October 21, 2010, Posted by Chris Kullar

21 oct Posted by Chris Kullar

PPC advertising is one of the key tactics used in an integrated online marketing strategy to drive traffic to both new and existing sites.  Optimizing PPC campaigns means the marketer has to judiciously balance growing the number of site visitors with the effective purchase of keywords to ensure that ROI does not drop in response to an increase in traffic.

Key points to consider when designing and implementing PPC campaigns:

1. Focus on relevancy - your PPC campaigns should reflect your enterprises’ core value proposition.  If, for example, you are not the lowest priced vendor in your category, but provide other discrete value to the buyer, experiment with ads that articulate specific benefits.  For example, you could structure ads that emphasize customer service, exclusivity and unique hard to find merchandise.
2. Test, test, test - split test to optimize your PPC ads as well as split test your landing pages.  The former can help you maximize click through rates (CTR) while the latter enables you to optimize for conversion.  The ad with the highest CTR may not be the ad that drives the best conversion rate.  Balancing these two factors can help produce optimal ROI.
3. Leverage and Plan - there are numerous search engines one can use in developing and executing PPC campaigns.  However, we recommend Google AdWords as the search engine that provides the most business possibility.  Also consider Yahoo as a potential candidate for your PPC campaigns.  Setting up effective campaigns is time consuming and focusing on the leaders provides leverage, efficiency and faster payback. Plan on expanding your campaign after a test period of one or two months. At this point you should be in a position to evaluate the key parameters that indicate success.  What keywords provide an acceptable ROI? Can your ads be refined and improved?  Have you fully explored all the keyword suggestion tools to ensure you have a comprehensive list of keywords?  Can you optimize your spend to identify keywords that are less expensive but still provide a good return?  Have you eliminated unsuitable traffic by using the correct negative keywords?
4. Continuous Improvement and Refinement - PPC campaign success and optimization is highly dependent on revisiting the above questions periodically and making the necessary adjustments and tuning to continue to generate traffic that provides a solid ROI.  There are no templates or rigid fomulae that assure success in this extremely important and potentially profitable area.

 

Chris Kullar

Customer Engagement Manager, SysIQ.Inc

Expert in account management and marketing at SysIQ. Prior he worked in various positions for CCI, NewTerra, Colo.com, ROIdirect.com and Tymnet. Chris earned a Bachelor or Arts degree in Economics from Rockford College and a MUP from San Jose State University.

Posted by Chris Kullar