I love Saturday Night Live, and I always hang in there during the (frequent) rebuilding years. There was a skit last weekend about a Monster in a little girl’s closet. Long story short, not only did her parents believe her and immediately become hysterical - eventually the suave monster came out of her closet and began singing “Here Comes Santa Claus”. It was twisted, the best skit of the night and also kinda timely given this recent report.

Every time I discuss SEM in open company, or meet a new PPC client for the first time, the discussion invariably turns to the horrors of click fraud. You’ve no doubt heard the ghost stories about the insipid teams of people in Prague and India who are paid by your competitors to do nothing except click your PPC ads all day and kill puppies. This poppycock has dangerously passed into the realm of truth for most peripheral online marketers, and it’s time to put this Boogeyman to bed.

Andy Beal’s scoop from Search Engine Strategies is straight from the Googleplex, so have a read and learn about the impressive security measures in place within AdWords. 4 levels of security, to be exact. Simply put, actual click fraud within AdWords totals less than 2%:

“This is an amazing revelation and clearly shows that Google is getting tired of speculation and rumor filling the void left by the lack of transparency Google has with regards to their click fraud numbers… The biggest reason Google has for being hesitant about revealing the exact numbers, is fear that Yahoo and Microsoft will be able to leverage the numbers to deduce more information about AdWords.”

I am putting a lot of my faith in these numbers - admittedly mainly because they reinforce what I’ve always believed. At the least this level of security should appease some of the skeptics. PPC, when done correctly, can be such an effective traffic and revenue generator that it should never be discounted because of what equates now to little more than an urban myth. Boo!

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Starting a new PPC campaign from scratch requires planning and a clear set of conversion goals. Building new accounts, researching keywords and testing ad copy all factor in to the ramp up time - but is there ever a point at which you’re ‘done’? Can occasional maintenance take the place of the undivided attention you were devoting in the early days of a new PPC effort? The short answer is ‘definitely not’. Although it may seem plausible that your campaigns will reach a point where they can be switched on to auto pilot, there are many reasons you should always remain active in their daily management.

In particular, PPC strategists should actively devise promotions and rebates which cater to annual trends. You can’t do this if you’re taking a hands-off approach. Keeping your ads seasonal can be a huge boost to their effectiveness and click-through-rate. During the months of April and part of May, for example, many retailers integrated Mother’s Day specials into their PPC advertisements. Discounts coupled with targeted ad copy which speaks to the specific occasion a person is shopping for - an occurance which is more likely should you be tailoring ads to specific calendar events - have much higher conversion rates than the general variety. Keep your PPC copy current and watch your sales soar!

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Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is undoubtedly the fastest way to get your products or services in front of your target market via a popular search engine. It is also a great way to waste a staggering amount of money if you’re not very careful. Starting a new PPC campaign from scratch requires planning, market research and a clear set of conversion goals. You have to understand what you’re getting yourself into before funding your first Adwords or YSM account, or you’re definitely flirting with budgetary disaster. Here are a few facts you should keep in mind before deciding PPC is right for your marketing effort.

PPC is very time consuming: Building new accounts, researching keywords and testing ad copy all factor in to the ramp up time - but is there ever a point at which you’re ‘done’? Can occasional maintenance take the place of the undivided attention you were devoting in the early days of a new PPC effort? The short answer is ‘definitely not’. Although it may seem plausible that your campaigns will reach a point where they can be switched on to auto pilot, there are many reasons you should always remain active in their daily management.
PPC is expensive: The amount of money you’re going to have to bid on a given keyword will be directly related to how competitive your vertical is. If you’re a mortgage broker, a battery store, a casino or a personal injury lawyer – pack in right now. If, on the other hand, you sell purple squirrel jackets, PPC may be just be just the thing. Providing, of course, anybody knows your product exists and will be searching for it. The underlying message here is take a close look at the landscape before settling on PPC. Organic search engine optimization takes much longer, but the long term ROI is much greater than paying $10 a click to be in the 7th bid position for “laptop battery”.
PPC is only one piece of the puzzle: PPC only drives traffic to your site which, if you’ve been fastidious in your keyword research, may be relevant to your business. It does absolutely nothing to improve your conversion rate once that visitor is on your home page. If you’re missing the basics in terms of user experience, content, the checkout process and generally instilling consumer confidence – do not spend a dime on PPC until you’ve gotten your house in order. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it pull out its credit card.

This is less of an introduction to PPC than it is a cautionary tale. Under the right circumstances, and with an experienced account manager at the reins, PPC can be a tremendously deadly arrow in your online marketing quiver. It is still an arrow, however, and not a silver bullet. Banner, CPM and PPC advertising should be only be among a wide variety of options you consider when planning a budget and strategy.

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