Ask any number of eCommerce merchants that are currently running paid search campaigns what their biggest headaches are, metrically, and you’re going to come across a few of the same things, over and over again.
Low impressions; low return on ad spend; an ineffective bidding strategy that results in high costs and low return.
You’ll also hear some gripes about high CPC, or cost per click.
It makes sense why this is a bear to some eCommerce merchants. Higher cost per click means you pay more for each click, which also means that, regardless of conversions, the objective cost of a campaign will remain high.
But high CPC alone does not paint the entire picture.
We got the information in this article straight from the source: Genius eCommerce, a professional eCommerce PPC management company that has been running and optimizing campaigns for decades.
As it turns out, high CPC is not always a bad thing – and the PPC experts agree.
When High CPC Is Not So Good
First, the bad news. High cost per click can actually be a bad thing, if it’s not justified by the performance of the campaign in some other way, namely in high conversions or sales figures.
If your cost per click is high it is likely because your bidding strategy requires you to pursue competitive keywords for your Google ad groups.
Every time a user clicks on your PPC ads, it’s going to cost you. If a user clicks on your ad and then bounces before converting, the ad hasn’t paid for itself.
Inevitably, this is going to be the case with some users, but the idea is to drive down these figures as much as possible. If too many people aren’t converting, then the cost of your campaign will be very high and have little to show for it.
But there’s one missing piece to this puzzle.
When High CPC Really Is Not Only Not Bad but Justified
It is sometimes necessary to bid on highly competitive keywords as a part of your ad campaign in order to get your ads to display to the right audience. This can be expensive.
Making money costs money, and to ensure that your Google AdWords ads are properly optimized, it may require you to spend the extra money to get them to make the right impressions.
If users are not converting, it just means that your ads are not optimized in some way or other. You could be targeting the wrong keywords, your ad copy could be unappealing, or your landing pages could be poorly optimized – among innumerable other factors.
However, as long as customers are not only clicking on your ads but converting, and the ads generate a profitable return, that high CPC was necessary to generate that revenue.
When conversions offset the cost of clicks, high CPC can actually be a good thing – especially since you effectively blocked your competitors from stealing certain positions for lucrative keywords.
More Questions about High CPC? Contact This PPC Management Company!
The key takeaway here, and any PPC management company will tell you, is that high CPC is not a bad thing when the ad campaigns remain profitable and the costs of those clicks are offset by the revenue generated from conversions. Ideally, you’d want to keep CPC low, but some keywords just cost more. If you want to profit from them, you need to pay the price.
To learn more about eCommerce pay-per-click management, contact Genius eCommerce at GeniusEcommerce.com A full-service PPC management agency that offers search engine optimization and social media management in addition to PPC services, Genius eCommerce is poised to help you take your pay per click advertising to the next level.
You just have to contact them!
