PPC Management Requires a Professional Touch


Why Pay Per Click (or SEM) Management Requires a Professional Touch

Despite our increasingly virtual world, Pay Per Click (PPC) Management is an often untapped market for both small and large business. Often times when a new marketer does decide to explore it, they encounter nightmarish issues that prevents return on profit, such as:

  • Improperly identifying and stragegizing the goal of the campaign;

  • An incredibly Competitive Market driving up costs to unmanageable levels;

  • A drained budget due to useless clicks;

  • Lack of familiarity with the process (broad match search terms, poor use of negatives);

  • Ineffective Ad Copy driving the wrong sorts of traffic;

  • Unproductive landing pages that lower the chance of conversion;

  • Lack of familiarity with quality score and impression shares, drastically reducing effectiveness.

A good PPC Management team can address all of these issues and set strategic sessions to create industry specific campaigns and leverage all aspects of Search Engine Marketing (SEM). This includes the creation of effective ad copy (A/B testing multiple forms of ad copy to not only increase click- through rate, but targeting and drawing in specific audiences to gain more transactions per click-through, increasing your pay-per-click ROI.)

They will also properly handle what may be the single most important piece of your PPC campaign: Keyword Targeting. By sparsely using broad match keywords (keywords that match against anything that includes them in the search phrase in any order or permutation) with extensive negative keywords (keywords to specifically exclude if they are present in a search), and making heavy use of phrase match keywords (searches must include the phrase in the proper order) and exact match (searches on the specific keyword with nothing else) keywords, a team of experienced managers can push your ROI to its limit.

PPC Management for Mobile is also massive. In 2014 Lisa Raehsler, David Szetela, and several other industry experts predicted the importance of being able to shift to mobile support for PPC ads.

“In 2014, many advertisers saw huge increases in impressions and clicks from smartphones. This trend will continue through 2015. Mobile clicks will often represent the majority of clicks available to advertisers.” – David Szetela

The past 10 years have each been the year of mobile in some way or another, but companies still believe just porting their site over and calling it ‘responsive’ will give users what they want. Look at the recent changes in mobile ads – Google forced our hands by chopping ads in half, as they know users on the go don’t want to read 70 character ads.” – Aaron Levy

(you can read more from PPC Experts here).

With so many experts agreeing on the increase of mobile as an important platform, and with the numbers to back it up, it would be a fiscal misstep to ignore the signs. However, trying to manage it yourself may be a futile act. This requires an intricate knowledge base to leverage. Desktop ad copy cannot be the same as tablet ad copy, which will not be effective on mobile phones. This requires its own set of ad copy.

Landing pages are yet another issue that must be handled. Moving a prospective customer from the ad to your site is not enough to secure a conversion. PPC Management requires the ability to point your prospective customer to your conversion page, as well as the ability to produce an effective follow through. This can be done by making the characteristics of the advertisement stand out on the landing page. This requires the ability to edit landing pages without stepping over Google’s guidelines on what makes a proper landing page.

Yes, Google has guidelines on what is acceptable and actively rewards or penalizes for the adherence, under the quality score metric. A low quality score produces a reduced impression share which lowers the number of potential times your ad is seen by the people you want to see it. It also increases bid overhead, directly affecting your potential return on investment (ROI). Their guidelines include a large variety of factors, from the relevance of the page, to the search term, to the design of the web page itself. Without expert knowledge in the industry, this can become its own minefield.

Speaking of minefields, the skill to properly use Google’s content network can be the difference between a big ROI boost, or a money blackhole. Without the knowledge to carefully target the content network, it can be extremely detrimental as its cheap clicks are consumed in a flurry of pointless activity. While content management is never the strongest form of conversions by percent, a strong PPC Manager can turn it into a source of profit (or branding). They can achieve this with the power of proper targeting and ad copy, that are often completely different from what works in search.

Remarketing is another tool from the content network that can be leveraged to great effect, using the subconscious reinforcement of presence of mind. By showing a product that the customer previously expressed interest in but did not purchase, remarketing ads can bring the interest in that item back to the forefront of a customer’s mind. This form of content marketing has proven to be extremely effective in generating leads and conversions, but is a somewhat advanced technique that many do-it-yourself advertisers feel are over their heads.

All of these forms of advertising get turned on their head when you expand beyond Google. Bing has its own PPC Management quirks, and they hold a decent portion of the search market. Bing is the next largest from Google. The people who use Bing are also quite different, as are the tools and rules involved in operating a Bing account. This also applies when moving to Yahoo or any other search engine.

Speaking of alternative search engines, SEM and thus PPC management are also part of most social networks. Facebook alone has an intricate and at times convoluted system for paid advertising. But Facebook paid advertising allows a level of demographic targeting that makes for an extremely potent leverage when used correctly. When combined with their cheap clicks, the quality of traffic that can be drawn for a low price becomes a surprising contender to Google. They also have a paid system for ‘Boosting’ posts and content, increasing its market propagation and allowing your message to reach parties it might not otherwise.

Other social networks, such as LinkedIn, offer similar advertising tools. An experienced PPC manager can become a force of SEM advertising nature, giving you greater reach and better ROI than far more expensive forms of advertising.

One of the greatest values of an expert manager is the ability to show you what you gained for your investment. Experience using tools such as Google Analytics to delve in and show the differences they made by tagging keywords and setting up goal funnels is both an incredible tool to further leverage your account, and provides powerful peace of mind.

In summary, an experienced PPC Management Team can grant the following benefits for your business:

  • Identify and create a strategic goal for your campaign;

  • Set up an extensive keyword search campaign that blocks out unintended clicks while capturing the parts of the market you need;

  • Use ad copy to attract high conversion traffic, and implement A/B testing to tweak for the constantly adjusting market;

  • Set pages for landing, which includes advising on the optimization of these pages to push up quality score, increasing impression share and ROI;

  • Leverage the content network with what is often entirely different ads and keyphrases, sometimes even landing pages (this will be about the production of bulk);

  • Determine the best use of Remarketing, a powerful psychological tool a PPC Management team can use to reinforce the desire to purchase an item or follow up on a lead generation item;

  • Utilize alternative search engines such as Bing, and optimize their individual and unique systems, including being aware of their demographics and how to utilize them;

  • Take advantage of the powerful demographic targeting tools and unique presentation of Facebook, and possibly other social network pay-per-click advertising, to leverage for conversions;

  • Provide reports on a weekly basis that determine not only where you have been, but how much you have improved and where you should go.

An experienced PPC Management team should also not be afraid to talk to you. Bi-weekly or even weekly meetings should be set up to update you on what’s happening with your account, what the course is, and what you can do to help them get you on the path to success. That’s right, an expert PPC Manager will also tell you what you can do to help them make you successful. Providing them information on your market cycle, season trends, or if they need the help of your web developer will all serve to implement substantial changes.

The value of expert PPC Management is difficult to overstate. Knowledge of how searches work, the market they’re utilized for, and how to beat out the competition will more than pay for itself. While it’s certainly within your capacity to be your own PPC manager, learning this entirely separate technical trade is time consuming, can be quite costly, and isn’t what you went in business to do. So let our SEM experts help you get the most out of the internet. If you have questions, we’ll be more than happy to have a consultation with you.