Digital Media Monkey

Just stumbled across this PPC ad for Tesco (either bidding on niche beer merchant brand names or using broad match on ‘beer’ I guess?).

Tesco's PPC ads in Google's sponsored links

Nothing wrong with that, and in the light of me hearing that they would be starting to stock a few more North American beers I thought I’d take a look.

Tesco's landing page: good or bad PPC strategy?

Alas, I need to sign in as an existing customer, or register.

Now I’m not really interested in going through the red tape of registering just to see Tesco’s beer range, so off I go on my previous ‘online journey’. So in my case, Tesco’s PPC tactics have led to a potential lost sale.

But I did wonder whether this is actually a good tactic? If I’m only browsing, yes they’ve paid for my click, but they haven’t had to waste time analysing lots of wasted traffic from a ‘tyre kicker’ like me, who wasn’t actually likely to buy.

Those that do register and browse are much more likely to buy, and their web stats should reflect the behaviour of people actually in the market to purchase. Plus, I wonder if this tactic actually has led to an increase in registered users?

By no means best practice, and not quite sure if this really fits Google’s landing page policy, but I maybe the amount Tesco spend on PPC probably Google’s concern over that…