PPC - Pay Per Click Management

The last PPC campaign I analysed in the ‘Analyse A Real PPC Campaign’ series was from eflorist, who had a below average search advert, due to the lack of ad extensions used (where all of the competition used ad extensions, such as the ratings extension, to their advantage). The landing page was an effective landing page, illustrating colorful images of the flowers eflorist had on offer to the web user.

With it coming to the end of August and ‘Back to School’, it is a popular time for people to start to buy stationary for the new academic year. With this, here is an analysis of a PPC campaign from Papier.

To view Papier’s PPC search advert, I had to type into Google search UK, ‘buy stationary’:

Straight away, it is clear either the CPC Papier have gone for, or their quality score, is not as competitive as the adverts above them, hence why they rank 3rd in paid search results. It’s telling that the competition isn’t strong for this search phrase, since the maximum of four adverts does not appear: only three. This is surprising considering that it is a busy time to capitalize on the Back to School movement.

Looking at the advert itself, it’s a very good search advert. Papier have kitted the advert out with lots of ad extensions, to make the advert appear more clickable, as well as increasing the size of the advert, increasing the level of exposure it will get too. There is a call to action at the start of the title, addressing exactly what the web user searched for.

After clicking on the above advert, I came to the following landing page:
Although the search advert mentioned the stationary was ‘personalised’, the landing page used by Papier has some areas of improvement which would have made it suit the search advert and the type of traffic they would have targeted better:

• The images used are light feminine colours, such as pink. This will make it seem that Papier are targeting female stationary, whereas they should be targeting both male, female, and unisex stationary. Since men can reach this landing page, first impressions will most likely cause them to exit, wasting PPC budget.
• The navigation menu is effective and hovers upon expansion. The only problem is that the navigation menu would have been better suited to be solely about stationary, since there is a lot of different types of stationary a person can buy. This will make it harder for the web user to find the stationary they want.
  • Based on this, they will have to scroll down the page and shop by scrolling. The problem is that the only stationary Papier show on this landing page are cards and books – not completely in keeping with the range of stationary there is or the ‘Back to School’ campaign.