PPC | Internet Marketing Blog

Using product data feeds for search marketing

SEM is about producing compelling advertising that makes an online consumer click on the link within the advert. The more relevant an advert is to the search terms used, the more likely this is to elicit a clickthrough.

If a merchant can successfully match a product and the price, availability and delivery terms are reasonable then this will result in a sale.

A general rule of thumb is that Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns will deliver around £1 of revenue per click through to the website across all products within paid search.

by Lee Cash 04 November 2011 10:05am 2 comments

How dirty is your PPC?

A well managed Google's AdWords campaign does a great job in delivering relevant traffic to your site.

However, if you leave AdWords alone to judge what is 'relevant' for your products or services you may uncover some surprising results.

We have compiled a list of frightening and sometimes comical examples from real campaigns.

by Ian Harris 26 October 2011 09:53am 18 comments

The value of significance in ad testing

Advert testing is critical to the continuous improvement of an Adwords campaign. It’s a reasonable bet that many of your competitors are testing new adverts, and hence improving their click through rates and conversion volumes over time.

Where do you think those clicks and sales are coming from?

by Shane Quigley 25 October 2011 09:53am 6 comments

Overcomplicating your AdWords account

In many ways, effective Adwords account management is a balancing act. Whether you’re trying to balance sales volumes with the cost per sale or trying to write a compelling advert whilst trying to stand out from your competitors, you’re often pulled in opposite directions.

I am often approached to appraise accounts for advertisers, and one of the most common problems that I see is also perhaps one of the most understandable, it’s the result of failing to find the balance between relevancy and optimisability.

by Shane Quigley 27 September 2011 09:57am 15 comments

The seven deadly sins of PPC

According to the Catholic Church, there are seven deadly sins. They are, in effect, the root of all of the other sins.

Can the same be said of PPC? There are many, many mistakes that can be made, but can they be tracked back to seven root causes? And are these causes similar to the seven cardinal sins?

It’s not quite as ridiculous as it sounds…

by Shane Quigley 25 August 2011 11:30am 12 comments

How to lose friends and influence no one

Too many businesses seem to forget customer service and best practice as soon as they venture online. They behave as though any sales behaviour is allowed via the internet.

In fact, with so many people relying on the web for shopping, socialising and research, these companies risk alienating huge numbers of people and damaging their corporate reputations.

by Kevin Gibbons 14 June 2011 11:09am 7 comments

How is Facebook advertising performing against search?

We’ve been testing the performance of Facebook advertising on our Facebook optimisation platform, and how it performs against search for a test sample of brand clients.

We did this by running two simultaneous campaigns across search and Facebook for each client (both campaigns are designed to work together, with a similar message and content). We’ve measured the impact of each on conversions (predominantly sales and registrations) on each brand’s website.

by Jonathan Beeston 07 April 2011 09:01am 11 comments

Social media and SEO massively undervalued: study

Now that TagMan has been tracking all the activity of some very big clients for a substantial period of time, we can provide some pretty definitive answers about how different campaigns appear in, and contribute to, the path to conversion.

From this data, we have proof that natural search and social media channels are vastly undervalued, while the effect of paid search is overstated...

by Paul Cook 03 March 2011 11:29am 48 comments

Wrestling with cross-channel attribution

Marketers (and many publishers) are wrestling with the problem of cross-channel attribution: understanding what each channel adds to the entire process.

Producing a breadcrumb trail of user paths is too simplistic. The real key is understanding the incremental effect of each unit of media.

by Jonathan Beeston 18 February 2011 10:21am 10 comments

Seven departments you should involve in search marketing (but probably don’t)

Search engine marketers tend to work in isolation. The SEO and PPC function sits in various departments depending on the company. Sometimes it's marketing, sometimes IT and other times web design or maybe e-commerce.

Most of the time though, integration with other business functions is minimal and work goes on without consideration for other business activities.

But search engine marketing should be something which is at the heart of a businesses operating online. Every part of your business should be aware of your search engine marketing strategy and how what they do, influences it.

An effective search engine marketing programme involves most areas of your business; here are seven business functions which should be involved in your search marketing.

by Rob Weatherhead 05 January 2011 09:56am 8 comments