Award-Winning PPC Agency Manchester

Here at Cedarwood despite working with companies right around the world we are proud to be based in the heart of Manchester City Centre, so if you are looking for a PPC agency based in Manchester (or just a PPC agency in general!) you have come to the right place.

Whether you are near or far our team is on hand to help with your PPC needs. We work with clients right around the world from just 10 minutes down the road all the way around to Australia, Singapore and the United States. 

We have extensive experience working in the PPC sector across a range of industries, managing budgets from £10k to £500k per month across key client accounts, we understand how to get the best out of your campaigns, or if you’re just starting out we can help you to set them up from scratch! 

So wherever you are based – if you are looking for a fresh approach to PPC, get in touch! 

Depending on the PPC product that we are working with the auction can work in a number of different ways – however most commonly when we refer to the PPC auction we are talking about Text Ad Advertising which is the advertising that appears at the top (& bottom) of Google’s search results.

The Text Ad Auction works on an equation of Maximum CPC (Cost-Per-Click) * Ad Rank to determine a position within the search results. The benefit of having the Ad Rank metric is that Google doesn’t just look to award the top position to the advertiser who pays the most – rather there is a key focus on the quality of the advert.

The Ad Rank Metric is made up of a Quality Score – which comprises different elements including Expected CTR, Landing Page Experience & Ad Relevance – each of which are designed to improve the quality of the ads & are essential to ensure that you get good ad positioning. By improving the quality of your ad you can bring down your Max CPC – leading to still having a good position, but also spending less!

It’s worth noting that Google Shopping works in a slightly different way – working with a Search Impression Share – so the higher the bid the more available impressions & search space you will be able to gain.

PPC is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, given the exponential growth of the internet and the shift to digital business, customers, clients, users, and potential prospects are now more reachable than ever. A small, independent artist no longer has to limit themselves to their local community, and can instead push their products in front of millions of users around the world. The playing field has never before been so accessible, with web platforms allowing businesses to get online in a matter of hours. This increase in competition makes organic competition incredibly fierce and, in some cases, leaves marketers with no other option than to pay for exposure. 

PPC is an extremely popular marketing method due to one’s ability to directly attribute a level of spend with a result. With pay-per-click, the advertiser only spends when a user clicks the ad and so, in theory, the spend isn’t wasted. In this context, you have been successful in bringing the customer off the street and into your store. PPC is undoubtedly more complex than this; marketers around the world work to target their PPC efforts perfectly to bring in customers and users that are most likely to convert. This is why hiring a PPC agency is valuable to your business – they know the ins and outs, have experience of what works in what industries, and can help to scale your business more quickly due to their extensive knowledge of the channel. The strength of PPC agencies here is their ability to test a wide variety of metrics, such as the user’s location or the users demographic, to push advertising efforts to a smaller niche and give you more time to focus on other important business tasks. In a world where data is invaluable, understanding your customer is more important than ever before, and PPC is a huge component in allowing marketers to target users based on their intent.

A keyword’s ‘Quality Score‘ refers to a value out of 10 that Google attributes to a keyword based on a number of key variables;

• Ad relevancy – How relevant is the advertisement to the keyword that it is returning for? Google is focused on making the user experience as seamless as possible, and therefore, it’s important to ensure that Ad copy is relevant. For example, if one was to search for ‘Red Running Shoes’, it would be ill-advised to return an ad with ‘Green Running Shoes’ in the ad copy. 
• Landing page – The relevancy and performance of the landing page will affect a keyword’s quality score. If the page is poorly optimised – for either mobile or desktop – then Google may penalise the keyword based on these factors. Furthermore, similar to the ad relevance, the landing page must be relevant. The user searching for red running shoes should be returned to a page with red running shoes!
• Expected click-through rate – This measures how likely your ad will be clicked on by a user if it is shown for that specific keyword. It takes into account past performance of that keyword based on where the ad was positioned as well as how that keyword has performed for other advertisers.

So what does this actually mean for PPC advertisers and why is this so important? 

