PPC - Pay Per Click Management

The last PPC campaign I analysed in the ‘Analyse A Real PPC Campaign’ series came from PC World, who had some stiff competition in Google search from having sponsored shopping above their search advert. However, from gaining top spot of paid search results in PPC and having a well designed landing page, it became apparent they had, on the whole, a good PPC campaign. With March being under a month away, it is that time of year as the new number plates for cars are generated which means there will be lots of offers for the old generation and old ’16’ plate number plates. Therefore, to look into the car market at this time of year, here is an analysis of a PPC campaign from Vauxhall.

To view Vauxhall’s PPC search advert, I had to type into Google search UK, ‘vauxhall’:

It is not uncommon for companies to bid on their own brand name in PPC for the following reasons:

1. To ward off competition – Competitors might bid for competior brand names to ‘steal’ traffic away from them. From Vauxhall bidding on their brand name, they are sending out a message to others that they simply can’t steal traffic from them that easily in PPC.
2. To display different links to the top organic search result – SEO takes a long time to do and, therefore, the links that display there are usually quite general and do not always suit the company. For this reason, you will usually find companies using the site link extension when bidding on their own brand name so they can change/adapt the links displayed to be up to date with the time of year, local trends and more (which will all aid in a better conversion).

It is likely to be the second bullet point more than the first for Vauxhall bidding on their own brand name. As well as the site link extension, Vauxhall have opted for more extensions such as a telephone and location extension, to provide the web user as much information about contacting and finding a Vauxhall garage.

After clicking on the above advert, I came to the following landing page:
This is a well designed landing page for the following reasons:

• The navigation menu above the slideshow of images is expandable upon click. This enables web users to find the exact page they are interested in a lot quicker, reducing any chances of exiting the landing page prematurely.
• Since the web user prior to this (being me) searched ‘vauxhall’, I have not specificed what model of car I wanted for the make. For this reason, Vauxhall have put a range of their cars on a slideshow to show me what cars I could buy if I wanted to. This is a good technique to go for when the keyword that is targeted is vague.

The only downside to this page is the fact there is content below the fold. However, there is no way the web user would know this from viewing this landing page. Therefore, I would have included an arrow pointing down at the bottom of the page or have the cars at the bottom appear half above/below the fold to encourage the PPC traffic to scroll.