Page 1
Pay Per Click Advertising: Best Practices
A Guide for CEOs, CIOs and Marketing Professionals
Copyright 漏 2005 - 2006, Beyond Email, Inc. All rights reserved.
Pay Per Click Advertising:
An Overview
Beyond Email, Inc.
7341 W. Friendly Ave. Ste M
Greensboro, NC 27410
Voice: 336-851-0040
Fax: 336-851-0664
www.BeyondEmail. com
editor@BeyondEmail.com
This publication is protected under international and domestic copyright law.
Distribution without consent is strictly prohibited. If you would like authorization to
distribute this publication in its entirety, contact editor@BeyondEmail.com.
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Pay Per Click Advertising: Best Practices
A Guide for CEOs, CIOs and Marketing Professionals
Copyright 漏 2005 - 2006, Beyond Email, Inc. All rights reserved.
A Brief Introduction
It's hard to believe that Search Engine paid advertising has only been
around for a short time. This type of search marketing was introduced
in 2002 by Yahoo. Its beginning was humble enough; to have your
web site undergo express review by Yahoo, you needed to pay the
express fee of $200. That was it. That was essentially the only form of
paid advertising in the search engines.
Then came Pay per Click. Pay per Click is the concept of paying for
the rank you would like to have. Sounds great doesn't it? I'm here to
tell you it is a wonderful thing. Pay per Click (PPC) can be a great
asset in your overall web marketing strategy. It's immediate. It's
flexible. It's measurable.
Now before you get too excited, there are a few downsides to PPC
advertising. It can be confusing and if not closely managed, you can
spend some serious money with little to show for it.
Beyond Email has been providing Pay per Click bid management
results for companies of all sizes since PPC has been around. We know
how it works. We know how to make it work for your business.
We get asked a lot of questions about PPC advertising. Many of the
questions are the same. We know what concerns are top of mind
when it comes to considering a PPC company.
This guide is intended to provide an overview of PPC and address
those questions and concerns. It is not intended to be a "PPC How to
Guide". It is provided for CEOs, CIOs and marketing professionals. It's
intended to demystify PPC advertising and arm you with information so
you can comfortably consider it as part of your overall web marketing
initiatives. Enjoy.
(I welcome your comments and questions. Please send them to
editor@BeyondEmail.com . Visit us online at www.BeyondEmail. com to receive
our Monthly newsletter QuikTips.)
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Pay Per Click Advertising: Best Practices
A Guide for CEOs, CIOs and Marketing Professionals
Copyright 漏 2005 - 2006, Beyond Email, Inc. All rights reserved.
What Is Pay Per Click?
Pay per Click advertising is the process of paying for a high rank in a
search engine. Some of the PPC engines rank based on highest bid;
others use a mixed algorithm of highest bid and click popularity of the
ad for the site. So that we don't get to technical, we will refer to the
highest bid throughout this document. Just remember, in some PPC
engines a few other factors come into play.
For each targeted keyword phrase (hereafter referred to as keyword)
you need to indicate how high you are willing to pay each time
someone clicks on your ad. If you are paying the highest bid for a
keyword, then your site will be listed first. If you have the second
highest bid, your site will be listed second, and so it goes.
Let's take an example. You want to target the keyword "accounting
software for architects". One of your competitors currently holds the
highest bid at .25 cents. To have your listing come before theirs would
require you to bid .26 cents. This bumps them to second place.
So PPC is somewhat like an auction. The grand prize (1st place
position) goes to those firms willing to pay the most.
2nd Place Isn't So Bad
There are significant advantages to being near the top, but it is often
not necessary to be in the 1st position. Your business will receive
nearly the same exposure in 2nd and 3rd place and these positions are
more budget friendly.
Where exactly your listings appear depends on the engine and the
rank you've paid for. First, second and third place paid listings usually
have strategic advantages in placement in that they are listed above
the natural or organic listings. Listings in third place and beyond are
listed to the right of the natural or organic listings.
You can see examples of PPC placement listings for Google on the next
page.
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Pay Per Click Advertising: Best Practices
A Guide for CEOs, CIOs and Marketing Professionals
Copyright 漏 2005 - 2006, Beyond Email, Inc. All rights reserved.
What Does A Keyword Cost?
Well00that depends. As is true in pricing of most things it's based on
supply and demand. The more competitive the industry and the more
companies that want the word, the more expensive it is. Here are
some benchmarks for you to consider.
00In most popular PPC engines, there is a minimum bid of .10
cents.
00The average cost of a keyword (across all types of words and
all industries) is .38 cents.
