As an agency born out of successful PPC Management we encounter issues all the time on PPC. Anyone who says that they don’t encounter those issues is lying, whether they are an agency or a single PPC advertiser in the middle of sparse Shropshire. However, the way in which issues are overcome is the determination of our continued success.

As Head of Search I am responsible for many issues on PPC and I think that my experiences and solutions can benefit many people who strive for PPC success. I want to share 5 of the top issues that we experience here.

1. Budget constraints: With limited amount of budget you have to make sure that your campaign is watertight otherwise you will run out of budget in minutes or hours and you will not appear consistently throughout the day. Consistency is King on the search engines and the more consistent your appearance the more consistent the performance. Negative keywords are essential for driving down PPC costs and make advertising more relevant. Careful selection of keywords and matching options will round off the best ways to maximise your PPC budget.
2. Should I do PPC on Yahoo and MSN? Yahoo and MSN do remain considerably smaller than Google but there are many benefits to them which should not be overlooked. Many people are unaware that Yahoo accounts for 12% of UK searches and MSN 5% and considering the vast amount of internet searches each day, this is still a massive captive audience. Google has the volume but Yahoo and MSN invariably lead to better results for ROI. Particular verticals such as advertising in Recruitment and Retail are very effective on Yahoo. We have a client spending £15,000 a month on Yahoo and he laps up the orders in high retail vertical. MSN has the highest revenue per search out of all the search engines, i.e. all of the money spent online after doing a search on MSN divided by the number of searches works out better than Google and Yahoo. With MSN you will get a good return but be aware you won’t have the same volume of clicks and orders as Google.
3. High CPCs: If you are worried about high cost per clicks then you need to make sure that your marketing is absolutely watertight. It is worth considering that if you are paying this CPC for a particular keyword then your other competitors will be paying similar. It is all about knowledge of how to work this CPC to best effect for you. Targeted adverts, correct landing pages and the right offers for the traffic that you are targeting are so important for maximising return. If you maximise Return, then CPCs will fall into line with a successful ROI.
4. How does PPC fit in with my other Marketing solutions? This is my job role – it is important for anyone doing PPC to understand how it fits in with other marketing areas. PPC is very effective because it directly taps into what people are thinking. How many times do sales calls get halted at the gatekeeper because all calls are screened regardless of what they are about? With search, you can tape into a constant stream of people all across the world looking for your product or service. Google is a lead generating super-highway – what an amazing opportunity?! In the light of this, other marketing avenues are available. SEO adds strength to PPC (or vice versa, depends on your upbringing!) to make the most of the super-highway. There are other advertising avenues that increase the volume of interested searchers through the search engines. Brand awareness marketing, including newspaper adverts, radio, TV, and online banner adverts are all fantastic for generating knowledge of your company, product or services. This form of marketing is great for driving more searches and sales/leads through search by statistically 22%. Other forms of online marketing awareness include email marketing and affiliate marketing which are again great ways to maximise your sales.
5. I want ROI! People who run their own businesses can be quite petulant and I should really be a parent. If they demand it, they either get it or walk away. It is very important to manage expectations with PPC results however the quality of advertising does correlate to what comes out in return. It is quite simple and if the above are all adhered to then there should be no reason for not getting the best ROI for your business.

Online growth is accelerating. TV, Radio, Newspaper and other traditional advertising solutions are decreasing in the wake of the internet growth. As more and more people become online the internet is becoming the best place to reach people who are most likely to buy products and services. It is important that agencies are sensitive to this change for both their own success and clients’ success.

Your success is our success, so let make it happen.

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Employing ad scheduling and changing the timing rules of your Google campaigns can improve PPC (Pay Per Click) performance dramatically. One example of this is only showing sponsored link ads when you know there will be someone in the office to man the phone and handle enquiries. Another example would be pausing the account during weekends when there is too much casual, browser traffic and too few conversions. Or you can employ a strategy I devised in April 2006 called the ‘Weekday Evening Strategy.’ This simply means running your Google campaign from around 6 pm to 11pm/midnight every weekday.

This has a number of benefits….

1) No wasted clicks from people at work who are casually searching for your product/service while the boss isn’t looking. Unlike some guy who is sitting at his home PC in his dressing gown and boxer shorts, these people are unlikely to have sufficient free time to make a serious, well thought-out enquiry. Also, you wouldn’t expect someone to make a phone enquiry during business hours on their employer’s dime. Moreover, they are unlikely to enter their credit card details and make an online purchase on work computer. The user may have security concerns or this may be explicitly against company policy, even during lunch hours.

2) Cost per clicks (CPCs) are cheaper. By 6 pm the daily budget of your rivals 24/7, “100% of the week” PPC campaigns is used up or, at the very least, it is depleted and dwindling down. Accordingly, ad appearance will slow down and their ads will appear less and less – for instance, their ads may show for 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 searches. So while your rivals have had their budgets exhausted from the hours of 9am - 5pm, you can enter into the fray at 6 pm with a fresh, untouched daily budget. This will make it much cheaper for you to rise above your competitors in the ad rankings and get into the coveted top 3 positions.

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