by weboptimiser

24-7 PPC management is an advanced search marketing technique that enhances the success of a PPC campaign. It involves managing, optimising and monitoring a PPC campaign constantly, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This is done manually alongside automated systems to ensure marketers are maximising their campaigns around external factors such as the weather, press activity and other uncontrollable issues an automated system can’t know about.

A technique that reflects market usage

Search engine marketing has become an integral part of any online advertising campaign, whether that is SEO or PPC. Whilst search advertising can often provide a lower CPA than traditional offline campaigns, the market has become increasingly competitive and costs have escalated. 24-7 real time optimisation, a form of advanced search marketing, is an approach to PPC search advertising that can deliver the Holy Grail in search: both value and ROI for advertisers.

When running a PPC campaign advertisers adjust and manipulate their keywords list and the bid price associated with them to deliver targeted traffic for the lowest cost possible. Typically, these PPC campaigns are monitored 9am – 5pm Monday to Friday through the use of automated bid systems. Until recently, this approach was considered to be perfectly adequate.

However, the web is available to consumers around the clock, and they are using search continuously in different time zones. The ability to have full control of the PPC activity 24 hours a day, seven days a week provides greater control over the market and the target audience. Today, 24-7 real time optimisation plays a crucial role in delivering performance and ROI generation of a PPC campaign by eliminating the time lag time between the search engine and the occurrence of data.

Benefits

Real-time campaign management

By combining automated bid software and human expertise, 24-7 PPC management gives advertisers full control of their PPC activity. With the knowledge and ability to adapt to competitor bid strategies and fluctuations in search behaviour, results are always in line with client objectives, whatever the day or time.

Real-time budget control

Having the ability to capitalise on fluctuations in demand by assessing search trends to the minute means advertisers can effectively distribute their PPC budgets to achieve greater ROI.

Real-time tracking

With standard tracking tools there are inevitable down times, but by using real-time tracking software, a campaign can be tracked from click to conversion as they happen. Campaigns can be adapted to maximise the results as they come in. Compared to work day 9 am - 5.30 pm campaigns, 24-7 PPC management provides a maximum 12 hour real time competitive advantage, and 48 hours at weekends.

Instant strategy implementation

24-7 management allows for strategic bid changes to be implemented immediately; whereas with bid automated software this can take up to 24 hours.

Web analytics

The 24-7 combined management of web analytics software enables you to see and analyse traffic on your site from click to conversion and identify ineffective landing pages, drop off points and much more in real-time. This tool is essential to ensure that the traffic that is delivered to your site has a successful user experience and optimal conversion rates.

Summary

In an increasingly competitive area, neglecting a campaign overnight or over a weekend can result in significant losses in certain highly competitive markets. The ability to target your market 24-7 via search is now essential - with many already benefiting from the results.

Case study: Virgin Money

Virgin Money approached Weboptimiser after they had already carried out significant national and local advertising, including TV, radio, direct mail and press advertising. An optimisation campaign was started on natural search keywords and related keywords.

Then the 24/7 approach to analyse which keywords were most successful at converting visitors to customers was carried out by Weboptimiser. This was done by integrating the search optimisation activity with other promotional activity. For instance, Virgin may focus on credit cards in national TV, press and radio advertising; this would then be mirrored in the search campaign. All the activity is managed in this way to get maximum ROI.

Since the launch of the campaign to include 24/7, Virgin Money has seen a 40% uplift in online applications across all of its financial products since Weboptimiser took over the SEO activity, and some individual products experienced much greater increases.