PPC - Pay Per Click Management

The last article that can be related to the ‘Analyse A Real PPC Campaign’ series had a look at Tesco vs Sainsbury’s who are two supermarkets using pay per click advertising to promote their online delivery service to consumers. What we found was that Tesco’s search advert was generally better than Sainsbury’s as it focused more on being price sensitive than Sainsbury’s and included a clever call to action that injected a sense of urgency into the web user to use Tesco’s service. In this article, with Halloween around a month away, I will be looking at a campaign based around Halloween costumes: in particular, joke.co.uk.

To view joke.co.uk’s PPC search advert, I had to type into Google search UK, ‘halloween costumes’:

Straight away, there are a few things we can gather about joke.co.uk’s advert:

• They have most likely got the highest CPC for this search phrase since they are ranked #1 in paid search results (which is an area which gains the best performance).
• They had to create a PPC campaign to get traffic for this search phrase since they are ranked organically #9 which is towards the end of the first page results.

Looking at the advert itself, it has many good elements to it but also a few bad ones too:

• I like the title they have used since it is a direct call to action. They are to the point (which works on the internet) and have included their URL so that the web user will remember them so they can visit joke.co.uk again directly instead of through PPC.
• They don’t really need to include a call to action in the description although it wouldn’t have hurt to do so. They have included lots of information in the description by having stop/start phrases.
• joke.co.uk have two ad extensions in their advert being seller rating extension and the Google + follower extension. I think it is wise to include the seller rating extensions as it will build confidence for the web user to use joke.co.uk since many consumers have used joke.co.uk and have given them a very high rating indeed. Google have automatically included the Google + social extension which I don’t think will help joke.co.uk as they only have 162 followers which is not something to brag about.

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

Of course, joke.co.uk are going to have to have a orange themed landing page to go with the Halloween theme. Below are the main things I found in this landing page that are good:

• The menu bar is crisp and clear which is exactly what it needs to be. What makes it great, as well, is that they are all drop down menus offering the web user an easier experience to browse around the website.
• It is clear this page is a click through landing page with the larger orange button being the main button joke.co.uk wants to be clicked on. What is clever, though, is that there are multiple click through buttons because the main area is a slideshow.
• I like the idea of the countdown at the top of the page. It makes clear that joke.co.uk have a good delivery service and also gives a bit of urgency to the web user since if they buy before the countdown timer reaches zero, they will get same day dispatch (which is something web users will want).
• At the bottom of the page area there are a few reasons why joke.co.uk are a website to shop with. This is effective in winning over web users that are still not convinced in using their service.