What is Paid Search Marketing?

Paid search engine marketing or Pay Per Click is a unique method of advertising your products or services. If you use the internet for home or business purposes the chances are you’ve used one of the major search engines such as Google or Yahoo.

When you enter a search term into these engines you may have noticed the results are returned in 2 sections. In general the web sites served up to the left of the screen are termed “organic results” (see search engine optimisation for more information) while those on the right are advertising slots similar to advertising space in a paper or magazine.

Pay-per-click is still the only guaranteed method to achieve top search engine rankings. It is true pay for performance advertising because if no one clicks on your ad and goes to your website you don't pay a thing!

In effect, you can pay the search engines to display your advertisement in the top or right hand section of the screen when a person enters a search term that is relevant to your business products / services.  This ensures your service or goods are found near the top of the search results.

Why Search Marketing Delivers a Better ROI...

Statistics show that paid search engine marketing returns up to 35% better ROI than traditional marketing methods. But why is this?

The simple answer is that if you setup and manage it correctly, your advertisement is displayed only to people who are actively looking for the products and services you offer as a result of typing in a relevant search term.

This makes search engine marketing unique compared to advertising in newspapers, TV, radio and any other traditional methods of promoting your business. These rely on wide market exposure in order to attract the very small percentage of people who are actually interested in the products or services you offer.

The ability to measure the success of your campaign, almost in real time, and the comparative ease with which it can be launched compound this advantage and makes search engine marketing a powerful method of helping to achieve your business goals.

Compared to Search Engine Optimisation alone, Pay per Click does have some particular advantages:

• You have a Placement Guarantee - rankings are controlled by the amount you are willing to pay

• PPC has a fast implementation time - you can have your text ads promoting your business in as little as 24 hours whereas organic Search Engine Optimisation may take many months to become fully effective

• The cost is directly controllable - you pay only for the number of clicks or visitors that click on your text ad and come to your website.

• The implementation is relatively easy - there is no need to worry about the complexities of website coding, content and link building which are required for organic Search Engine Optimisation.

PPC is a very effective method of identifying the most conversion focused key words and phrases before embarking on an SEO campaign.

 

How Much Does it Cost?

Unfortunately there isn’t a straight forward answer to this question. Unlike advertising in a magazine or newspaper you don’t pay for advertising space or even when your ad is displayed. The search engines only charge when your advert is clicked on by a person who has typed in a search phrase that matches a term defined within your search engine marketing campaign.

As you can imagine some phrases are entered into search engines more often than others, for example the term “bargain holidays” is typically entered into Yahoo! over 270,000 times per month whilst the term “knitted tank top” is entered less than 100 times. In general the more popular a search phrase the more you will need to bid to have your advertisement prominently displayed in search results.

If you would like an estimate of the likely monthly cost for your business please contact us and we’ll be happy to discuss your requirements.

 

Why Choose WSI to Manage Your Campaign?

Because it’s relatively straight forward to set up a search engine marketing campaign it’s easy to assume that you can create your own advertisement, put it online and then wait for customers to flock to your website.

Unfortunately a commercially successful campaign requires careful research, planning and implementation to ensure you achieve the expected returns. Every detail, including the structure and wording of your advert, the landing page and the keyword phrases all impact the outcome.

It is also necessary to monitor your advertisement at regular intervals and make adjustments to ensure that your advertising budget is being used wisely on words that convert searchers into customers.

WSI has many years experience managing campaigns that deliver a return on investement for our clients. We achieve this because we’ve developed a thorough understanding of the media and so even in the most competitive markets are able to drive down advertising costs while increasing targeted traffic.

WSI will also share with you detailed statistical information showing the performance of your campaign to ensure your objectives are being achieved.

Our Pay Per Click Campaign Management Service includes the following:

• AdWord Keyphrase Analysis - We conduct a keyphrase analysis to determine the most relevant and cost effective keywords/ keyphrases for your Ad(s)

• Management of Multiple Ads over Multiple Adgroups – 50% of Ads displayed at any one time – 50% being tuned based upon performance over previous period.

• Text Ad Copy Creation - We write the text ad used to promote your business for a given keyword/keyphrase. This is the ad that your visitors will see before they come to your website.

• Account Set up - We set up your account with the text ads we have created and implement the budget and bidding guidelines that you have set for your campaign.

• Performance Management - We will manage your campaign, which includes meeting your budget guidelines and managing the bidding process.

• Advice on and/or Building of Landing Pages

 

We measure the performance of each PPC campaign that we manage so that your Return on Investment can be determined. Typically over an agreed period we will track and analyse the following performance data:

 

• The number of impressions (number of times your text ad was displayed)

• The number of clicks through (the number of people who clicked on your ad and came to your website, the percentage known as click-through-rate)

• The number of conversions (the number of people who met your goal such as ordering a product or visiting your contact us page) and the conversion rate

• The average rank of your text ad and the average cost per click.

Throughout the campaign we continue to analyse the above data to ensure that the campaign meets your objectives. We implement any of your approved modifications to the campaign to ensure optimal performance.

Most of our customers set a limited budget, so when we manage Pay per Click campaigns we concentrate getting the most clicks for the budget, not solely on buying the top position on the page at any cost.

Pay Per Click advertising is most successful when used as part of an integrated Internet Marketing System – so be wary of spending lots of money on Pay per Click Ads which may attract visitors to a Website that has a poor conversion rate!