Real-life PPC
Imagine you have a store selling kids’ toys. You want people to come into your store and buy.
You hire a kid called Jake to bring people to your store, and you’ll pay him $2 for every person who comes in. Jake is delighted with his new job and sends in almost every person who happened to be walking past. You had 500 visitors that day, but only 10 people actually bought something. That’s $1000 in marketing expenses, with only $250 in revenue.
Something is wrong here.
You quickly realise that all the teenagers, businesspeople, and street cleaners that Jake has been sending in are not going to be buying toys. It’s not about bringing a huge number of people, it’s about bringing in the right people.
Take Two
You fire Jake and hire a new guy, Blake. You tell him to bring to your store anyone who looks like they could be interested in kids’ toys – parents, grandparents, anyone walking with kids, and so on. As this is harder work, you’ll be paying him $4 per person.
That day, you had 100 visitors – an expense of $400 – and 25 people bought something, bringing revenue of $625. You’re getting there, but it’s still not enough.
The Master Plan
Then, you get an idea. You print flyers describing how amazing your store is, and send Blake to stand outside another toy store 2 blocks down. Whenever he sees someone approaching the store, he hands them a flyer and convinces them to try out your store instead.
This works amazingly well, with almost every person making a purchase, until the staff at the other toy store notice what is happening and threaten to call the police.
That’s the end of that, then.
Back to ads in the local paper.
*sigh*
PPC Online
Now let’s try the same story, but with two differences.
- Your toy store is a website
- The kid you hire is called Google.
You’ve launched your website and want people to come and visit.
You set up a Google Ads campaign, telling Google to display your ad to anyone who searches for the words ‘kids’, ‘children’, ‘toys’, ‘games’, and any other relevant words you can think of. You’ll pay Google up to $2 for every click.
You get 500 visitors, pay $1000 for the traffic, and make a fair amount of sales.
But you need to improve if you want to stay in business.
Take Two
Now you’re getting smarter. You narrow the filters so that the ad will only display to people searching for ‘kids toys’, ‘where can I buy toys for kids’, ‘games for children’ and other, very relevant keyword phrases.
The traffic that you’re getting is now far more focused, as the majority of people typing in these terms are ready to buy – you’re just ensuring they buy from you.
At this point, you decide to get competitive. There is an older, established toy store called Sugar & Spice that is doing very well. You target the keyword “Sugar and spice” so that anyone searching for that toy store, will see your ads first.
You even change the title of the ad to be ‘Toys like Sugar & Spice – but cheaper’.
Boom! Your traffic skyrockets, sales go through the roof, and you go on a 5* trip to Malibu.
And the best part? Sugar & Spice can’t do anything about it.
Unless they decide to launch their own Google Ads campaign.
But that’s a different story.
And the moral of this tale is that PPC can be a very effective online marketing tactic when done correctly. If you want to make sure your PPC campaign is fully optimised for conversion, contact us today.
The End.
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