Sometimes, the best thing to do in PPC is to analyse your competitors or other general advertisers and see how they are using PPC to 
make them money. Around a week ago, who were the highest advert placed on Google search results from searching for the keywords ‘bank loans’. This time now, I will be analysing the first advert that appears when I search for ‘iPod’. No surprise then that the highest advert is Apple…
Apple’s advert when searching for ‘iPod’ looks something like this:
Official iPod® Store – New iPod touch and new iPod nano.
store.apple.com/uk/ipod
520 reviews for store.apple.com
Pre-order today, direct from Apple.
Already, this advert is different to the typical PPC text advert. A PPC text advert consists the majority of times with a title, description and URL. With this advert, Apple have managed to add another line being reviews of Apple’s store because they have a mass of reviews from Google reviews. This is a great way to encourage clicks seeing that Apple are a company that bases themselves on high quality products with strong USPs. Therefore, tell the world about it! Web users will be able to see from the great review Apple has got that they are a company which has high quality products that are possibly worth buying.
After clicking on their PPC advert, you will come to Apple’s landing page which is the homepage of iPod:
Apple are a company which just want to take you to their website: they don’t create specific landing pages for PPC adverts. This may be a thought for your own PPC campaign too. You don’t always have to create a new landing page for a campaign. Sometimes, some of the best campaigns literally have already existing pages as their landing pages just like Apple.
Apple have designed the page nevertheless with strong internal linking. Web users will have come to the page because they are interested in iPods. With the word ‘iPod’ though, there are four different devices you can buy that come under the category of iPod with the most expensive of the iPod range having the limelight and space of the iPod homepage. Apple have given the iPod touch more room to advertise because it is clear it is the iPod that has the biggest profit margin because it is the most expensive. Therefore, if they would want a sale, it would be for an iPod touch from the iPod range.
What Can We Learn?
Apple’s PPC campaign can tell alot of advertisers about what they can do to their PPC campaign. Apple are giants in the electronics market. From this, it is clear that their PPC campaign has been well thought out to deliver the best results:
- They are the highest bidders for their own brands. This is important because if other competitors outbid them, it can led to companies such as Samsung pinching sales from Apple. Always be the highest bidder for your own brand.
-  Apple have not created a separate landing page for their PPC campaign. Instead, they just want to get people onto the Apple website: in the iPod section. From this, the internal links should let web users explore other intuitive products Apple has to offer. You don’t have to create a new landing page if exisiting pages can work just as well.
- Apple’s description is very short and to the point, ‘Pre-order today, direct from Apple’. They have taking into consideration that web users don’t like reading much and have a very short attention span. When you create your description, don’t make it too long because people will get bored of reading it and loose interest.
- Apple have given the iPod Touch the most amount of ‘floorspace’ on the iPod homepage to advertise because they are the most expensive. Try to advertise the product with the best profit margin the most. This can help lead to increases in profit if web users are resorting to buy products with bigger profit margins than they were going to buy before.
