It is common to see storefront displays and media ads promoting the sale of items to celebrate the special day or event, but how often do you see local businesses doing similar promotions online?

Seasonal marketing, as it is called, is becoming very popular online.  One of the most common ways that businesses are implementing seasonal marketing is through Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns.

What is PPC?

As you search for your topic of interest online, you may notice that you receive two sets of search results.  There is a listing on the left side of the page that is called your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) results and another on the right side which is your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or sponsored link results.  You sometimes may receive two or three PPC results at the top left side also.

Major search engines such as Google, Yahoo!  And MSN provide this PPC service that allows you to advertise your business on their search network.  You are required to indicate the price that you are willing to pay for each visitor that clicks on the ad.  You only pay when the person clicks on your ad.

To get your website listed on the left side of the search engine results (SEO results) requires a number of steps and can take months, but you can get listed in the PPC results within 24 hours.

Keyword selection and cost

To determine the cost of the clicks that you will receive, you must decide on which keywords you are willing to buy.  So how will you know which keywords to buy or bid on?  Well, you may start by asking yourself the question, "What would I search for if I was looking for my product or service?"  Also ask friends and business associates the same question.  The answers to this question will give you a starting point for your research to verify if the keywords you came up with are being used by the Internet Public.  The search engines that provide PPC service include tools that can help you verify the popularity and minimum bid price of your keywords.

The laws of demand and supply are no different in the PPC market than in any other market, so the more popular the keyword, the higher the bid price.  Keyword prices vary from US$0.01 per click to as high as the highest bidder makes it.  One of the most expensive keywords is "mesothelioma" which fetches over US$80.00 per click.

Fortunately for you, not many Jamaican companies are using this advertising medium yet.  You may have to pay competitive prices for the keyword "hardware supplies", but if you bid for "hardware supplies Jamaica" you will find little or no competition.  Campaign setup

Once you have selected all the keywords relevant to your business, you need to create your campaign.  This involves setting up several keyword groups and the related ads that should be displayed, establishing a budget and other general campaign activities.

If you are a retailer carrying many products your keyword research exercise may have yielded you hundreds of keywords.  Therefore, it would make sense to arrange the keywords into related groups or ad groups as it's called.  You would then create at least 1 ad for each ad group, which is the four-line display that you usually see on the right side of your search engine results.  The ads that you create should be appealing enough to encourage searchers to click on them.  The amount of text space you have is limited so must be efficient in your use of words.

As previously outlined, you will be paying for each click (or visitor) to your website from these ads.  Even if you have an unlimited budget I am sure that you would still want to control how much you spend on your campaign each month.  You can actually determine a daily budget for your clicks which when reached will ensure that your ads will no longer be displayed.

If the products and services that you provide are limited geographically, then you can create a setting for this in your campaign.  For example, you can limit your ads to be displayed only to persons from Jamaica.  The setting is flexible enough for you to select 1 or many countries or territories.  You can even determine the time of day that the ads are shown to website surfers.

Managing the campaign

The real work starts after you have completed the setup of the campaign and have made it active.

Convincing business owners, especially those in the Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) sector, to spend on intangibles is one of my most challenging tasks.  Business owners are usually frugal people who want to see real returns on any investment made and calculating returns on any marketing or advertising campaign can be difficult.  However, with the advent of PPC technology you can now easily calculate your return on investment for any campaign.

The initial management of the campaign involves daily monitoring of the clicks you receive and the result of those clicks.  You will have to examine which keywords and ads are generating the most clicks and determine which clicks result in a customer or lead.  Armed with this information, you must then make adjustments to your keywords, ads and/or your bid price to ensure that you are achieving a return on investment.  The tools at your disposal from the PPC service providers are usually very helpful.

Over time and with your input the campaign will become optimised and may not need daily monitoring.  However, it is very important to keep abreast of the changes occurring in the search engines as these changes can have significant impact on your campaigns.

Click fraud

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia describes click fraud as "a type of internet crime that occurs in pay-per-click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad's link".  This means that someone sees your ad and continuously clicks on it to increase your monthly click charge.

The main beneficiary of click fraud is the search engine but the main culprits are usually persons who are acting as affiliates for the search engines.  These persons legally carry the search engine's ads on their website and earn a percentage of the revenue when someone clicks on the ad You may sometimes find advertisers' competitors engaging in click fraud activities but to a lesser extent.

The fact is that search engines are aware of this and are putting in place technology to prevent it.  If advertisers can no longer achieve a return on investment from their PPC campaigns then they will no longer use it.  Fortunately, this advertising medium can still be profitable if set up and managed properly.  In addition, there are a number of companies offering software solutions to detect click fraud from campaigns.  If you can provide evidence of click fraud within your campaign, the search engine will give you a refund.

Even without fancy software you can detect blatant click fraud if you are keenly monitoring your campaign.  The bottom line is, click fraud or not, if you are making a return on your investment then continue with your campaign.  Otherwise, scrap it.

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