PfP Manage in detail

PfP Manage is ivantage's full-on Pay-for-Position Search Engine Marketing Campaign management service. PfP Manage includes all aspects of creating, building, running and managing campaigns. Despite the intricacies of doing this effectively, we charge a modest percentage of the media (click charge) expenditure and clients find it pays for itself quickly and many times over.

In a PfP Manage service we can set-up all your Pay-for-Position marketing campaigns across all the relevant UK PfP engines and networks. They can include: Google Adwords, Yahoo (Overture), MS adCenter, Miva, Mirago, and WebFinder. For reasons of practicality and dominant coverage, campaigns often focus on Adwords at the outset.

By means of diligent and imaginative keyword research, we ensure that the broadest range of relevant and effective keywords is used to promote your business and obtain profitable traffic.

Paid Search in action

Paid Search works by showing adverts to visitors who visit search engines or who view pages on web sites which have agreed with a paid search service company to display adverts relevant to their content. The collection of associated web sites which have agreed to display such ads are often called the “content network”.

The adverts are shown in response to visitors entering certain keywords (in the case of search) or the content of the page being viewed. ivantage works hard to help you identify the keywords which are relevant to your ads being displayed.

If a visitor is attracted by the ad then he/she will click the link displayed in the advert and land on the URL associated with it. This may simply be the home page of your web site. However, if you have planned a specific action for your target visitors – in all probability directing them to a place to make a purchase – the destination URL should be a landing page specifically designed to receive such visitors and direct them to the goal you have chosen for them.

The costs of Paid Search

Every keyword or keyphrase on a particular paid search service (for example, Google’s Adwords) has a click price determined by the service’s advertisers who bid against each other. When you start to advertise on PfP engines, you become part of the keyword auction. Commonly, the more you are willing to pay per click, the higher will your advert appear. This should result in more traffic – and a bigger bill from click charges.

Recently, some PfP services have added relevancy and advert quality as well as bid amount to determine position. Google, MSN adCenter and Yahoo now all employ a formula which Google have named Quality Based Bidding (QBB). The paid search services want the most relevant sites to appear as they do on natural search results, so reward relevant and penalise poor ads. Old style bid management systems are unable to deal with QBB, so they can only promote ads higher by drastically increasing the CPC, resulting in very expensive campaigns. ivantage works hard with clients to produce relevant ad copy of high quality so as to benefit from the QBB systems.

The places where Paid Search advertising is displayed

The most well known position for advert display is in the right-hand column of search engine results pages, headed “sponsored links” or “sponsored sites”. Sometimes, highly rated paid adverts are displayed at the top of all results.

In addition, each PfP service has its own distribution network comprising websites who have agreed to present its adverts in return for a percentage of click charges. Because of this, some PfP services are also called PfP networks. The network consists of a number of search engine portals where the ads are shown in response to user search queries in a similar way to those on the search sites of the PfP services themselves. Google and Yahoo-Overture (the most important source for traffic volume) associations include:

Google Adwords

Google (all locations)

Google Groups

Google Directory

Google Products (pka Froogle)

BT Openworld.com

NTL.com

ASKJeeves.co.uk

DealTime.co.uk

Blueyonder.co.uk

Nexttag.com

Virgin.com

Overture

Yahoo.co.uk

MSN.co.uk

AOL.co.uk

Lycos.co.uk

AltaVista.co.uk

Wanadoo.com

There are also web sites which do not offer themselves as search services but simply present ads on pages alongside normal content. The ads are displayed in response to a keyword match between the advert and words in the text content of the page. Again the ads are displayed in return for a percentage of click charges. The collection of such websites associated with a paid search service is known as the “content network”. ivantage can help advertisers determine whether expenditure on placement in the content network will deliver relevant visitor traffic.

How do we manage the PfP campaign?

As a result of considerable experience in the field of online search, we have a defined methodology that we use in connection with PfP Manage.

Our methodology

As soon as the campaign has begun, the process starts with you, the client, completing the Business Discovery document, then continues as outlined below.

The Business Discovery document

The Business Discovery document is used by our Account coordinators to fast-track their learning about your business, your market and your key competitors. Armed with this information, your Account coordinator will, with the assistance of our most senior consultants, be able to build an appropriate PfP campaign for your website starting with extensive keyword research.

PfP Campaign Set-up Report

After this analysis we deliver a PfP Campaign set-up report for your approval or refinement. This details exactly which keywords we intend to use to start your campaign and the general messages we shall embed in the creative work for the PfP adverts.

Your approval

Subject to receiving your approval, we implement the campaign across the selected PfP network(s).

Campaign live date

As soon as we have your agreement to go live with the campaign, we switch on your adverts, first at Google Adwords, and you receive traffic immediately. If other networks are included in the campaign, we “go live” with Overture one to two weeks later, then on other selected engines. We start with Google because Adwords allows us to change adverts quickly and we can monitor response rates for each change. Once we know which keywords and ad copy work best we can use them on the other PfP engines.

Budget control

You authorise the PfP media spend with us every month by completing and sending a Monthly Insertion Order. On receiving an Insertion Order, we continue with the campaign at the expenditure level you have authorised. We allocate your monthly spend across the appropriate services and set daily limits so that your expenditure is spread over the month in an agreed profile.

Initial bidding strategy

We advise you in the early stages of the campaign about your maximum bid prices for each keyword. We estimate these before your campaign starts and they are detailed in your Proposal and Contract document. As your campaign progresses, these variables may change and we advise you on maximum bid levels and recommend suitable budgets.

Ongoing bidding strategy

Determining your continuing bid strategy can be the most complicated part of your PfP campaign. It may include tactics, such as:

Bidding to a maximum cap

Bidding to specific position or rank

Bidding to find gaps in competitors’ bids

Bidding to jam competitors into paying higher prices

Google Analytics

With PfP manage we use a sophisticated conversion tracking system called ivantage Bid Manager that monitors how well the traffic is converting to fulfil your specific goals. Bid Manager makes it possible to calculate additional metrics and use them to enhance your bidding strategy. They include:

Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS)

Advertising Spend over Revenue ratio (ASR)

Return on Investment (ROI)

Cost per Action (CPA)

Profit Margin

Regular monitoring

Depending on the competitiveness of your campaign, your industry and chosen keywords, your campaign is monitored at least every day – some times every hour of every day and night – to ensure your bidding strategy is implemented.

Automated intervention

ivantage Bid Manager provides a feedback loop that automatically adjusts your bids according to your chosen bidding strategy. This ensures that your bidding tactics or marketing metrics are always being met.

Campaign reporting

We provide regular reports from ivantage Bid Manager about the traffic your PfP campaign generates together with information about which PfP keywords have led to successful goal conversions or sales.

Integration with ivantage Visitor Insight

If we are running your SEO campaign as well as a PfP campaign, your PfP results can be integrated into ivantage Visitor Insight, enabling you to compare your paid and natural search campaigns, together with any other online campaigns you may have included in the scope of Visitor Insight.

Learn more about ivantage Visitor Insight

Detecting click fraud

The Paid Search services have systems to detect click fraud but, to assist in combating this continuing concern, PfP Manage includes its own click fraud detection. Our monitoring systems inform us should too many clicks originate from a single IP addresses or from competitor addresses, or if unusual click patterns develop on specific keywords or from unexpected sources.

PfP timescales

Below is a typical project plan for PfP Manage. Critical points are receiving the Business Discovery Document and a revised or approved PfP Campaign set-up report.

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