For those already using Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising on internet search engines, Optimease is offering a PPC management service that will be self-financing from the savings made.

Martin Elliot  from Optimease explains: “A PPC campaign is very easy for anyone to set up. But it is equally easy to over-pay for the responses you receive, and for a small business, it can be difficult to manage the campaign properly.”

“The internet is a dynamic, ever-changing environment that requires constant monitoring in order to deliver good marketing results. At Optimease, we have extensive experience of managing PPC campaigns for clients large and small, and as a result, we frequently cut campaign costs for clients, while delivering better responses for them.” The Optimease PPC offer means a business need spend no more, but ask Optimease to deliver a better return from the same investment.

The flip side of paying for online advertising is ensuring a website is visible and ranks highly in search engines, and here Optimease is offering its Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) services on a monthly fee basis. Says Martin Elliot: “By agreeing a monthly fee commitment, small business clients can see rapid results for what they are paying, without overstretching their marketing resources.”

“By combining judicious use of PPC and SEO, it is possible for a company’s website to deliver a stream of high quality sales or business leads, month after month. There is no reason why a small business, with a well planned and executed internet marketing campaign, cannot match the online results of far larger competitors.”

Over £2 billion was spent on online advertising in the UK during 2006, £1.2 billion of that was spent on paid-for search listings.

However, it is widely accepted that you cannot merely build a website, publish it online and expect commercial success. So what can you do to ensure your website is reaching your target audience and isn’t lost among millions of others? This introduction to search engine marketing from Smallbusiness.co.uk and Seamus Ryan of Optimease will point you in the right direction.

What is search engine marketing?

Search engine marketing (SEM) is the most popular form of internet marketing. Encompassing a range of methods, it attempts to promote a website by increasing its visibility in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

The most commonly used SEM methods are:

Search engine optimisation (SEO) – The goal of SEO is to increase the quantity and quality of traffic to a website via ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ search results by increasing the site’s ranking in the SERPs.

Pay per click (PPC) – PPC enables advertisers to create custom adverts related to the keywords of their choice in the sponsored section of the SERPs and on content-related websites within the search engine’s advertising network.

Advertisers bid on the keywords they deem relevant to their website and then pay for each click on their ad, which results in a visit to their website. This advertising model is not only employed by the major search engines, but also by shopping comparison sites such as PriceRunner, Shopping.com and Kelkoo.

SEO or PPC, which one is for me?

This subject has sparked much debate online, but the short answer is both. Studies have shown that running SEO and PPC campaigns concurrently yields a greater return on investment than relying solely on either method.

Look out for coming articles in which we will look at SEO and PPC in more detail.

The benefits:

PPC

• Flexibility – Campaigns can be created quickly with your ads appearing within minutes. You can also choose who sees your ads based on demographics, times of the day or days of the week. The ability to set daily, weekly or monthly budget means you shouldn’t overspend.
• Reliability – You can control the position and content of your ad. Your ad will continue to appear until your daily budget is depleted.

SEO

• Visibility – Eye tracking studies have shown that users’ eyes are generally attracted to the top-left search results which are predominately natural as opposed to the top-right search results which are generally paid for.
• Popularity – Due to many users’ scepticism of paid adverts, natural listings attract more clicks.
• Affordability – Once an SEO campaign begins, it can be less expensive to maintain on an ongoing basis.
• Longevity – Once you achieve high rankings they can be maintained for months or even years.

1. Keywords

The marketplace is dynamic, so you need to constantly question and test the effectiveness of different keywords and campaign timings, feeding the results back in a bid to continually drive down the cost per lead generated. At any point in time, competitors could start a new campaign, reducing the effectiveness of terms that have served you well to date. Can your reports spot when this happens?

2. Dedicated management

Running your Pay Per Click campaign needs a dedicated e-marketer with fast responses. Don’t rely on the IT department, because they understand computers, or a marketing team that plans campaigns months ahead. Pay Per Click is all about today. By having a specialist focused on managing your campaign, you can use a combination of planned input, and real time reactions to the marketplace,to ensure your Pay Per Click spend maintains and builds traffic to your website. Effective campaigns need planned management, on a very regular basis.

3. Budget

Pay Per Click can be highly cost-effective, and many companies spend substantial sums on it because it delivers carefully filtered inquiries with a high likelihood of conversion. But before you bid on some more search terms, have you calculated what return you are really getting? And what is the price you should be paying for your online inquiries to ensure you stay ahead of your peers?

4. Quality vs quantity

Is your campaign directed at hooking those few, ideal, high spending customers who you know will buy your product, or is it broadly based in order to build inquiries, generate newsletter leads and seek to grow online sales? Pay Per Click can deliver both, you just need to be sure what you are looking for, and plan not only your spend, but also your handling and measurement of inquiries.

5. Co-ordination

Do your keywords deliver inquirers to the right part of your website? If you are setting up a new campaign, it’s vital to ensure that those interested in a specific product or service, are directly to the most relevant part of your website. Otherwise, you’ll lose them – and waste your investment.
If you’re looking for a dedicated specialist to keep a close watch on the effectiveness of your Pay Per Click campaign, call Optimease now for an initial consultation.
We are always available to discuss individual requirements so if you’re interested in our services why not contact us today to discuss your Search Engine Marketing needs.