Pay-Per-Click and Google Adwords

Pay-per-click is an accountable method of generating qualified web traffic for your website.  For each visitor you receive, you pay a pre-determined fee.  Therefore, you can determine in advance how much traffic you want to receive, and at what cost.

Usually, such traffic is sourced through a type of search listing, although sometimes the traffic may come through a content channel instead.

Google Adwords is probably the most famous example of Pay-per-click marketing.  Text-ads appear to the right of (and sometime above) the normal search results in Google’s search result pages.  Ads are matched to a users search, and so are relevant to the person viewing them, maximising the possibility of a click.

Clearly, some subjects are more competitive than others – mortgages, for example, is a more competitive subject than pet toys.  The more competitive a subject, the more it will cost to advertise websites within that subject, not least because the order that ads are displayed is dependant partly on a "bidding" system.

Google Adwords as an On-Off Tap

As Google Adwords are accountable, you can determine a very simple cost-of-sale model and use this to determine whether or not Google Adwords is a feasible marketing strategy.  If it proves to be, mathematically speaking, and you have the capacity to service the resulting customers, then Google Adwords is an excellent source of easy-win, affordable business.  If not, then it clearly isn’t suitable.  Many businesses sit on the borderline where sometime it is feasible and sometimes not.  If this is the case, it is entirely sensible only to use Google Adwords at selected times – it is possible to switch your campaigns on and off like a tap, in order to achieve this.

Google Adwords Cost-of-Sale

Determining an acceptable cost-of-sale is probably the single most important marketing exercise any business should undertake.  Any marketing that costs you more than this acceptable value to make a sale should be discouraged, and any activity that can generate sales with less than this acceptable cost should be encouraged.

As Google Adwords is accountable, it is straightforward to determine whether your cost-of-sale is above or below an acceptable level.

Optimising Google Adwords

However, simply switching Adwords on or off is not your only option. Adwords is highly configurable and there are many subtle things that you can do that can affect the resulting cost-of-sale you can achieve.  For example, you can raise or lower bids (your traffic might alter drastically as a result, but the conversion to sale might not differ by much).  Or you might adjust the text of your ads, or the keywords on which you bid, or your daily budget – each of these, and many other aspects, can have profound effects on the performance of your Google Adwords effectiveness.

Find Out More

If you are running, or planning to run, a Google Adwords campaign, and would be interested in our help, call us during office hours on 0871 900 8407 or contact us now.