Pay Per Click (PPC) / Paid Search Marketing

Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) | What is Pay per Click Advertising (PPC)?

The paid advertisements shown as “Sponsored Links” are known as Pay per Click (PPC) ads. PPC is a pricing structure whereby an advertiser pays for an ad each time it is clicked on. This may also be called Cost per Click (CPC). PPC is an effective method of search advertising because the advertiser only pays for their ad when a user clicks on it, therefore only paying when a customer is already interested in the ad.

PPC Programmes

Search engines may offer their own Pay Per Click (PPC) programme or platform. The 3 major search engines all offer this service.

Google AdWords, Yahoo search marketing, Microsoft adCenter

These services allow an advertiser to run several advertising campaigns within an account, and within a campaign several ad groups, which may in turn contain a whole set of keywords per ad. This means that an advertiser can manage all the different areas of the site they wish to advertise in one account.

 

Creating a PPC Campaign

When creating a PPC campaign ad it is important to consider:

Keyword Analysis and Research

This step involves searching the best and the most relative keywords those are to be focused for your website. We will conduct a keyword competitive analysis; perform keyword research to analyse which ones are to be focused for the campaign.

The popularity of the keywords you choose. There is no point in choosing keywords that receive minimal or no searches.

The relevance of the keywords to the site the ad is linked to. There is a tool on all the Pay Per Click programmes that enables you search keyword lists relevant to your ads, showing you the usage of the keywords so that it is easy to see which are most popular.

Budget

You will need to decide on a daily budget for your PPC campaign. This is how much per day you want to allocate to your ads. Budget is given on a monthly basis, so it is important to remember that this will affect your daily budget depending on how many days are in the month. Budget indirectly affects the ad position and click through rates.

Advertising Copy for Impact

A good copy of the advertised ad on search result will be the key, whether someone clicks on your website or not. It is important to convey a customer that you are offering genuine products and services with the promise of best results/outcome.

Ad Character Restrictions

Which ever PPC platform you use, there will be restrictions on the amount of characters you may use in the title, description and URL.

Google AdWords – Title: max 25 characters; description: max 35 characters per line for each of the 2 allocated lines; URL: max 35 characters.

Yahoo! Search Marketing – Title: max 40 characters; description: max 70 characters; URL max 35 characters

Microsoft AdCenter – Title: max 25 characters; description: max 70 characters; URL: max 35 characters
Editorial Guidelines

It is very important to stick to the editorial guidelines laid out by the PPC platform. These may include correct spelling, grammar and punctuation, no unnecessary capitalisation or repetition of words, characters or punctuation.

Also included may be rules against offensive language, pornography, promotion of drugs and alcohol, and promotion of violence. There may also be strict rules against affiliating your ad with the platform provider. Because there are many editorial guidelines, and they vary from one platform provider to the next it would be advisable to thoroughly check these before constructing your ad. As well as highlighting what may not be included in the ad, the guidelines also give pointers as to what will enhance your ad. For example, insuring that your ad contains relevant information and the URL works correctly.

Landing Page URL

It is important to consider which page you would like to link to on your site with relevance to the ad. For example, if the keywords in the ad relate to the business in general, you would want the URL to link to the homepage of your site. If, however, the keywords in your ad relate to a specific product you would want the URL to link to the page on your site where that product is displayed.

This is important because if the searcher is looking for a specific product, but is then linked to homepage they will need to look up the product on your site, thus having to spend more time finding the product they have searched for.

Reports & Tracking Traffic

Statistics tools and traffic tracking codes are used in the website to track the movements and time duration of a customers visit. This helps in daily monitoring of the traffic on your website!

PPC platforms provide a report service which enables the advertiser to view specific areas of the campaign to determine which of their ads are receiving the most clicks, and what the click through rates (CTR) are. CTR is the number of clicks the ad receives divided by the number of times the add is shown (impressions).

Analytics

A report alone, however, cannot show a true ROI because although you can see how many clicks your ads have received, you cannot truly know how effective the ads are without knowing how the clicks are converting to sales. In order to determine exactly how effective a campaign is you need to know which ads have been converted to sales, which keywords have had the most conversions, and at what times (of day, week, month) conversions have occurred. To do this you will need to use a third party analytics platform, such as. An analytics programme will record all the movements of a user, from which ad they clicked, to which pages they visited within the site and when a sale has occurred. This means that you can see exactly which ads and keywords have converted to sales. Click to find out more.