So you can see, it's all over the board. One of the first steps in a PPC
campaign strategy is a keyword analysis which can provide you with a
list of good phrases to target and the budget required to stay visible in
the phrases.
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Pay Per Click Advertising: Best Practices
A Guide for CEOs, CIOs and Marketing Professionals
Copyright 漏 2005 - 2006, Beyond Email, Inc. All rights reserved.
How Often Should the Bids Be Reviewed?
Paid placement bids are very dynamic. Once your site moves to 1st
position, I can assure you that any competitor worth their weight will
adjust their bids. If your campaign is not being watched closely, your
site will drop. Aggressive PPC campaigns need to be reviewed once a
day at a minimum. Monthly reviews and adjustments are too late.
PPC Seems Expensive
It sounds expensive, sure. But in reality a business is able to get
extremely targeted traffic, at a national level for a few cents a click.
Compare that to the cost of an ad in the phone directory. A phone
directory ad is expensive and they provide exposure to your business
in a limited geographic region with limited space to insert your
information.
Answer these two questions:
00When was the last time you used a search engine to find
something? When we ask this question in our workshops
the answer is usually "this morning".
00When was the last time you pulled out the phone directory
to look up something? The answer? Usually "a couple
weeks ago", at best.
Now, we're not suggesting you stop advertising in the phone directory.
In fact for some businesses, the phone directory is the place to put the
majority of your advertising dollars. However, statistics show (and our
own workshop polls confirm), people are turning first to the search
engines to find what they need. Your business needs to be there. PPC
is a way to get you there fast.
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Pay Per Click Advertising: Best Practices
A Guide for CEOs, CIOs and Marketing Professionals
Copyright 漏 2005 - 2006, Beyond Email, Inc. All rights reserved.
Managing Your PPC Budget
Every PPC campaign should have a budget. The ads will be delivered
in the search engines until the daily budget is reached.
In order for the campaign to be effective, the budget needs to be
sufficient. An effective ad spend budget usually starts at about $400
per month and goes up from there based on the competitiveness of
the industry, geographic target and the number of keywords you are
targeting. If your market is local, your budget can be significantly
lower.
The Real Cost Of A Low Budget
Putting tight constraints on your PPC budget will decrease the
effectiveness of the campaign and can, in fact, render completely
miserable results. Consider the following:
00Your PPC ads will display until your daily budget is reached. If
there is a lot of activity on a phrase, you may run out of your
daily budget by 9 AM. This doesn't give your business exposure
long enough to see results.
00Given a low PPC budget, your campaign will need to be focused
on just a few keyword phrases and may only run in one PPC
engine. Again, this decreases exposure to the point that no
results may be seen.
00A low PPC budget is very difficult to assess the performance of
the campaign due to low click rates.
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Pay Per Click Advertising: Best Practices
A Guide for CEOs, CIOs and Marketing Professionals
Copyright 漏 2005 - 2006, Beyond Email, Inc. All rights reserved.
Do People Click On These Ads?
The results are clear. People do click on the ads. The effectiveness of
the ad is directly related to it's placement on the page. This doesn't
refer to the position, but the placement.
Some ads are displayed "in column" on the left along with natural
search results. These are the best performers, hands down. Other
times, the ads are displayed on the right hand side of the screen. The
click thru rate of the right hand side of search engine real estate is
lower.
Beyond Email frequently conducts workshops on search marketing.
During these workshops, we often take polls about which engines
people are using and if they click on the right hand side. Frequently
we hear "but I never click over there". And that's what we see in the
industry statistics as well. People are more likely to click on left side
"in column" ads than on the right side.
What does this mean to you in your PPC strategy? Pay for 1st or 2nd
position.
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Pay Per Click Advertising: Best Practices
A Guide for CEOs, CIOs and Marketing Professionals
Copyright 漏 2005 - 2006, Beyond Email, Inc. All rights reserved.
PPC Advertising For Local businesses
"All my business is local, I don't need national exposure." PPC isn't
just for national market arenas. A PPC strategy can be crafted to
target a local audience as well. The best part is that a PPC campaign
with a local or regional focus is usually quite inexpensive.
Getting A PPC Campaign Going
The immediacy of PPC gives it a huge advantage when compared to an
organic search engine optimization strategy. A campaign can be up
and running within a couple days.
Click Fraud
"What prevents my competitors from clicking on my ads until my
budget runs out?" This is probably the most often asked question.
The search engines employ technology that allows them to detect
when click fraud is occurring. Essentially they look for repetitive clicks
from the same internet connection within a short period of time. If too
many clicks are received, the clicks are negated and not charged to
your account.
Conversions
A key success metric of PPC campaign is the conversion rate. A
conversion is an action you would like a visitor to take once they get to
your site. In its simplest form, a conversion is an order from an
ecommerce web site.
