PPC Campaigns - Anyone Can Do It?

On the previous page there was an introduction to why it's vital for companies to have a strong online visibility in search engines such as Google.

The question in the mind of most businesses is: "why should I pay someone else to create and maintain a PPC campaign if I can do it myself?". True indeed! In fact, Google allows any company to create their own PPC campaigns and within a few minutes any company can be up and running with adverts. This is great but it's also a problem.

Google would love all advertisers to promote themselves in the way they recommend. The reality is that Google take advertisers down a path that we at Custwin consider to be uneconomical and ineffective for the business. PPC advertising seems simple but it's actually an extremely deep subject and if we at Custwin are learning more about it every day through all the industry contacts we have, then how can a typical company expect to do that while still running a business?

Take our word for it - any company that sets up their own PPC campaign could come back to Custwin within a couple of weeks and we guarantee that we'll be able to highlight huge holes in that campaign within just a couple of minutes of looking at how it's been set up. That wouldn't be the 'fault' of the company but purely yet another example of how hard it is to get it right if the expertise isn't there.

Contrary to some beliefs, getting good positioning in Google search results under paid advertising (PPC) isn't all about offering good budgets. Google doesn't care much about how much money people have to throw at advertising - Google cares much more about the quality of the advertising so that people click on the adverts and continue to click on other adverts in the Sponsored Links, which all contributes to the long-term success of Google. If Google allowed advertisers to get good positions in the Sponsored Link search results purely based on how much they were prepared to pay for clicks then the Google business would decline due to poor quality advertising creeping in, which leads to dissatisfaction in the searchers, who decide to go to other search engines with better systems.

Let's look at an example, using the following screenshot, which is what appears when someone types the phrase 'Spit Roasts Yorkshire' . . .

In the Sponsored Links there are various advertisers displayed. If YOU were searching for 'Spit Roasts Yorkshire', which advert would you click on first of all? Your time is limited and you want a company that can specifically supply spit roasts in Yorkshire. So the majority of people are going to click on that link titled 'Spit-Roasts Yorkshire' that appears in the yellow 'Sponsored Links' bar - purely because the other links aren't as relevant to their search request.

It'll come as no surprise that the advert shown is for a Custwin client but what will come as a surprise is that the client is paying LESS each time someone clicks on that advert than the other advertisers in the sponsored links. The reason for this is relevance - the more an advert gets clicked on compared to how many people type search phrases, the more Google sees the advert as being of good quality and Google rewards good quality with lower costs per click on the advert. So, if someone searches for spit roasts in Yorkshire and they see an advert that's highly relevant then they're more likely to click on that advert, especially if it appears in the yellow coloured bar above the natural search results.

This is just a small example of where the expertise of Custwin is important. It's easy for any business to create a PPC campaign in Google, or any of the other systems such as Yahoo or MSN, but it's just as easy to lose lots of money by doing it wrong and so getting the perception that 'PPC doesn't work'. PPC DOES work but only if it's done in the right way.

Read on to see how Custwin approach PPC campaigns for clients . . .