Ambergreen offers pay-per-click advice

Ambergreen outlines activities that may help to optimise pay-per-click (PPC) activities, which have had a significant impact on online businesses for more than a decade.

Changes in online marketing have made PPC an activity that is usually recommended as a part of a larger online marketing strategy rather than a stand-alone initiative.

Nevertheless, PPC activities still hold a significant part of revenue generating activities directly affecting performance and bottom lines.

PPC allows for charging for advertising of a site or business on search engines, networks and content sites.

Advertisers typically bid for keyword phrases they determine are relevant for their target market within the search engines, and then pay the host when the ad is clicked.

Alternatively, payment can be charged in the form of a fixed rate, which is a form more typical of content sites and blogs.

The overall aim of PPC activities is to reach potential purchasers and get them to click the ads.

The following are some activities that Ambergreen has found to be helpful when optimising PPC campaigns for some of its clients.

The aim is to reach target markets, so try and eliminate random clicks on the ad; they cost money and generate no revenue.

Focusing on buying and converting terms will help pre-qualify potential purchasers.

Narrowing down broad match options and keywords to 'long tail' terminology will help make sure that people who click on the ad are more likely to convert to actual clients.

Putting prices in the actual ad will also help sift out and qualify potential purchasers.

Provide people with an incentive to give away their email address or contact information.

Since most online purchases are done only after research, the majority of online conversions will visit a site several times before purchasing.

To keep track and interact with potential buyers, getting their contact information can be highly valuable.

This will also save future costs as it will provide direct interaction with qualified leads.

A/B testing can be easily carried out and is an effective way to optimise ads.

Having two or more versions of an ad running simultaneously will allow the measure of performance and determination of which elements of an ad work better for specific products or markets.

Complete the Google Adwords tutorial on how to get started with PPC campaigns.

While it is a time consuming activity, it will provide a good head start in an attempt to understand PPC.

However, keep in mind that the tutorials will show PPC from the Google Adwords perspective, and while those provide a good overview, they are biased.

Conversion tracking is necessary to measure performance and account for the effectiveness of each keyword or phrase used.

While most free tracking mechanisms do not track sales, they will still give a good indication of performance, traffic and volumes.

The most commonly used tracking platform is Google Analytics.

It is fairly comprehensive, will provide most of the information a business might need, and is completely free.

Keep constant track of the campaign, performance and budgets.

While PPC is one of the quickest and easiest ways to make money online, it is labour intensive and requires constant care, updating and optimisation.

Once past the initial stages of PPC or if a company does not have the time/resource to constantly monitor, optimise and keep up with market developments, the best thing to do is to hand activities over to a professional agency with lots of PPC experience.

Make sure the agency can show successful case studies across a wide range of industries and with different clients.

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