Mark Simpson | 9 Mar 2007

Pay-per-click campaigns are becoming increasingly popular due to their success and ability to bypass natural search engine listings and drive relevant traffic to a specified web page. We have identified six steps to ensure a successful pay-per-click campaign:

STEP 1: Decide Who You Want To Target?

You are never going to sell your product to everyone in the world. The Yorkie chocolate bar is not marketed towards women and pink mobile phones aren’t designed for men.

One of the most commonly-made mistakes in pay-per-click advertising is to target everyone with your sales message. By more carefully channelling your advert to a niche audience, such as male professionals aged between 30 and 40, you are guaranteeing yourself a higher ‘click-to-sale’ conversion rate.

Work out what you are selling and who you are selling to - then stick to it!


STEP 2: Choose Your Keywords

Choose keywords that will be searched for by your target audience. Decide on a concentrated set of relevant keywords and use ‘negative’ keywords to reduce irrelevant clicks on your advert.

If you do feel the need to use lots of keywords, monitor them closely to see which are working and which aren’t. It might then be worth increasing the cost-per-click of the keywords that are working for you and removing the ones that aren’t.


STEP 3: Qualify Your Clicks

Display your advert in a way which attracts your target audience. Don’t just write ‘We Sell All Kinds Of Motor Vehicles’ - most people have an idea of what they want before they’ve even switched on the computer.

Try and drive the clicker through by advertising something that is unique about the product you are selling, like a special offer - e.g. ‘50% off all Ford Mondeo’s in March’..

If you need help qualifying your clicks then please get in touch.


STEP 4: Define Your Budget

Your budget will be affected by your overall monthly allowance and your desired cost-per-click. The latter is almost always dictated by competition and the value of your products or services. If you are selling a £5000 product, it might be worth paying £5 per click, but if you are selling a £1 or £2 product, your cost per click amount would have to be considerably lower. You can specify a different cost per click for each keyword.

In cases where budget may be tight expert advice will make your spend more cost efficient.


STEP 5: What Will People See When They Click?

When people click through to your website, direct them to a relevant landing page so that they know they have found what they’re looking for. This landing page should be designed specifically to sell your advertised product and should include a call-to-action in the most obvious place - e.g. a ‘buy now’ button or a callback request.

Having a series of landing pages also means that you can take an accurate recording of how many people visit your landing page and where they go from there. Don’t have an effective landing page? Get in touch.


STEP 6: Measure Your Success

Possibly the most important part of running a pay-per-click campaign is monitoring the success you are getting from your campaign.

Taking accurate statistics means you can start asking yourself the questions: -

1. Am I targeting the right people?
2. Am I using the right keywords?
3. Am I getting relevant clicks?
4. Is my budget too high/low?
5. Is my landing page working?

Getting success from a pay-per-click campaign takes patience and a good understanding of how your changes will affect results. If you would like someone to manage your campaign for you and ensure high conversion rates, please get in touch.

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