Pay-per-click Tools

There are many tools available to aid developers in their PPC management. Overture offers a variety of tools to aid in bid management, and there are several third party tools to monitor the costs and successes of a site’s bids. Using these tools effectively can greatly increase the likelihood for success in a PPC campaign.
Some of the tools that Overture offers include a ROI calculator, a CPM calculator, a term suggestion tool, and a view bids tool (http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/adcenter/tools/index.jhtml). These tools are very helpful in the PPC process. The ROI calculator will determine return on investment by taking total monthly click-throughs (TMC) times average cost per click times the customer conversion rate times the average cost per customer (TMC x Est. Ave. CPC x Conv. Rate x Profit/ Conversion). This tool can be helpful in determining estimates for maximum cost per clicks. The CPM calculator measures the ROI (return on investment) of a CPM (cost per thousand) impressions advertising model, such as many banner and button buys. The term suggestion tool should be used during the keyword development in the planning phase and throughout the website creation process. This tool will tell a developer about related searches that include given search term and how many times that term was searched for in the last month. The view bids tool is essential once a PPC campaign has begun. (See Appendix 3-11) This tool will tell a developer the selling prices for each keyword phrase. This can be important information when a “bid-war” starts between two sites. Google offers some similar tools for PPC bid management within the interface of their advertising program “Adwords”. These tools are constantly being improved and should be monitored and utilized by developers closely.
There are also several third-party programs for PPC management. Some of the most well known programs include Go Toast (www.gotoast.com), and Bid Rank (www.bidrank.com). These programs allow developers to manage hundreds of keywords at one time and track their performance. Good PPC ad campaigns utilize obscure niche keywords and can include many, many phrases. In order to use the best phrases with justifiable ROI it may be necessary to use a third party program to reduce valuable time spent managing these campaigns. These programs allow users to set up automated bidding systems based on time, price, and budget that would otherwise take significant man-hours to maintain. The developers of serious PPC advertising campaigns will immediately recognize the value of such analysis and improved management.
PPC campaigns can be a very good short-term solution, and in some cases a long-term solution as well. The key to successful PPC campaigns is close monitoring of statistics to deduce which phrases offer the necessary ROI to justify their costs. PPC campaigns can help improve customer awareness of a company’s site and serve as a good solution for obtaining traffic until rankings through unpaid listings can be achieved. PPC campaigns may also help drive traffic during periods where free listing positions suffer due to the sometime unstable nature of free search engine rankings. PPC campaigns can certainly help in the promotion of a website if managed appropriately.