PPC - Pay Per Click Management

The last PPC campaign I analysed in the ‘Analyse A Real PPC Campaign’ series was from Thread, who were the only paid search advert competing against Shopping Sponsored results. However, the problem with this campaign was mainly with the inefficiencies of the landing page. Thread failed to see that what the web user searched for automatically targeted the gender of clothing the web user wanted to purchase. For this reason, it was a redundant lead capture to immediately ask web users on the landing page whether they were interested in men or women clothing.

An area of competition that will always be high is with banking, in particularly mortgages. With this, here is an analysis of a PPC campaign from DWM Mortgages.

To view DWM Mortgages’ PPC search advert, I had to type into Google search UK, ‘first time buyer’:

Surprisingly, DWM Mortgages’ search advert are the only advert appearing for this search phrase. The search phrase refers to a type of mortgages that has become very popular among those looking to buy their first home (due to the Government providing an incentive on their part).

Looking at the advert, it is clear that DWM Mortgages are not looking to provide the mortgage itself, by provide advice for the mortgage. This could potentially be a reason why competition is low: a conversion for gaining advice won’t generate near enough as much revenue as getting someone to sign up to a mortgage.

The advert does well at being full of highly dense contextual keywords, which will make the advert seem more applicable to the web user. However, there is no call to action in the advert. As well as this, DWM Mortgages do not seem to want to promote their brand name, which will not feel the web user too much of confidence, if they are to get advice for one of the biggest purchases potentially in their life.

After clicking on the above advert, I came to the following landing page:As a landing page goes, this is not the best example of how an optimized page should look, highlighted below:

• The text to the right should not be white, or used with the background image, as it makes it very hard to read. This seems to stem from the background image, which is not the best image to encourage someone to get a mortgage for their first ever house.
• It is clear from the ‘Get Started’ button that this is a click through landing page.  However, the landing page does not go into enough detail as to what DWM Mortgage actually offer. Is it a comparison of mortgages? Is it advice? More information needs to be applied to this landing page so the web user is crystal clear on what ‘Get Started’ actually means.