PPC - Pay Per Click Management

In the last article in the ‘Analyse A Real PPC Campaign’, I looked at O2 and what I found was that some businesses bid on other business’ brand names so that they can ‘steal’ a sale away from the actual brand. O2 made a bid for HTC which redirects the web user to a O2 webpage on HTC phones for sale. Today, I will be looking at Argos which are a British based retailer where people look through large catalogues of products and then choose what they want to buy at the till.

To view Argos’s PPC text advert, I typed into Google ‘Argos.co.uk’:

It is interesting, though, why Argos have made a PPC campaign for ‘Argos.co.uk’ anyway since the landing page of the PPC campaign will bring the web user to the homepage of Argos: just like the number one organic search result for ‘Argos.co.uk’ will. Here are possible reasons why Argos made the campaign:

• To scare competitors away – If competitors know Argos are bidding for their own brand name, it will put them off bidding against them.
• To promote something more specific than the title or description of the number one organic search result. For example, the text advert promotes the fact Argos offers next day delivery and that there is a ‘big sale’ going on at the moment. This would not be possible organically.

Looking at the text advert itself, it is very simple in design. The fact ‘Next day delivery’ is mentioned twice in the title and the URL reinforces the message Argos is trying to promote. Therefore, if you want to bring something across to the web user in your PPC text advert as clearly as possible, have a think about mentioning it in two of the three areas of a PPC text advert.

From clicking on the advert, I came to the following landing page:

As I have already said, the landing page Argos have chosen to use is the homepage. Although it is wise not to use your homepage as the landing page to your PPC campaign, it is clear that Argos have adapted their homepage to accommodate their PPC campaign. Here are a few examples of this:

• Argos have implemented a huge slideshow in the centre of their homepage making clear about the ‘big sale’. This was in the PPC advert.
• The fact Argos have already mentioned  next day delivery means that they do not have to mention it again. ‘Next day delivery’ is pretty self explanatory. ‘The big sale’ can be expanded upon with more information.

Ultimately, I do think that this campaign is slightly pointless: especially when bidding for ‘Argos.co.uk’. Web users don’t usually shop somewhere because it has next day delivery because the sites that offers this may have overpriced products to compensate. If Argos wanted to use PPC to its full advantage, they should have done what Sony did and advertised a specific segment of the business.