Managing Bids

The placed Bid on your website will have to be revised regularly in order to stay ahead of the competition. Website ranking shuffles without any notice and it is very important to keep a track and make immediate changes when others increase their bids and move ahead of you in rankings.
Reviewing and Reporting

Reviewing of the campaign is done at the end of every week or the way it is agreed with the client. Finally we prepare a report of the project that can be discussed with you in details for any further enhancements.

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Some of the elements of our PPC service include:

Extensive Research pre-launch

The better we understand your brand and marketplace, the better Return on Investment we can achieve for you.

Managing, Testing and Monitoring

A structured testing program is produced, including targeted keywords data mining, creative ad copy, geo-targeting, day parting, and deep linking.

Keyword Data Mining from all major Search Engines

The key factors in sourcing keywords are ensuring that the keywords are relevant to the products and services offered on the website as well as people actively using them to search the internet.

  • Sourcing data and seasonality on how users actually search.
  • Generation of keywords from Digital Clarity’s extensive database and market tools
  • Copywriting of descriptions for each key word, for each search engine (All keywords, title and descriptions will be sent to the client for approval)
  • Reviewing the size volume and cost of the relevant client market

Submission & Liaison with Search Engines

  • Submission of key words, titles and descriptions to all search engines (Upon submission to search engines, the client will be informed of ‘live’ date)
  • As a normal search engine campaign consists of running on more than one engine it is imperative to keep in continual contact with the various engines.
  • For many advertisers this is a challenging prospect especially with so many advertisers now using search as a source of traffic and sales generation. This becomes increasingly complex when one tries to do this with different engines, with different technologies across different countries. Digital Clarity Media provides you all the contact you need under one roof.

Dedicated day-to-day management

Once the campaign is live, Digital Clarity provides Dedicated Account Management. Amongst other behind the scenes work, this includes:

  • A dedicated account manager
  • An internal point of contact and in route to all the major search engines.
  • Strategic planning and execution
  • Review and Recommendation
  • Competitor monitoring
  • Seasonality awareness and strategy application
  • Total Bid Optimisation
  • Total Bid Management
  • In depth reporting and analysis

With an experienced account manager looking after your account, you can be assured of continual monitoring and optimisation of your campaign.  Digital Clarity use a variety of dedicated and approved bid management systems that continually optimise and manage bids, in most cases, every hour as well as human monitoring to ensure your account is running to target.

These Bid Optimisation systems sit alongside a recommended third party Search Management tool to achieve cost effective Return On Investment (ROI) and optimise Return On Advertising Spend (ROAS). For any queries, help and support will always be available from your main point of contact and the team.

Intelligent Budget Allocation

We thoroughly investigate ROI expectations and funds are intelligently allocated to each search engine down to an ad group level, to ensure that clients are at the optimal advantage to achieve the highest ROI possible

In-depth reporting & analysis

Essential to the monitoring of performance and recommendation of improvement the reporting and analysis that Digital Clarity offers is tailored specifically to each unique clients needs. This offers as simple or in depth data to the client as required.

Regular reporting includes:

  • Weekly/monthly reports including evaluation and optimisation suggestions
  • Pay Per Click analysis
  • Online marketing platform analysis
  • Periodic goal and target strategy review
  • Market performance updates and campaign comparison
  • Market change and competitor trends reviews
  • Keyword and Copy analysis and A to B testing

Digital Clarity Australia reports are designed to present exactly the information you need at your fingertips, allowing you total control of your campaigns.  Our philosophy of managing campaigns and communicating in a transparent fashion allows clients to benefit from our services without sacrificing their position or knowledge. Digital Clarity can provide a bespoke through the line digital solution that uses the best of direct response platforms to achieve a seamless ROI.

Tracking & Bid Technology

We choose the right campaign management tool for each client, as mentioned above we were pivotal in designing tracking & bid software but we are not tied to any one vendor. Digital Clarity Media use a variety of dedicated and approved bid management systems that continually optimise and manage bids, in most cases, every hour.

These systems sit alongside a recommended third party Search Management tool to achieve cost effective return on your investment (ROI) and optimise return on advertising spend (ROAS).

Integration

We incorporate all of your offline advertising messages as well as online activity and schedule it into our campaigns to ensure brand consistency and higher conversion rates

Digital Clarity Medias focus on one thing - generating ROI for the client

 

Search Advertising Technology

There is an increasing array of search management technology available in the market place today. Historically, banner based ad servers have acquired search management stand alone solutions to provide a seamless process for online advertising management and reporting.

Augmented to these platforms are Analytics based platforms that are developing serious joined up search platform to compliment their analytics offering.

