Monday 12 March 2012

Using PPC Marketing to Tell a Story


Waseem Saddique highlights the value of good ‘storytelling’ in PPC Marketing

When supplying PPC Marketing Services to either a client or in-house across your own business, it’s imperative that all the information relating to the ‘before’ and ‘after’ click is gathered and structured in a coherent way that tells people a story. Too many people are subjected to Microsoft Excel spreadsheets that contain an impressive display of numbers, but ultimately mean nothing unless people understand them.

Businesses who use PPC services need to understand what they are paying for and as such, figures should be given ‘life’ by means of storytelling that clearly sets out what the figures mean to a business. After all, using metrics on clients who do not understand them is relatively useless.

Waseem Saddique provides a template for telling your PPC story:

Teach Clients About Metrics
In many instances, when taking on board a new client for instance, who is new to the concept of PPC or has suffered a bad experience with a previous agency, there is often a misunderstanding of what’s known as ‘success metrics.’ Many businesses think that ‘impressions’ are the measure of success for a PPC campaign, whereas others simply associate the number of clicks as success. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Therefore, it’s up to the PPC ‘Gurus’ of the world to raise awareness of what metrics matter to a campaign by producing effective strategies that clearly focus in on the ‘before’ and after ‘click’ performance goals. It is also vital to establish realistic expectations with the client in order to build a rapport based on trust.

Utilise Web Analytics Data to Add Body to the Storytelling Process
Whilst PPC performance data contributes to the storytelling process of PPC figures, they do not provide the whole story. Waseem Saddique says: "PPC marketing ultimately has a profound impact on brand awareness and manipulating organic results. For instance, a client’s direct website traffic can be dramatically increased when focusing on non-branded keywords. However, if a campaign like this was stopped then direct traffic performance often plummets. Explaining these figures is something that needs to be done through the storytelling process."

Make use of Google Adword Dimensions
Google Adword Dimensions provide substantial information when telling the PPC story. These include the hours of the day, the day of the week and locations that people are accessing a client’s PPC Campaign. The metrics from Google Adwords, when used in correlation with performance data, help to generate a well-rounded ‘story’ concerning the success of a PPC campaign and perhaps more important is that PPC novices can understand it. In understanding what the figures mean, clients are then able to take their strategy to the next level.

Presenting the PPC Performance Story
There are a number of platforms for presenting comprehensive PPC Reports and they work by synchronising complex data from search engines and compiling impressive looking reports whereby users can piece together performance metrics of their choosing. With some of these platforms, text facilities and the ability to upload images are also made available, in order to add depth to the PPC storytelling process.