Got Click? Launching and Optimizing Your Pay-Per-Click Campaign

Marshaling traffic to your website — and away from your more savvy competition — is digital marketing’s end game. A paid search, or pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, is the winning play strategy.

Search marketing comes in two main flavors — Organic and Paid. Organic traffic requires search engine optimization (SEO), which may take months to achieve quality results. When you need traffic now, Paid Search is the most targeted and cost-effective.

Paid Search works as follows — buyers see the text of display ad posted on the search results of Google, Yahoo!, and Bing because they are relevant to the topic they’re searching. You only pay when a user clicks on the ad to go to your site for more details — hence the name “pay-per-click”.

Organic and Paid search are not polar opposites. In fact, Paid Search goes hand-in-hand with Organic Search. When a Paid display ad appears on the same page with Organic results, click-through rates (CTR) are higher. Consider these stats based on data from Google.

• The higher the organic result listing, the higher the CTR of your Paid Search campaign.

• A full 34% of paid search clicks happen with an organic result from the same company on the same page.

• When Paid Search ads are paused, a whopping 89% of ad-generated traffic is not replaced by organic clicks.

• Even with a top organic search ranking, paid ads deliver 50% of incremental clicks on average.

Without Paid Search ad support, click potential for Organic Search results is limited.

And what’s driving paid search ad clicks the most?  Mobile.

By the end of 2012, mobile will account for 25% of all paid search clicks, according to Marin Software’s State of Mobile Search in the U.S. report. By this time next year, Marin reports, the global smart mobile market will have one billion devices, all searching for your business service or product.

The CPC for mobile-based search traffic is lower than that for desktops, making those devices an even more favorable market for their ad spend’s performance.

When launching a Paid Search campaign, implement these best practices for maximum results:

1. Define campaign objective. Figure out the role of Search within your overall marketing strategy. How will it drive additional sales or leads? Identify goals with achievable targets over a realistic timeframe.

2. Settle on a budget. Determine the target number of new sales per month from paid search and the preferred cost per conversion. From there, it is possible to calculate the minimum number of clicks needed to ensure a decent return on your investment.

3. Select keywords strategically. Use a keyword tool to identify the top keywords for your campaign. Google Keyword Tool provides data on the estimated cost-per-click and monthly traffic; Google Analytics reveals what keywords already bring traffic to your site. These resources and others help classify keywords into unique groups for developing and refining advertising themes.

4. Create compelling ads. The effectiveness and power of Paid Search lies in the poetry of short, compelling ad copy that sparks emotion and inspires an engaged user to click. One word or twist of phrase can make all the difference.  Use action words (buy, find, get, discover, learn) to draw the attention of users engaged in a specific search. Direct, powerful verbs create clear calls to action, directing users’ focus to your ads and ultimately your site.

5. Define negative keywords. Maximize effectiveness by filtering out negative, dissimilar keywords that deliver unqualified traffic. A thorough negative keyword list ensures only relevant search queries show up and ad spend goes to the pre-qualified users you want entering your sales funnel.

6. Target an audience. Focus your ads by location, demographics, and language via Google's Content Network. This capability allows you to better reach your target market, as well as serves as a measuring tool for tracking the performance of ads across networks.

7. Evaluate and optimize. Chart impression data versus the rise and fall of cost per click (CPCs) for insight into competitive volume, market demand, and brand power. Evaluate account structure to make sure it’s current with objectives. Update your sitelinks as your website changes.