PPC - Pay Per Click Management

The last PPC campaign I analysed in the ‘Analyse A Real PPC Campaign’ series was from airconco, who had a relatively good search advert that used the USP of being experts in their respective industry. The landing page was also good, but it was a little confusing to determine just exactly what type of landing page airconco had used and the conversion they wanted to obtain from the web user (appearing to be a call on their business number).

The football/soccer season is fast approaching, which makes it the perfect time for many footballers/soccer plays to start to look and buy new football boots/cleats for the coming season. With this, here is an analysis of a PPC campaign from Football Maties.

To view Football Maties PPC search advert, I had to type into Google search UK, ‘buy football boots’:
Straight away, it is going to be tough for Football Maties to compete considering sponsored shopping results appear, which offer something that PPC search adverts simply cannot include: images.

However, it is an interest search advert to say the least. Instead of trying to get people to buy football boots, Football Maties are looking at their keyword search term from a different perspective. If people are buying football boots, they must have old unused boots left, for which Football Maties is addressing to donate to charity to African children. Although this is strictly not negative keyword targeting, it is a reverse targeting technique where instead of going with the norm of a keyword search phrase of ‘give away football boots’ or ‘sell football boots’, Football Maties chose a keyword search phrase that implies the web user can give away boots – very clever.

With this advert, it adopts a typical keyword heavy title and has a question and call to action in the description, to evoke an action out of the web user, a click. For this reason, overall, this is an effective search advert.

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

The first thing I noticed about this landing page is the fact the navigation menu highlights that we have landed onto the ‘About Football Maties’ page. This makes it clear that Football Maties have chosen to use an exisiting page on their website as the landing page. Although this would have worked out cheaper, it wouldn’t have helped Football Maties in gaining a high conversion rate. This is because this landing page has a few drawbacks to it that does not make it best usable for PPC:

• Above the fold, there is absolutely nothing that is working to keep the web user on the landing page. The only thing that may work is the enticement as to what Football Maties does from the question. However, we have already gathered what Football Maties does from the search advert.
• There are no pictures to accomodate the feeling of self-achievement. People like to see how they have helped others when it comes to charity. Therefore, it would have been good to have a football of African kids playing football with donated football boots, looking happy.
• Below the fold of the content there is an image poster – this is not the most effective way to describe a charitable service on a landing page.

But, more worringly, I cannot see where the conversion takes place! There is no button to click onto, no contact and nowhere which describes how to donate the football boots. For this reson, unfortunately, this is a poor landing page for PPC.