Looking at the schedule, it’s easy to see the pattern in the average number of seconds that visitors
spend on your site. During the hours of 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. visitors spend slightly more time than
they do during the lunch hours. However, the most time that users spend on the site (by seconds)
is between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. It’s these hours in which you should invest the most.Additionally, if you’re looking at the schedule, you see the company is closed all day on Sunday and
before 9 a.m. during the week, and is short-staffed all day on Saturday. These are times when you’ll
want to keep your ad exposure low or non-existent.Dayparting also has an additional benefit that many people don’t think about. It can help
you reduce the instances of click fraud that you may face. Because your ad is shown only
at specific times, it is less available for your competition or other malicious souls to use it to drive up
your PPC advertising costs.Dayparting also works for days of the week and is especially useful if your products and services
are seasonal in nature. For example, if you find that your ads gather the most traffic on weekends,
you may decide that exposure during the week isn’t as important as exposure on the weekend. In
that case, you can keep your exposure during the week to a minimum and increase it dramatically
over the weekend. This should result in your budget being lower, or at the very least your budget
should stay the same while the effectiveness of your PPC campaign should increase noticeably.Another strategy that can help you reduce your PPC costs is geo-targeting. You’ll find
more information about geo-targeting in Chapter 14.Improving Click-Through Rates
Some of the efforts you take to reduce the cost of your PPC campaigns can also lead to improved
click-through rates. It’s essential that you work toward increasing these rates. Even though more
clicks drive up the cost of your PPC campaign, they also lead to more sales or conversions.Aside from the efforts that you’ve already seen (like dayparting and better targeting) you can also
improve your click-through rates by improving the ad copy in your PPC campaigns. Ad copy is
covered in more depth in Chapter 12, but for now you should know that there are a few strategies
for beefing up that copy. Include special offers or incentives in ad text.If you have coupons to offer, discounts
available, or even free gifts with purchase or other special offers and incentives, be sure
those are included in your PPC ad text. People are drawn to specials, and advertising them
should draw more people to your site.
Consider including price in ads for products and services.Many people shy away from
advertising their prices, but those prices (especially if they’re real bargains) can entice cus-
tomers. If you have great prices, tell the world. Just make sure you check out the competi-
tion before you decide you have the best prices on the Internet.CROSS-REFCROSS-REF
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