PPC - Pay Per Click Management

My last article in the ‘Analyse A Real PPC Campaign’ looked at who use PPC to attract web users to their online casino. However, what was most interesting was the fact that SuperCasino actually placed a bid for ‘casio’ hoping that there were lots of web users misspelling ‘casino’. In this article, I will be looking at O2 which sell phones, mobiles, broadband and mobile phone contracts. Will O2 be like SuperCasino and bid for a misspell with their keywords or go for a different approach?

To view O2’s PPC search advert, I typed in ‘htc’ into Google search UK:

As we all know, HTC is a company which sells mobile phones based on the Android operating system. Their homepage is ranked #1 organically for their own brand name. This is why O2 have made a PPC campaign including the keyword ‘htc’. People that are likely to search for HTC are likely to buy a HTC phone. Therefore, instead of buying it from HTC’s website, O2 could get the web users to buy the phone through their website gaining them a profit.

Another reason O2 have bid for ‘htc’ is because another network has bid for it being Three. This makes clear that there is competition for this keyword and for O2 to be ontop, they must have outbid Three for the ‘htc’ keyword.

Looking at the advert itself, the description makes clear that O2 are aiming the advert at web users with HTC phones (so they buy accessories) and web users who haven’t got a HTC phone at all (but may want one). The advert has been designed so it gives very limited information to the web user. For the web user to gain much more information, they will need to click on the advert to O2’s landing page.

This landing page takes many features of the original website (if not all of them). Although it is warned to never use your homepage as a landing page, it can sometimes be okay to use a sub-page from your homepage as a landing page like O2 have done. If O2 decided to completely differentiate their landing page from the actual O2 website, it will be hard for the web user to understand the navigation if they have already visited the O2 website in the past (which is quite likely). From O2 adopting the same design as their website for their landing page, they have allowed the web user to browse much more easily through O2’s website.

If I was to look at just this landing page to encourage web users to buy a HTC mobile, it isn’t the best. Above the fold, no clear image of a HTC phone is displayed (you have to scroll down to view them fully). This might be a benefit as it entices the web user to scroll down the page. However, since first impressions are everything online, my first impression of this landing page was not the best.