What is PHP?

PHP is a powerful and common scripting language that is used on over 20 million websites. PHP now has many uses but it is particularly useful at dynamically generating content. PHP gives websites like Facebook the ability to create new pages on the fly. PHP can also be used to create highly customized PPC campaigns.

PPC PHP

If you are unfamiliar with PHP and don’t know how it applies to PPC, think of it like a mail merge function. When you receive a credit card offer in the mail, they may use your name in several places to give their offer a more personalized feel. You can do the same thing with your landing pages, only instead of using names, you can use keywords.

Customized Landing Pages Means Higher Conversions

Typically the more you customize your landing pages for what a potential customer wants, the higher your conversion rate will be. With a dynamic landing page written in PHP, your entire page will be based upon specific keywords in a search query. Once you have the PHP scripts in place, you can use keywords to generate unique title tags, headers, text or calls-to-action for thousands of different keywords.
Exploding Offers

PHP also allows you to use date-based functions for your pay per click campaigns. So you could use an exploding offer, based on the date. For example, if someone were to enter the page on Monday, you could say “Offer Expires Tuesday.” When someone else visits on Tuesday, the offer would automatically change to say “Offer Expires Wednesday.”

Phone Number Tracking Using PHP

Online marketing is generally extremely trackable. One place that the tracking breaks down is when someone looks at the page and then picks up the phone. A good technique to use is to set up a few unique tracking phone numbers and then forward the call to the main number.

You can then track any metric you find important; campaigns, keywords, ad group, landing page etc. PHP gives you the ability to display a different phone number based on these metrics. Since setting up a unique phone number for every single keyword is expensive and time consuming, here are a few other options:

• *Focus on high traffic metrics. If a certain ad group only generates a handful of clicks a month, you probably won’t have many phone calls to track and it won’t make sense to assign a tracking numbers for each keyword in the group. So focus just on the keywords, ad groups or landing pages that generate enough traffic to warrant tracking.

• *Use a third party phone tracking system. You can bypass PHP entirely and track phone calls all the way back to the keyword level by using a third party like clickpath.com. Of course these solutions are expensive and the value you receive in the call tracking needs to be more valuable than the cost of the system.

• *Assign a dynamically generated tracking code. You can use PHP to display a unique code on a landing page. That code can be based on a search query, landing page or ad group. Then train the person answering the phone to ask for the code on the page and make a note of it. You can now trace your phone calls back to specific advertising metrics.

Dynamic Navigation

PHP is also good at customizing navigation options for users. You can create links that have dynamically generated text or you could display custom links that send people to different sections of your site based on their original search phrase. Also, once people are on another page, this page can also have customized content.

An Example

Let’s assume that someone searches for “Vacations in Mexico.” They would see a sponsored ad that talks about vacations in Mexico and when they click on the ad they would be taken to a landing page that talks about vacations in mexico. If they weren’t quite ready to buy, they could click on a link that says “Learn More about Vacations in Mexico.” Then on that page, there would be an offer to sign up for “Special Offers for Vacations in Mexico.” When they submit that offer you would know what they were interested in and could tailor future communication with them.

Use With Caution

With this technique you can make thousands of landing pages that are customized on search queries or sponsored ads, but don’t take it too far. Read a few sample pages to make sure it sounds human. If it sounds manufactured or the search phrases don’t fit the text around it, many people will leave. People don’t trust content that appears to be automatically generated.

It is also crucial that you are actually able to provide the product or service that you promise. Generating thousands of pages of targeted advertising does you no good if you can’t actually fulfill the promises made on those pages.

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