AS businesses across the world engage in the ‘battle of the eyeballs’ to win more customers, research conducted by a leading digital marketing agency has revealed that some companies are paying as little as 76p to get more clicks onto their website.
The popularity of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising has risen dramatically as companies realise the effectiveness of more targeted methods to reach their desired audience, and businesses are increasing their marketing budgets as the competition for attracting eyeballs to their services heats up.
ROAR Digital Marketing, which specialises in PPC and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategies, has conducted research into UK businesses’ digital marketing behaviour by reviewing levels of PPC investment, click through rates and successful website conversion rates.
The data, conducted over a three-month period, has revealed that some businesses have witnessed significant improvements in their conversion and click through rates at a cost of just 76p per click.
Michael Knowles, the founder and Managing Director of ROAR Digital Marketing, said: “PPC advertising is an indispensable tool for businesses seeking effective online marketing strategies because of its precision, cost-efficiency and the ability to track and make that channel accountable.
“By adopting these strategies, companies can be extremely targeted in reaching specific demographics, locations and interests to ensure a high level impact for their campaigns.
“Where online competition is fierce, PPC campaigns offer instant visibility and measurable results to allow businesses to track every click, and seeing as a click could be costing them just 76p highlights how effective this type of advertising is and how it can significantly change the trajectory of a business by bringing larger audiences to their websites.”
ROAR analysed PPC data for businesses of varying sizes and across different sectors, and the requirement of larger budgets in more competitive fields was one of the key findings. The research also showed that higher budgets were needed in more densely populated locations, such as London.
The research also showed that where the competition was more fierce, for example the energy sector, the average cost per click exceeded £10, but businesses still enjoyed a high conversion rate of more than 17%.
The research found:
- The businesses which experienced the lowest cost per clicks, on average, invested approximately £5,000 over a three-month period, and for that amount received an average of 6,000 visits to their websites. They also saw an average conversion rate of 9.27%, the equivalent of around 550 quality leads.
- Conversely, the businesses which invested at the lower end of monthly budgets were paying approximately £1.50 on average, per click, receiving close to 3,000 clicks to their websites, in turn leading to almost 250 leads.
- One particular sector which saw businesses investing at the highest levels due to the competitiveness nature of the industry was energy. With companies investing an average of £80,000 over three months, they received close to 3,000 website clicks and an average of 350 new customers for their businesses.
Michael said: “There is no one size fits all formula as some specific industries are more competitive in the digital marketing stratosphere, so require more investment from the business.
“For example, a small cleaning company should expect to see a steady stream of local inbound leads trickling in if they commit say £20-30 a day with Google Ads, and this should transfer into a high return on investment and allow the business to grow.
“However, that budget would likely be ineffective for the likes of an app development company or financial firm where online competition is much more fierce, and you would have to invest more to see a solid return on that amount, especially in the more densely populated cities.”
PPC campaigns allow businesses to target audiences by geography, industry and demographic, and creating lists of detailed keywords with commercial intent is key to the effectiveness of where the advertising will feature.
Setting up tracking provides businesses with the ability to gain insights into the performance of both Google Ads and the business’ website holistically, allowing businesses easy access to data about how many leads are being generated and from which channel they are coming from.