A brief introduction to Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising and how it can help your Charity grow.

There is now an alternative to traditional methods of advertising and this method in my opinion beats all other forms of advertising, sales and marketing techniques.

And not only can the results be instant but they can also be cheaper than the other older traditional methods of advertising. And, if you can get one result, you’ll know for certain that with your research and efforts you will get more results too. What is it that delivers these results? Well it’s the Internet of course. The fact is that the Internet can deliver faster results than any other type of marketing.

I believe that if you use the Internet the right way you will achieve your objectives, both quicker and cheaper than any other marketing channel you may have already used. Google is the most used search engine across the world.  Approximately there are 4 billion searches a month made via Google, so have peace of mind that you can be sure someone is searching for what you want or offer.

If you were to enter ‘children's charities’ in the search field, Google will list various websites that provide news and information on exactly that.  So, let me quickly try and explain the basics of how the Google Search Engine works.

Top left of the page – this is how many results Google has found based on your search query.

For ‘children's charities’ it’s about 28,500,000 results – so a lot of websites and websites Google deems relevant to your search query – so I am pretty positive that when searching you will find a page that delivers news and information on what you are looking for.

Below the search figures you will see that Google displays a left and right side.

The search results on the left hand side are called ‘Search Results’ – and you appear here by using ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ or SEO as some people refer to it.

This side of Google is based on what relevant content is within the websites. The more relevant the content matched to your search, then the higher Google will position and display that website within their search engine results.

By using and adopting quality content and SEO you can make Google approve your website more and so Google will position your website higher up its search engine rankings.

This side of Google – SEO – is harder to master and it does take more time to deliver results.

On the right hand side of the page results of Google you will see the term ‘Sponsored Links’.

This is pure and simple advertising – here organisations pay to be displayed and you can do exactly the same for whatever it is you are doing or wanting to achieve for your charity.

The right hand side of Google is called ‘Pay Per Click’ advertising, or PPC is another term often used.

Any organisation can advertise and display here.  You can easily place your advert here to tell everyone about your charity etc. And if done right it can be quick, cheap and you will get results.

And you only pay if someone is actually interested in your mission to click on your advert. This means you only pay money if someone has clicked on your advert that relates to the search query they typed into Google. So it is highly likely that this person has a real current interest in what you do. And the more specific the search term typed in, based on the keywords you are using in your advert ensures a good match.

Within this page, I will explain to you in an easy step-by-step process on how exactly you set up and create your own adverts on Google.

No matter what you are doing and want to achieve I believe these easy to read instructions will help you achieve your objectives.

I will explain:

• How to set up, create and manage your Pay Per Click Adwords account

• How to easily write your adverts so you perform well

• How to structure your bids and online marketing spend
• How to do the important things for every campaign that will increase your results

To do all this, I need you to do some things beforehand which will help you become a success when using Google Adwords.

Write down every search term that describes what you are doing or what your charity is and then write out every possible question that someone could ask about your charity and its mission.

For example, if you had a web page called ‘How to donate’ you would detail all the various ways someone could donate to your charity etc. In fact, you could if you wanted expand into other areas such as how you can volunteer and what forthcoming events people can help in. The more detail you provide the better results.

It’s this information that will help form your advert and provide you with the words which will ensure that people find you easily.

Get more from your own PPC campaign

Now, we’ve looked at the 2 different types of online web advertising: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC).

As previously mentioned, the key to SEO is to ‘optimize’ your website content so that it displays higher on the Google search results list. But SEO takes much longer to achieve this and get your website noticed and displayed within the Google search engine results. PPC is easier.

PPC is about bidding for your advert to appear when people search for words and phrases (e.g. what children’s charity can I donate money to) that are commonly associated with your charity. And so you only pay when someone clicks on your Adwords advert.

Unlike SEO, PPC allows you to get to the top of the Google search engine results page instantly. And so get relevant, valuable search engine web traffic to your website.

I will now show you how to set up and create a PPC ‘campaign’ and get your website immediately noticed.

Setting up your own PPC account on Google

You could if you wanted launch a PPC campaign on any search engine such as Yahoo or Bing, but whether you like it or not, Google has a massive share of the web search market – so Google is going to get you the most web traffic.

 Creating a PPC account with Google couldn’t be any easier so visit: www.google.co.uk/adwords and click on "Sign Up" or "Try Adwords Now".

After answering a few easy questions, click on  ‘create account’ and you are done and ready to go.

How a PPC campaign should be structured

The basic structure of a PPC campaign is as follows. The ‘campaign’ is the overall group name. So, say you are a Cancer Charity. You could have a campaign for let’s say “How to donate” and only this.

Once you’ve got your campaign name (How to donate), you’d divide all the different ways and methods on how to donate. These are your ‘ad groups’ you will have one ad group for, say, PayPal and different ones for the other donation websites.

You may ask why you have to split and divide your campaigns like this. Well, this allows you to divide your keywords into key specific groups that are deemed the most relevant to a person’s search engine query. This means you can tailor all your adverts to a specific search term and direct people to the most relevant page on your website.

For example, if you have an ad group specifically set up for donations then you can put all your donation keywords under this and write an advert specifically for donations.

Then, when someone searches on how to “donate to a cancer charity”, your donation advert will appear and take them to the relevant page on your website. Now you have got your Google Adwords account created and set up and know how to structure your campaigns, it’s the time to create a relevant list of keywords.

A simple method to creating a great list of keywords

If you haven’t heard the term ‘keywords’ previously  they are basically the words or phrases that you the people you want visiting your website will more likely use when searching for your Charity.

