Initiating a Pay-Per-Click Campaign
Optillion’s pay-per-click management service covers all aspects and all stages of a pay-per-click campaign. Critically, this includes an assessment of whether pay-per-click advertising will meet a business’s financial objectives.
Pay-Per-Click Assessment
Whilst pay-per-click advertising can be used to promote any online business, its effectiveness as a driver for profit will depend both on the economics of the underlying business and the competitiveness of the marketplace in which it operates. Factors which are considered during the pre-campaign assessment of an e-commerce site include conversion rates, product mix, margins on individual product lines, order size and composition, order fulfilment costs, customer retention and market competition.
The pre pay-per-click assessment will indicate:
- Whether pay-per-click advertising is appropriate for the goods or services being promoted or sold by the website
- Whether there are changes to the website or the underlying business model which need to be implemented prior to the pay-per-click campaign
- Which of the products or services offer the best potential return from pay-per-click advertising
- Whether other Internet Marketing techniques should be considered either in conjunction with, or in place of, a pay-per-click campaign
Advertisement Copywriting
The initial stage of a pay-per-click advertising campaign involves preparing the plain text advertisements. The copy of each pay-per-click advertisement should take account of the product that is being advertised, the keywords or key phrases with which it will be associated and the web page to which it will link. Limited space, often as little as 25 words, is allowed for these text advertisements, which makes clear identification of the product or service being promoted of paramount importance. Every spurious or exploratory click on a pay-per-click advertisement costs the business money, which is why each advertisement should be individually copy written to target a particular product. In contrast, broad ‘catch all’ copywriting and key phrase selection produce low quality, unfocused traffic which is both expensive to maintain and difficult to convert. Optillion’s expert copywriting skills are utilised to compose advertisements which are clear, concise and compelling – key elements in attracting high quality website traffic – and include appropriate stop phrases to prevent costly, unwanted clickthroughs.
Trigger Key Phrase Selection
Extensive key phrase research is carried out to select appropriate trigger key phrases to associate with each advertisement. Key phrase selection for a pay-per-click campaign requires particularly close attention since it is not the clickthrough rate, but rather the product of the average click-through-cost and the conversion rate which determines the cost of customer acquisition. In Google AdWords, however, a higher click through rate will equate to a lower cost-per-click, as a result of the complex ‘bid discount’ formula Google employs which is based on the Vickrey Auction model. Click through rates for individual pay-per-click advertisement are therefore monitored closely and poorly performing advertisements either rewritten to improve their performance or dropped from the campaign. A successful pay-per-click strategy uses highly targeted key phrases and focused advertisements to achieve low click-through-costs and high conversion rates. In comparison, less focused key phrase selection generally produces higher click-through-costs and lower conversion rates. Optillion’s skill lies in combining expert copywriting, keyword selection and bid management to create pay-per-click campaigns which optimise the rate of return on investment – the only true measure of the success of pay-per-click advertising.
