay per click management services run the full-spectrum of activities.
Listed below is our usual menu of pay per click services. If you are interested in working with us, please fill out the form located on our Get A Quote page and we will contact you.
Existing Campaign Analysis & PPC Action Plan
In working with new clients, our first steps are to analyze any existing PPC campaigns if there are any. If no current campaigns exist, we schedule a client call to get an assessment of your goals and objectives with regard to search engine marketing.
We then work on creating a PPC action plan in conjunction with the client’s goals and objectives. Many times, we will recommend re-building existing campaigns if they are not constructed optimally for conversions. Additionally, we almost always find the need for more adequate keyword research (which can complement SEO efforts as well).
When we have determined the course of action, we then begin working on the campaigns. The main activities that we focus on are as follows:
Keyword Research
Just as with search engine optimization, keyword research is the foundation of any pay per click campaign. The main difference between choosing keywords for SEO and choosing keywords for PPC is that PPC allows advertisers to bid on as few or as many keywords as they like. Contrast this with SEO where one single page on your web site might be optimized for only one or two phrases. In this way, PPC is an excellent way to test effective keywords that can then be used later in SEO efforts.
Depending on the competition for the keyword, costs per click can have a broad range. Advertisers are not able to see what other advertisers are bidding on particular keywords, but by running campaigns can get a general feel for the click costs among various positions on the page.
PPC campaigns can and should be constructed with a broad range of possible keywords that can gradually be narrowed down when advertisers have found the keywords that convert customers and leads the best.
Campaign Build & Launch
When the keyword research is finished, we then begin constructing the campaign. Constructing a new campaign takes time if it is done correctly. The list of keywords must be narrowed down and sorted into relevant groups. Once the keywords have been sorted, the campaign begins to take shape and the ad copy is written.
When the campaign has been built offline, we will then upload it to the PPC networks. As Google is the dominant player in web search, we usually begin any campaigns on Google but later expand to other networks if we see fit.
Conversion Tracking
When you are paying of every click, it is absolutely crucial to know which of your keywords result in conversions and which result in wasted clicks. For this reason, we highly recommend installing conversion tracking. All of the big 3 PPC networks support conversion tracking.
We work with you to determine your desired conversion action if you don’t already know and to design a system for tracking your conversions down to the keyword. Over time, the keywords that have poor conversion rates can be eliminated while keywords with great conversion rates can be optimized for an even higher conversion rate.
Landing Page Design, Testing, Tuning
Along with keywords and ad copy, the third key pillar to success with pay per click advertising is the landing page. The landing page is the page a searcher is taken to when they click on your ad.
Landing page optimization is an entire discipline unto itself and most people are often astounded to hear about how small changes of the crucial landing page elements can result in dramatic shifts in conversion rates. By merely testing a few key elements on a landing page, the best possible combination of elements can be determined to literally skyrocket conversion rates.
We work closely with clients to design landing pages that will result in high conversion rates and then continually test the critical landing page elements for even higher conversion rates. We employ the Google Website Optimizer for these tests and use both A/B and multivariate testing methods.
Ongoing Campaign Management
Some people we work with just want us to set up campaigns and let them continue to manage them while others prefer to completely outsource all campaign management to us for an extended period of time.
We are open to several different kinds of arrangements but we prefer, at minimum, that clients agree to work with us for at least 3 months so that we can set them up for at least initial success. Like search engine optimization, pay per click marketing performs best when it is done over time and continually refined for better and better performance. Over longer periods of time, the optimization process becomes more subtle but in the initial stages, campaigns need to be watched very closely.