It is always best to write down and create a quality list of key words and phrases that would best suit and describe your Charity and its mission. If you have had difficulties doing this, you can use the Google Adwords keywords tool in your account to find useful  variations on keywords, which will help develop and grow your list.

The important thing is to ensure you keep your keywords relevant to what your charity is, does and offers. This way, your ad should only be seen by people who are interested in what you do. And so stop you having to pay for pointless clicks from people who aren’t interested. For example, if you are a charity focussing on a specific illness or condition, then use only those keywords that are specific to that illness or condition and not any keywords. This way it enables you to drill down on the exact search term/s and so get value for money on your online marketing spend.  So do not forget to group your keywords under the ad groups that they are most relevant for.

When adding your keywords, you will see that you can specify how you want your keyword to be matched. There are 3 types of keyword matching:

1. Broad Match: This allows your ad to show when similar phrases and relevant variations are used e.g. if the term you are bidding on is ‘children’s charity’ your ad could also appear for ‘children’s charity London’ and ‘children’s charity in London’ also.

2. Phrase Match: This allows your ad to show for searches that match the exact phrase with any other surrounding words e.g. if the term you’re bidding on is ‘children’s charity’ your ad could also appear for ‘children’s charity fundraising events’ or ‘children’s charity events in surrey’ also.

3. Exact Match: This allows your ad to be displayed for searches that match the exact phrase exclusively and only e.g. if the term you’re bidding on is ‘children’s charities’ your ad only appears when ‘children’s charities’ is typed into Google as a search query.

The Google Adwords account default setting is ‘broad match’ and based on his and some findings I would suggest changing this to ‘phrase match’ when starting. After all, you want value for money and not irrelevant search queries and clicks you don’t want to be paying for.

This gives you control over who your ad is displayed to and will given time and refining help you better target your audience. And when it comes to bidding on your keywords, what you are doing is saying just how much you are prepared to pay per click.

Finding the right amount to bid on each keyword will come from time and experience, and at the start you will just like anybody else monitor your results and change your keyword bidding accordingly.

How to create the perfect PPC advert

Just like any method of advertising your advert is the first impression the potential donor or volunteer gets of your charity. And, if you have a charity that has a lot of competition, then your ad has to stand out just like a business has to. For this there are simple rules you should follow when setting up your advert. 1. Keep your advert copy short and to the point, and a necessity as you have limited space to write your ad in. So pack in as much as possible to sell your charity, so being specific is KEY. 2. Think of unique selling points and include any targets or achievements that help you stand out from the crowd.

An example of a good Google advert might be:

Children Charities

www.savethechildren.org.uk/

Donate today and help us save

the most vulnerable children

OR

Donate To Children

www.rainbowtrust.org.uk/

A child with a terminal illness

needs support. Please donate now.

Keep your ad copy relevant to the keywords and search terms people will use when searching and finding your charity. Constantly review the keywords that bring the most web traffic to your website and try and include those in your advert text or at least in your advert title so that your ad is relevant to your keywords. This once known, also allows you to delete/remove the non performing keywords and either add new keywords or allows you to spend more on the keywords that deliver the clicks you want through to your website.

Relevancy is the most important thing in creating Google Adwords PPC campaigns as it affects your Google quality score.

You can find more information on quality score calculations in the help section of your Adwords account, but for your interest Google uses your Quality Score combined with your bids on keywords to determine where your advert is best placed when someone uses one of your keywords in their Search Engine search.

So the higher your score you get, the more relevant Google views and deems your website, so the lower the price you actually pay for each click and the higher your advert will appear on the webpage screen. Adverts at the top of the website page (positions 1, 2, and 3) generally get more clicks.

However, there is no point in creating a relevant list of keywords and great advert copy to attract people to your website when equally as important is your website landing page. And this should never be the Home page; you want the landing page to be specific to what the web searcher is looking for. In other words, if the web searcher entered “how can I donate to a cancer charity” then the page that the web searcher clicks through to, will be a page on how they can donate to the charity etc. So NOT just your homepage as this is a big error as you have left the web searcher to find this out for themselves and if they don’t find it, they will leave your website and that’s a click you’ve bought for no reward or end result.

Optimizing your landing page to make it more relevant will also improve Google’s opinion of your charity and mission. Additionally, it will improve your overall quality score, making your campaign more cost-effective to operate and help get you the results you are looking for.

And remember to ALWAYS monitor your results

To ensure Google Adwords PPC works for you, you have to monitor the success or failure of your campaign. This can be done very easily.

If you login to your Adwords account then simply click on the reporting tab and then click on conversions. In doing this, it will create a piece of ‘JavaScript code’ which you can then enter on the page of you are offering and want people to land on.

Google will then track these pages and display them in your Adwords account which keywords are bringing in the most rewards and more importantly show you how much you have spent on clicks in order to achieve the conversions.

It’s essential that you track all your results so that you can pinpoint exactly which keywords are working (and those that are not), which adverts are the most rewarding and which areas are most effective so you can concentrate on them to bring you more conversions.

Creating good PPC campaigns means you must master 4 key areas:

• You need to create a relevant list of good quality keywords.
• You need to ensure your advert copy is short, smart and will always attract people’s attention.
• You need to ensure your website landing page is relevant to what you offer in your advert.
• You need to ensure you track your campaign results.

Consider each of these 4 areas when creating your own PPC campaign and you are well on the way to gaining your end results. This as I said was a brief introduction to Google Adwords PPC but should you have any a question regards PPC (or even SEO), do not hesitate to make contact with me via: charity_links@yahoo.co.uk  and I will try my best to help you.