PPC or Pay Per Click campaign is an online advertising model wherein a particular keyword relevant to the business (and believed to be most searched also) is bid for. The more researched and accurate the keyword is, the better are the chances to present your business before the business prospects navigating across the internet.
But how to go about bidding? Is it wiser to start a new PPC campaign with low bids and then gradually increase the amount to gain better position, more clicks and better ROI as a result? Or to start out with high bids, and then lower them over time to obtain optimum cost per conversion?
The right strategy for the other may not be exactly fitting to your needs. Your situation and objectives are in many ways different to your competitor’s. So, each step you take should be driven by the essentials that relate to your business.
It is to be remembered that when a need is to aggressively market your product, the point of prudent and calculative steps that consume time hold little value, and vice versa.
Let’s look closely at these two polar situations; and find the best match for for your business needs.
The Calculative Strategy
A ‘Calculative PPC bidding strategy’ is appropriate for a business that:
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has plenty of time for testing and refining their online campaigning module
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run with limited budget and
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yet to set the right keyword for the campaign.
Businesses following this strategy start their campaigns with hundreds of keywords. After viewing the performance in the first weeks of the campaign, they finally select the keyword to be stemmed upon. No wonder, this process is known as ‘keyword stemming’ and hold the base of later promotional acts to happen.
To succeed in a ‘Calculative Strategy’ it is advised to set your bids just high enough to obtain a reasonable position for the top-performing keywords. Try to get a position that makes your ad appear on the first search results page. That way even though you are not required to pay a higher premium (as it is for positions 1 through 3), you are amidst being seen.
Analyze your results, pay special attention to the keywords that result into better conversions. Increase the bid price gradually until the cost per conversion (CPC) levels out at (or better, if below) the maximum you defined in the beginning.
Like every strategy, there are pros and cons associated to this strategy as well. While there is minimal risk of overspending associated with a Calculative Strategy, the entire process can take weeks, or even months, to ramp up a campaign.
The Aggressive Strategy
There are situations when a campaign needs to follow a blitz marketing principle, where it would start high and then bear to go low gradually. Let’s call the online campaign mode as the ‘Aggressive Strategy’ since the process corresponds to the aggressive marketing formula of a modern day business.
An Aggressive PPC Strategy may be carried out for,
Instant results: In cases of an occasion of business/product unveiling or events that require speedy campaign build-up to it, undoubtedly the need is to collect initial clicks and convert bid up amount to prospective customer counts speedily.
Some campaigns, especially ones practiced by B2B companies, are targeted towards a specific niche group of people. In such a situation, where a targeted set of keywords are searched by a countable people, and the need is to promote the same within a short span of time, the beginning of the campaign needs to be highly aggressive. A long-term process, which may take several months to accumulate the required numbers ‘click throughs’, stands meaningless in this context.
Competitive Advantage: In a PPC campaign, when the need is to derive a competitive advantage and that too almost instantly, Aggressive PPC Strategy works as a perfect option. This short-term campaign methodology can render the much needed boost to a business venture.
Halo Effect. Starting a new campaign with relatively high bids can be beneficial because the resultant high ad position can result in higher CTR. Alongside higher CTR, your ad enjoys the chance to get even higher – all possibly even at a lower CPC than competitors who has gone for a higher bid. Termed as “halo effect”, the situation also helps in later course - even if you have lowered your bid.
‘Calculative’ or ‘Aggressive’, take your pick in terms of your needs. Both the measures have their individual benefits.