Revision and practice on digital marketing tools and measuring their success.
Key vocabulary: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Pay-per-Click (PPC), Cookies, Click-Through Rate (CTR)
A Google search shows three types of results: PPC ads — paid slots at the top of the page, always marked "Ad"; organic results — "free" listings below the ads, earned through good SEO; and increasingly, AI-generated results — also free, drawing on AI model training, which businesses are now trying to optimise for too.
PPC is where a business pays a search engine to show its ad at the top of results for specific keywords. Businesses bid against each other for keywords — the more popular the keyword, the more expensive it is to bid on. The business pays every time a user clicks its ad, whether or not that click leads to a sale.
SEO is the process of making a website as attractive as possible to search engines, so it appears high up in organic (free) results — using relevant keywords, a fast/secure/mobile-friendly website, and high-quality, trustworthy content.
Cookies are small data files a website saves on a visitor's device, essential for a personalised online experience. They remember a visitor (e.g. keeping items in a shopping basket), track their activity (which products they've viewed), and personalise their experience (showing ads for products they've recently looked at elsewhere).
Content marketing attracts, engages and retains an audience by creating and sharing relevant articles, videos, podcasts and other media. It's a type of "inbound" marketing that draws customers in and builds loyalty, making it especially effective for customer retention.
Unlike a TV ad, digital marketing is highly measurable — businesses track key measures to see if their spending is effective:
Click-Through Rate (CTR): (Clicks ÷ Impressions) × 100 — measures how engaging an ad is.
Conversion Rate: (Conversions ÷ Clicks) × 100 — measures how effective the website is at turning a click into a sale.
Worked example: an ad is shown 10,000 times (impressions) and receives 400 clicks, leading to 20 sales. CTR = (400 ÷ 10,000) × 100 = 4%. Conversion rate = (20 ÷ 400) × 100 = 5%.
| Benefits | Drawbacks |
|---|---|
| BenefitsHighly targeted | DrawbacksCan be complex to manage effectively |
| BenefitsMeasurable, so ROI can be tracked | DrawbacksCosts can rise quickly in competitive sectors |
| BenefitsCan be cost-effective | DrawbacksPrivacy concerns and GDPR compliance requirements |
UK businesses in 2026 typically pay around £1.50–£2.50 per click on Google Search for most sectors, though this varies hugely: charity/non-profit ads can cost as little as £0.30 per click, while highly competitive sectors like legal services can cost £12 or more per click. Location matters too — London-based campaigns typically run 15–30% above the national average. This shows PPC's core trade-off in practice: it's precisely targeted and instantly measurable, but costs can escalate quickly in a competitive market, which is exactly why businesses track CTR and conversion rate so closely to judge whether the spend is worth it.
Source: verified via search, September 2026 — Whitehat SEO and Search Lucid's 2026 UK Google Ads cost benchmarks.
Tesco now personalises 100% of active Clubcard customers' grocery home shopping journeys on a one-to-one basis, running more than 10,000 different "Clubcard Prices" each week. In 2026, Tesco partnered with Adobe to deepen its use of AI-driven personalised marketing based on Clubcard data, aiming to make offers, content and pricing more relevant to individual shoppers. This is a large-scale real example of digital marketing's key strength — its measurability and targeting — being used at a scale that would be impossible with traditional, un-personalised advertising.
Source: verified via search, September 2026 — Marketing Week and The Grocer's 2026 coverage of Tesco's Clubcard personalisation strategy.
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1. An ad is shown 20,000 times and receives 1,200 clicks. What is the CTR?
2. A website receives 2,500 clicks, and 150 customers make a purchase. What is the conversion rate?
3. What does SEO stand for?
4. What is a cookie used for?
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Short, snappy recall questions — tap to reveal the answer.
(Clicks ÷ Impressions) × 100.
PPC is a paid ad slot, charged per click; SEO is earning a free/organic ranking through website quality and keywords.
Any one of: complexity, rising costs in competitive sectors, privacy concerns/GDPR compliance.
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Don't just calculate CTR or conversion rate in isolation — always interpret what the figure means for the business, e.g. "a CTR of 4% shows the ad itself is reasonably engaging, but a low conversion rate alongside it would suggest the problem lies with the website or product, not the ad."
A high CTR doesn't automatically mean a campaign is successful — it only measures how many people clicked, not whether they went on to buy anything. CTR and conversion rate need to be read together, not in isolation.
Before using this: AI tools can get facts or mark scheme details wrong, and quality varies by tool. Always check anything factual against your notes or ask your teacher.
Give me three short CTR and conversion rate calculation problems, similar in style to an AQA A-Level Business exam, with the numbers hidden until I ask for the answer. After each attempt, mark my working and tell me whether I've shown the correct formula, not just the final number.