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Pay per click advertisements are very popular among the online marketers. It offers immediate results, the success ratio is measurable and the cost of advertisement is not very high. I work as a PPC consultant and me and my fellow PPC consultants regularly go through various online forums to know the latest developments in the filed of PPC. Every day, marketers comes up with new strategies and techniques to make a marketing campaign successful.

However, the word “successful” is very hard to define when you are talking about PPC, because it completely depends on the client. He has to decide what matters the most to him. Some will tell you that they need hundreds of clicks and some will say conversion rate is crucial., not clicks.

Before I delve into this matter, let’s first try to understand the concept of PPC. The primary goal of a marketer is certainly getting as many clicks as possible because if people won’t click on the ads, they will never come the client’s website. However, bringing customers home and encouraging them to purchase something is completely different. Conversion rate is the second target after CTR and the most difficult to achieve.

In one forum I noticed a question posted by an internet marketing expert. The question was, “Client wants more clicks but don’t want to increase budget. What can I do?” The PPC expert was concerned because when he reduced the cost per click rate, he was not generating enough traffic.

Other forum users had given him some good suggestions to increase traffic. Read them…

• Shifting budget to the display network.
• Ad position performance tracking
• Get rid of non-performing keywords
• Use 3rd tier PPC engines
• Search for long tail keywords
• How about re-targeting?

These are some great suggestions given by PPC consultants to lower the PPC cost per click rate. However, a few people posted that click is not the right metric to focus on. In fact, one professional commented that click is the worst metric and the person who asked the question on forum should meet his client and question him what matters the more to him? It is great news that 1000 web users are visiting the site, but is he aware of the conversion rate? Did he ever measure the conversion rate and did he ever spent time to make a plan for better conversion rate?

I completely agree with the questions asked by the seasoned professional. Sure, you can look for long tail keywords to drive traffic to your home and use brand terms in the ad copy to increase CTR, but getting the more for same money is not always a practical idea. You can get more, but the quality may not suit your standard.

Let me explain my point of view by giving an example. Suppose you want to buy a house and have only $100,000. Obviously, you want a house as big as possible, but size is not the only thing that you consider while buying a house. What is the bigger house is located in a notorious neighborhood? What if the architecture of the house represents a bygone era? Will you still be interested in that house?

Basically, it is all about quality vs. quantity. So, when a client tells you that he wants more clicks for the same budget, share some facts with him.

• There is a limit of low cost keywords that you can add to an account.
• 3rd tier engines certainly drive more traffic to the client’s website, but are those visitors really valuable? Suppose hundreds of potential and non-potential consumers visit your shop every day. The people outside the shop think that your business is running smoothly, but they don’t know that majority are leaving without buying anything. On the other hand, a shop is bringing only 50 customers per day, but 90% of them are purchasing something before living the store.
• Meet the client face to face and have an honest conversation. Tell him why you think that CTR should not be the ultimate metric. I often tell clients that I can bring millions of visitors to their website if I promise a “free iPod for signing up” in the ad copy, but since their business model does not give them the freedom to distribute free gadgets, it makes no sense.

PPC consultants should realize the fact that clicks should not be the KPI and you can take help of the points I discussed here to convince the clients that quality is far more crucial that quantity. If you are getting less visitors, but they are hitting the “buy now” button in the products/services page, you are doing a good job.

AuthorBio : This post is written by Sarmista Aun. She is a professional blogger and currently works in a leading PPC company in India. She provide tricks through her writings which you can follow to improve the conversion rate of PPC advertising campaign.