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Pay Per Click Advertising: Best Practices
A Guide for CEOs, CIOs and Marketing Professionals
Copyright 漏 2005 - 2006, Beyond Email, Inc. All rights reserved.
Setting Up A PPC Strategy
The major elements of a good PPC campaign involves the following:
00Keyword phrases - make sure that the right keywords are
selected
00Bid amounts - determine the bid amount for each phrase to
maintain 1st or 2nd position
00Budget - determine your monthly ad spend budget and
calculate a daily budget
00Ads - wordsmith your ads to help potential visitors "self-
qualify" themselves before clicking
00Landing page - determine which page on your site your ad
will take them to and make sure the page content is very
relevant to the ad placed
Make Sure Your Site Is Ready
Before you spend money on an aggressive PPC campaign, make sure
your site is ready.
00Does it look good?
00Is it easy to navigate around?
00Does it have appropriate landing pages for the ads you will
place?
00Does it have calls to action?
00Does it work properly across the major browsers?
00Do the forms work as expected?
Page 10
Pay Per Click Advertising: Best Practices
A Guide for CEOs, CIOs and Marketing Professionals
Copyright 漏 2005 - 2006, Beyond Email, Inc. All rights reserved.
The Goal
The goal of a Pay per Click strategy is to bring qualified traffic. In PPC
it's not about quantity, it about quality of traffic. Since you are paying
for each click that comes to your site, you want traffic that has the
high potential of converting to a customer.
For example, if you sell outdoor furniture, you don't want to attract
visitors that are looking for just "furniture". All that will do is drive up
your advertising spend. So you need to make sure your ad qualifies
your visitor.
Set performance benchmarks up front. Consider the following:
00Measured by specific keyword phrase
0 Increased revenue per keyword phrase
0 Increased contact us requests or request for quotes
0 Increased newsletter signup requests
00Difficult to measure by specific phrase
0 Increased phone calls to your offices
0 And increased overall web traffic
Tracking Results
PPC campaigns allow enormous trackability. Make sure the
mechanisms are in place to track the performance of each keyword
phrase. Otherwise, how will you know which ones to eliminate?
Review the ROI on each frequently and adjust campaigns according to
results.
Do It Yourself?
Pay per Click advertising can seem like an easy "do it yourself"
strategy. Depending on the competitiveness of your industry, it can
be. However, we've seen companies lose a lot of money with
ineffective PPC strategies that have been self-managed.
A professionally managed PPC strategy can pay for itself with
increased conversion rates.
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Pay Per Click Advertising: Best Practices
A Guide for CEOs, CIOs and Marketing Professionals
Copyright 漏 2005 - 2006, Beyond Email, Inc. All rights reserved.
The List of Don'ts
00Don't pay significantly more for first position, 2nd position is fine
too.
00Don't measure success by clicks: look at conversions.
00Don't consider orders as your only conversion point. Look at all the
conversion points on your site. Perhaps even increase the number
of actions you consider a conversion.
00Don't use a small budget for a campaign with many keywords and
national reach. You'll need a healthy budget to see results.
00Don't overlook the necessity of reviewing PPC results frequently.
A month is a lifetime in a PPC campaign. Your campaign should be
reviewed once a day at the very minimum. In an aggressive
industry, it should be reviewed and adjusted as often as possible.
00Don't pay for PPC bid management services based on a percentage
of your advertising spend. This encourages marketers to spend
more of your ad dollars without consideration for effectiveness of
the campaign.
00Don't settle for campaign reports being provided to you only when
asked. You should receive consistent periodic campaign reporting.
Page 12
Pay Per Click Advertising: Best Practices
A Guide for CEOs, CIOs and Marketing Professionals
Copyright 漏 2005 - 2006, Beyond Email, Inc. All rights reserved.
Wrap It Up
At Beyond Email we see the impact an aggressive search marketing
campaign can have on a business. We see it every day. Gone are the
days of "if you build it they will come". Your web site can be a
significant lead channel into your business, but it takes a well crafted
strategy and often a professional team to implement the strategy.
If this topic has piqued your interest, you may also be interested in
our other "companion" guides. Each of these can be found on our
website at www.BeyondEmail.com/pubs.
00Search Marketing: A Guide for CEOs, CIOs and Marketing
Professionals
00Search Engine Optimization: Best practices
00Choosing a Web Marketing Firm: A Checklist from the Inside
Be sure to signup for our monthly newsletter "Quiktips". Each month
we feature topics and suggestions to keep you ahead of the game.
Signup for Quiktips at www.BeyondEmail.com.
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