As the landscape changes and the search engines ad more process, functionality and open access to their API – a new breed of more sophisticated modelling tools are being developed to help online marketing professional garner the best information from the plethora of data produced.

Digital Clarity has a vast knowledge of most major search management platforms as well as specialist vehicles that concentrate on specific areas of the buying cycle. Over the years, the team at Digital Clarity have helped develop systems as well as act on a consultancy level to advise clients and agencies on the best system for their needs.

Taking an agnostic approach to technology allows for an unbiased approach with the clients needs being central to any technology platform chosen.

Please call or email to find out more on how along with the right people and process, technology can ad value to your business.

Tracking & Reporting

Digital Clarity reports are designed to present exactly the information you need at your fingertips, allowing you total control of your campaigns. Our philosophy of managing campaigns and communicating in a transparent fashion allows clients to benefit from our services without sacrificing their position or knowledge. Digital Clarity can provide a bespoke through the line digital solution that uses the best of direct response platforms to achieve a seamless Return on Investment.

Regular reporting includes:

  • Weekly/monthly reports including evaluation and optimisation suggestions
  • Pay per Click media analysis
  • Periodic ROI-based strategy review
  • Market performance updates and campaign comparison
  • Market change and competitor trends reviews
  • Bespoke to your requirements

In conclusion, Digital Clarity provides an ‘integrated’ online marketing service. Using search marketing as the core, Digital Clarity can seamlessly integrate other online platforms to achieve optimum customer acquisition. We provide Strategic Evaluation, Campaign ‘uplift’ Strategies and fully Account Managed Solutions using the best of cutting edge technology.
A bespoke analytics process can be applied to determine success metrics.

Campaign Management

An Integrated Approach

Digital Clarity has a variety of teams that work in tandem to ensure a clear line of communication both internally and to our clients.

Our teams are broken into:

Research & Data Mining | Account Management | Technology Migration ↦ Integration | Search Engine Implementation | Client Services | Reporting & Analytics | Training & Support

All of the above are focused around a client centric model allowing for transparency and open communication. Digital Clarity provides an ‘integrated’ online marketing service. Using search marketing as the core, Digital Clarity can seamlessly integrate other online platforms to achieve optimum customer acquisition.

We provide Strategic Evaluation, Campaign ‘uplift’ Strategies and fully Account Managed Solutions using the best of cutting edge technology. Over the last five years Digital Clarity has helped companies maximise the true potential of the digital economy.W: digital-clarity.com

Analytics

The team at Digital Clarity approaches the analysis of advertising data as a 3 dimensional approach. Sometime collating data from offline data (such as print media) as well as other broadcast media and then summarising data with the intent to extract useful information and develop conclusions.

Looking at various Data sets, the team can then reverse engineer results to the original data mining of keyword sets (e.g. for a paid search campaign) and draw powerful conclusions as to the potency of the campaign. When all elements are considered and analysed, only then can there be a true reflection of actual return on investment (ROI)

Management

In the day to day management of complex online advertising campaigns, a vast amount of data in inevitably produced. It is crucial that the data captured is not only accurate and up to date but that it can be analysed and re-applied top the campaign to make a difference.

Using a variety of different data capture models, analytics platforms and industry knowledge, the team at Digital Clarity are continually refining and analysing trends and user behaviour to ad impact to our clients advertising campaigns.

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7 Step Digital Clarity Media Approach to PPC

Step 1: Accessing Your Website

To start the process Digital Clarity Media’s entire campaign account team are required to spend a few hours accessing your site, this to ensure the entire PPC team are aware of your potential campaign with Digital Clarity Media, we will quickly discover the benefits of using your site, and identify any pitfalls.

The campaign managers will also have a briefing meeting with our e-commerce division ‘Engage’ to ensure that if any pitfalls are discovered they can easily be overcome.

We all know how important a good design is to converting visitors into customers and we’ll ensure your site is geared to do so. Driving qualified customers to your site is Digital Clarity Media’s core function. The purpose of your site is to make it as easy as possible for a visitor to achieve what they (and you) want - that's why we focus on usability, and gear your PPC efforts accordingly.

Step 2: Evaluating Your PPC Approach

A lot of Digital Clarity Media’s customers are aware of PPC and a lot have tried it with varying success. Our team of PPC experts that have worked with some of the largest online players will strip apart any reports you have to the bare bones and intensively examine areas that need focusing upon to ensure you are getting the most from PPC.

