Analysis of Online PPC Ads

Introduction:

The online traders or retailers or businessmen invest money in advertising campaigns of their products, but in many cases, they are least concerned about the performance analysis of their ad campaigns. In many cases, the online merchants choose some ad campaign managers or consulting firms & let them handle the ad campaigns, where a lot of questions may remain unanswered. Hence it will be more effective to self monitor the ad campaigns periodically & continuously.

What is Online PPC?

PPC advertising is an increasingly strategic way for online merchants to grow & diversify revenue at a time. In the web, the most popular method of promoting your web site as good as your products is Search Engine Marketing (SEM), which has various techniques like – PPC (Pay-Per-Click), CPC (Cost-Per-Click), PPV (Pay- Per- Visit), (AM) Affiliate Marketing, & EM (E-Mail Marketing). This PPC can be of either text or banner ads. The consulting firms target specific keywords for the PPC ads of an online merchant in order to reach specific audience, because the performance of every business in the web depends on the volume of traffic it caters to. Example – Admaya (a PPC consulting firm) charges an online merchant $0.025 per legitimate click on any text or banner ads of a product. The small and medium scale industries of India & South Asia may advertise their products online via PPC & value add their marketing techniques.

Managing Products.
 

The online merchants must ensure that there exists a continuous process in order to facilitate the flow of information to the Person-In-Charge of their PPC ads, i.e. about new products, outdated products or promotions. This information - both quantitatively & qualitatively, must reach the ad manager well ahead of schedule, for its effective monitoring & evaluation. As new products are added or old products are removed or hot products change, the inventory position of a company varies from time to time. An online shopper or retailer or web publisher affiliated to the company will be definitely frustrated when a huge discounted price is mentioned in an ad, which is not available in the original web site of the company or when an ad guarantees that a particular item is in inventory, but actually the same is out of stock. In view of the above, the money invested on PPC will be wasted, as that will not result in conversions beside the online retailer will have a negative impact of the concerned company. Further, the selection of products must be made weekly either manually or by an automated process.

Review of Ads.

The online ads should be tested invariably for quality improvement. It is important to know which ad responses more to the targeted consumers. The result of this review depends on the quantity of impression the ads generate.                 

Purchase one 14 MP Camera Save 30 % www.example.com	Free! Free! Free! Rush! Rush! Rush! Camera of All sizes   www.example.com
Discounted Price	Inventory Size
Ad Type 1	Ad Type 2

The data generated by above two types of ads should be reviewed every quarter, which may be of following table:

Ad Type 1	Click- Through Rates	Conversion Rate & its Cost	Total Return	Total ROI
Ad Type 2	-do-	-do-	-do-	-do-

Further, there must be a process to review ad campaigns put under the group – “Under Budget Limitation by Google”. If the merchant has profitable ad campaigns put under budget limitation, then he will definitely miss valuable profits & finally revenue.

Reports.

Monthly reports must be generated for verifying spending on online ad campaigns. The variation in data depends on numerous variables. Significant changes may occur due to old or new ad campaigns, budgetary control, market condition, entry of new competitors etc. The actual cause of this change must be investigated & corrected. Sometimes, the online ad campaign may be boosted owing to some unknown/unexpected search/query made in the search boxes.

Example:
 

The ad: 30 % Discount on PQR’s Digital Camera

Query: Digital Camera

This type of queries may improve the revenue & conversion numbers. Hence periodical reports must be generated & verified to look into this matter.

Updating:

In order to keep the online PPC ad campaign fresh & effective, the merchant must read numerous blogs & articles to get new notions & keywords, with reference to the reports generated by his company. The new ideas include site linking, creating Google feeds, linking Google Adwords account & mobile linking. Further, the use of tools like Google Trends is highly beneficial to find out the particular keyword.

Performance:

New ad campaigns should be given at least 03 months time to perform. During this 03 months time, data must be collected to refine & optimize the campaign. Performance can improve significantly over a longer period of time, as ads achieve a better Click-Through-Rates. Further, during this 03 months period, the merchant must test the ad copy, refine keywords, use negative keywords, review search reports, & still if the campaign is performing below break-even, he must invest in a fresh campaign. The online merchant must look for the campaigns that have improved over the previous year, & apply that knowledge to other campaigns. Seasonal trends must be looked into to find out the best possible time for launching seasonal campaigns. Further, the ad campaigns that have shown significantly weaker performance during the current fiscal year must be compared with that of the previous year, & necessary adjustments should be made to improve the performance.

Conclusion:

For online merchants, PPC ad campaigns are becoming an increasingly strategic method to both grow & diversify revenue simultaneously. Hence involvement bonding between the online merchants and the ad consulting firms will definitely improve the profitability of the PPC ad campaigns.

 

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