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Pay per click (PPC) marketing basics for paid search marketing starters

Manoj Aravindakshan, On Target Media & Marketing, Singapore

Pay per click (PPC) search engine marketing (SEM) has revolutionized marketing since it burst on the scene a few years ago. One of the fastest growing segments in marketing, PPC has been a key contributory factor in the resurgence of online advertising since the dot com bust.

The reasons for this are not too hard to fathom: relative ease of setting up, negligible starting costs, total control of budget and spend, unprecedented reach for the advertising message and highly results oriented. The last mentioned is critical since PPC marketing offers immediately visible and measurable results, which in turn gives the marketer umpteen times more flexibility with a marketing campaign than previously available with the more traditional forms of advertising. With pay per click search engine marketing, the marketer is in greater control than the advertising medium.

Despite the exponential growth of this advertising platform, the truth is that only a small proportion of potential advertisers and marketers have taken it up. Innumerable small to medium businesses are still reluctant to 'experiment' with PPC campaigns.

Even in a country like Singapore, which has an extremely high level of Internet penetration, the percentage of businesses that rely on traditional forms of advertising and marketing significantly outnumber those that have tried a hand at paid search engine marketing. The situation is not too different in many other countries in Asia, including India, Malaysia, Indonesia etc.

Inadequate awareness of the medium (search engines) and the method (PPC) is obviously the factor that impedes the adoption rate. However, marketers and businesses wary of search engine marketing need to realize that if they can get the basics of marketing right, the probability of a successful SEM campaign is very high.

Back to marketing basics with PPC SEM

Essentially, the fundamentals for PPC marketing remain the same as that for any other form of advertising, as I explain below. What really differentiate it though are the dynamic nature of a campaign (many of which are due to external factors) and the instant measurability of results that compels a marketer to react and/or proactively alter campaigns to get a better ROI. However, let's take a look at the basics:

• Mission: What is the objective of a PPC SEM campaign? It could vary from creating awareness of a company or brand to driving traffic to let people read articles or buy something through a website. Defining this clearly will impact how one proceeds with the other factors.
• Market: Who is the target market? How closely can the marketer define this market? Say, by geography, by age, by gender, by the search terms the market uses…. In the context of search engine marketing, the last mentioned is extremely critical, because the keywords used in a search engine demonstrate a certain intent and interest. As a marketer, your objective is to capitalize on that intent & interest.
• Medium: The medium is of course a search engine but what I suggest here is to get more specific ie. which search engine do you advertise in? The obvious choice that comes to mind is the Google Adwords program, which is undoubtedly the most popular PPC platform. Yet, take into account the other factors such as the target market to decide your spend. For example, if the PPC campaign is targeted at 18 - 21 year olds in Singapore, evaluating whether Yahoo or MSN has a wider reach amongst this audience in Singapore than Google is important.
• Money: The all-important budget. How much does one spend? How much does one need to spend? While the budget will in all likelihood be decided beforehand, the marketer may have to alter and adjust the budgetary allocations while setting up the PPC campaign. The most popular PPC engines use variants of an auction model, where how much an advertiser is willing to pay has a significant bearing on the exposure the ad is going to get. Bidding is a dynamic process and a PPC campaign manager needs to monitor the bids and the money being spent on the campaign.
• Message: Like any other form of advertising or marketing, the importance of the message cannot be overstated. Can you get the right user to click on your ad? The success of your PPC campaign depends on whether you have been able to attract the user to the target website, and the quality and clarity of that message will determine will determine whether the user does that. There is another part to the message component - and this is more critical to the ROI. What is the message on the destination page (commonly referred to as landing page)? Is there an easily apparent continuity between the message that brought the user to that landing page and the message on the page itself? If not, you could almost safely assume that it is a non-productive click that dents the profitability of your PPC campaign.
• Measurement: One of the best things about online marketing and search engine marketing in particular is the availability of sophisticated reporting mechanisms that can provide vital insights into your campaign. With statistics on the campaign available as close to real time as possible (within a few hours), marketers don't have to wait to do post-mortems of money-down-the-drain scenarios. Instead, smart marketers can quickly adopt the "market, measure, modify, market" cycle to optimize their campaigns and increase their ROIs.

As the above shows, the foundations of a paid search marketing campaign are exactly the same as that of well planned, traditional marketing campaigns. Obviously, certain aspects require more specialized knowledge, expertise and experience; but sticking to the above basics well will hopefully not only help overcome the resistance to adopt this marketing technique, but will also assist in executing and evaluating a PPC campaign effectively.

Manoj Aravindakshan is Director of On Target Media & Marketing Services, a Singapore online marketing and content services provider providing search engine marketing (SEO & PPC) consultancy and execution. On Target Media plans and manages PPC SEM campaigns for Singapore companies besides providing outsourced marketing support for companies in North America & Europe. Manoj blogs on aspects related to web content and marketing here. As a pleasant diversion, he also writes the BouncingYorker blog on the game of cricket.