Step 3: Identifying Marketing Goals, Budget, Competitors & Examining the Market Place

Identifying Marketing Goals:

A dedicated team will then be hand picked from our team members that closely fit your company. They will talk to you and understand your PPC goals:

We will develop specific online marketing goals for the products & services you are trying to promote. We’ll develop with you practical & achievable results that you’d like to achieve over a given time period, these might include:

  • Increasing web sales
  • Lowering my PPC costs but increasing web sales
  • Increasing traffic to your site to build your brand
  • Increasing downloads & sign ups
  • Driving people to your high street store
  • The list goes on & on
Budget:

We can work to any budget; we will listen to what you say and discuss with you how much of your marketing budget you wish to invest to help you achieve your goals. We can help you make this decision by providing you with details of expected results in within our proposal. Generally there are two ways to determine your budget:

  1. Choosing a Test Budget to start with – Determine how much of your marketing budget you can afford to effectively test the market, we’ll help by providing suggestions on a range of differing budgets
  2. Choose a figure based on the revenue you expect to achieve from promoting online – If you expect to receive $1,000 a week from PPC, how much are you prepared to budget to achieve this.
Competitors & Examining the Market Place

The dedicated team then start to examine your market as a whole both online & offline. They will identify any competitors and examine what it is that they are doing; Identifying if can you benefit from following them? Or if you can you benefit more from focusing your efforts differently and having your competitors play catch up? This dedicated team will also highlight any market trends that you can take advantage of, and also be wary of.

Competitors

Step 4: The Digital Clarity Media’s Proposal

PPC Charts

When we fully understand all there is to understand about your website, company, market & trends. We will write our proposal and send it to you for your consideration.

Generally to effectively understand your company & market fully in order to propose a service that we feel will succeed it will take up to 3 days to complete.

Digital Clarity Media are the type of company that focuses on quality & accountable accuracy. Please note that there are a lot of cowboys out there that will fire you back a proposal within a day, we aren’t that type of company!

Step 5: Designing the Account Structures for Each Engine

Most engines operate with three levels:

Account Level
Campaign Level
Adgroup Level

We have designed and manage some of the most profitable & complex accounts online today. It takes years of experience & expertise to effectively design a profitable structure:

This involves:

  • Keyword Data Mining from all major search engines
  • Sourcing data and seasonality on how users actually search.
  • A refreshed list of key words from Digital Clarity Media’s extensive database
  • Copywriting of new descriptions for each key word, for each search engine (All key words, title and descriptions will be sent to the client for approval)
Submission & Liaison with Search Engines
  • Submission of key words, titles and descriptions to all search engines (Upon submission to search engines, the client will be informed of ‘live’ date)
  • As a normal search engine campaign consists of running on more than one engine it is imperative to keep in continual contact with the various engines.

We will design a complex structure for each engine, then these structures are sent off to our dedicated account mangers at the specific engine directly for their feedback and suggestion before the account is uploaded and ready to be set live when you’re ready.

We thoroughly investigate ROI expectations and funds are intelligently allocated to each search engine down to an ad group level, to ensure that clients are at the optimal advantage to achieve the highest ROI possible

This process can take up to 5 days to complete, it is time well spent.

Step 6: Kick off Monitoring & Reporting

Once the accounts are set live we monitor the campaigns 24 hours a day. We have the added benefit of having offices fully staffed with certified PPC experts located in Australia & the UK which means that your accounts are managed by a team of experts 24 hours a day, so you can rest easy and know that while you rest, a team on the other side of the world is watching & optimising your account.

So your accounts are live, lets get you board level reports straight away…

Digital Clarity Media reports are designed to present exactly the information you need at your fingertips, allowing you total control of your campaigns.

We bespoke our reports to communicate in a transparent fashion allowing clients to benefit from our services without sacrificing their position or knowledge.

We will design our reports to fit in with your board level report, all of our reports are bespoke, designed specifically to show the information our clients need, with analysis and action points so you can safely gauge our performance. Graph

Step 7: Daily Monitoring & Optimising

This is Digital Clarity Media’s core service and speciality; monitoring & optimising your PPC accounts is what we have built our reputation on; so much so that it has allowed us to expand internationally. We constantly analyse campaigns and optimise rankings and creative to ensure conversions increase – FULL STOP!

You will have 24 hour access to our team.

  • Weekly / monthly reports including evaluation and optimisation suggestions and actions
  • Pay per Click media analysis
  • Periodic ROI-based strategy review
  • Market performance updates and campaign comparisons
  • Market change and competitor trends reviews
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