Quality score is an incredibly powerful metric, as it allows marketers to level the playing field against bigger players in the market. Traditionally, PPC was dominated by those with the biggest pockets. If you paid the most, you returned the highest, simple. However, after the introduction of the quality score, marketers can now bid LESS than competitors and return HIGHER in the search results. Google, in this instance, is looking to reward marketers that push relevant ads. This isn’t to say that the bid value is irrelevant, as the amount one bids is still a key variable in the position the ad will be placed. However, see the quality score as a ‘mate’s rate’ at the auction, whereby Google is seeing your ads as relevant and suitable for the search that it’s returning for. This not only works for you, as your ads can be seen more at a reduced cost-per-click, but Google will be pushing ads that users are more likely to click on and find a successful result in doing so. Win-win.

Keyword analysis looks at identifying the search volumes, competition and cost of bidding for a certain keyword or search term. Analysing the behaviour of users, and the way in which they are searching, is one of the first steps in understanding their intent and stage in their consumer journey. This is extremely valuable in paid search (PPC), as it allows marketers to bid on keywords where they can see users are actively searching. Additionally, PPC can be targeted to the various stages of the consumer funnel based on the keywords that are analysed. For example, a user at the top of their consumption journey may be searching for “Types of Running Shoes,” whereas those with transactional intent would search for “Buy X Running Shoes”. 

PPC can be effective for all shapes and sizes, no matter the size of your budget. Often it can be difficult to know exactly how much should be spent on a PPC campaign, which is why we’re here to help! If you’re unsure about getting started with PPC or you’re curious about what PPC could do for you, why not get in touch using the form below, or have a read through our blog to get an understanding of how PPC could help you. 

When considering spend you will be looking at both media spend and agency spend. We usually recommend that you pay your media spend directly to Google so that you have the payment relationship with them and then we can manage the account on your behalf through an MCC. From an agency fee perspective, each agency charges different fees and they usually either work on a £/hr model or potentially a % of spend – we work on either, depending on your spend, with a minimum management fee of £2,000 per month. 

A lot of people ask this question! So let me take the time to explain the key differences between the two & why you might choose one or the other – or alternately both together!

Why Would I Choose PPC?

PPC is a great way to get started whether you’re looking to drive more visitors to your website, increase sales or simply improve visibility – it’s also a really great way to scale & get in front of an audience at a time when they need you the most. It can work standalone or supplement your other marketing efforts & given that so many people click on the ads at the top of the search results you know you are going to be front & centre of your audience. PPC is also very measurable –  you can see exactly what you’ve spent for exactly what return – this makes it a popular option for marketers who are looking to directly measure ROI.

Why Would I Choose SEO?

SEO is a great way to grow your visibility naturally & organically – although a more long-term project than PPC, SEO results are also usually there for the long-term. With PPC once the advertising stops, usually so does the traffic, with SEO the traffic can continue for a period of time until it drops off – making it a more sustainable approach to marketing.

SEO has a number of facets to it from technical SEO, to on-page content, through to Digital PR, this means that it often requires more people & a varying skillset to achieve a well-rounded SEO approach.

Why Would I Choose Both?

PPC & SEO can work really well together & if you choose the combination, as long as your attribution in order you can get the best of both worlds. PPC is a great starter – it allows you to have an immediate impact on your audience while you are building up the SEO support in the background. The benefit of having the SEO with it is that it’s always-on, so if at any point you need to pause your PPC you know that with good Organic Rankings you will still see a good level of traffic through to your website & when used properly, PPC can complement this & really drive the traffic growth you are looking for – together they can be a powerful combination.

Tracking is incredibly important in ensuring that you are measuring the results effectively and getting the most out of each marketing channel.

At the start of any PPC campaign we will undertake a full audit of your existing tracking set up to identify any concerns or issues that we are able to fix – this means that from the very start we are confident that the data you are tracking is accurate and giving the right results – allowing us to more effectively measure which campaigns are working well and look to improve efficiencies among those which aren’t. 

We will also implement call tracking if required to help ensure that all of your leads are fully captures.

Our team are fully qualified in Google Analytics and have a good deal of experience working with Google Tag Manager and other related products to ensure that tracking is set up to the best standard – so you can rest assured that the data you are seeing is right.