Does Pay-Per-Click Advertising Work?

Pay-per-click campaigns are popular online marketing tactics thanks to their simplicity, cost effectiveness and measurability.  The ability to determine which keywords are bringing consumers to your Web site and track their behavior once they’ve landed on your site can have profound effects on a company's bottom line.

Want the secrets to creating a successful pay-per-click program?  Read on.

  1. Where do you want to be seen? Determine the search engine on which you want to appear, be it Google or Yahoo!, or a combination of niche search engines like Ask.com.  Each search engine’s pay-per-click program has its own idiosyncrasies, so find out how your online ad will be ranked on the search results page.  c21 recently initiated a pay-per-click advertising campaign for its student housing client University House, and experimented with both Yahoo! and Google to determine the best fit.  After a two-week trial period, the Google campaign had resulted in significantly more clicks, partially due to the fact that its audience skews younger, which was our target.  As a result, c21 decided to allocate the entire pay-per-click budget to Google.
  1. Who is your audience?  The more you know about your audience, the more strategic you can be in your pay-per-click approach, and the better your chances for success.  Aside from the Web sites your audience frequents, where do they live, do business and more? Many pay-per-click programs offer the choice of national or local exposure - right down to specific zip codes.  c21 pursued a national campaign for University House’s Madison, WI communities because the university attracts students from all over the country, while in Birmingham, AL we recommended a more targeted campaign because the affiliated university primarily caters to local students.
  1. What is your budget? Determine your marketing goals and objectives to help you set a realistic daily budget.  The budget for pay-per-click programs can be altered at any time, but setting a monthly or quarterly budget requires more planning and allows less flexibility.  c21 recommended a conservative budget for its student housing client’s pay-per-click campaign, since this was the first time the company had used this online marketing technique.  The budget was set at less than $5 per day with incremental increases to accommodate additional relevant keyword searches. 
  1. How will you cut through the clutter? Choose your keywords and ad copy carefully, and remember the “quality over quantity” rule.  Though there typically is no limit on the number of keywords or phrases you can incorporate into your pay-per-click campaign, it’s quality words that are going to result in clicks.  When developing keywords, think about which keywords your consumer would search for to find your product or service.  The ad copy should mirror your existing marketing materials, and several different versions of the ad should be created.  Technology is getting smarter all the time - the search engines will automatically detect which ad version is most popular with consumers, and display it more frequently on the search results page.  For example, c21 determined that people who clicked on the University House ads were most interested in the communities’ proximity to the college campuses, so we capitalized on this by altering the campaign’s keywords accordingly to achieve greater success.
  1. Measure, measure, measure.  The nature of online media means that it is constantly evolving and changing, and marketers need to do the same.  Continually monitor the performance of your keywords and ad copy, and make changes as needed.  The first few weeks of the campaign will be experimental, but it will soon become clear which actions are resulting in conversions.  Pay-per-click campaign reports provide a wealth of data, including the popularity of keywords and ads, industry cycles and trends and more.  A testament to the importance of measuring and refining the various facets of a pay-per-click campaign, c21 grew its student housing client’s Google pay-per-click program from approximately 60 clicks to more than 1,130 over a span of seven months.

If you are interested in initiating an online pay-per-click campaign as part of your company's marketing mix, please contact Sharon Goldmacher at sgoldmacher@c21pr.com or 404.814.1330. 

 

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