Pay per click (PPC) advertising is used to bring traffic to your website and when marketing strategies are aligned correctly, this type of advertising can greatly benefit your online business monetarily! The process works as follows:
- You set up an ad account with providers like Google AdWords, Microsoft adCenter, or Yahoo! Search Marketing.
- Prospective clients go out to Google (for this instance) and search for what you are selling or advertising, they see your ad posted in their search results, and click on it to be re-directed to your website. Keep in mind, if your keyword phrases are targeting your online searchers needs, then you are basically getting a great lead.
- When a prospective client does click through to your website, you have to sell them on the service or product they are interested in. So, this now becomes your job to make sure you make the sale based on the keywords phrase(s) you advertised.
Keep in mind that you can also register with a banner ad network and pay to have your advertisement featured on websites relating in nature to yours. Google AdWords is a great service to use if you are looking to go this route and your website can be displayed on what is called their content network.
Pay per click advertising has the potential be incredibly effective, but it can also be rather costly. It is important to set your budget before you go forward with a PPC advertising campaign. When starting an advertising campaign, you need to be willing to bring a minimum of $50 a month and then expanding to $500 to $1000 if you see you are bringing in a decent return on your investment. Determining the right budget for your business depends on the amount of revenue your company brings in yearly and the results you are looking to see from your campaign.
One strategy to keep in mind for your advertising budget could be to set aside a certain percentage of your advertising budget. You may then choose to lower or increase this percentage as your company grows. Within the percentage set aside for marketing, you can then determine how much funding you want to be used for each type of advertising. PPC providers make staying within your budget easy by allowing you to set daily and monthly maximums. For instance, with Yahoo! Search Marketing you are able to set your daily spending limit, your maximum bid amount per click, and set your monthly PPC budget. In short, pay per click advertising can certainly prove to be budget friendly if done within your company’s means and with your overall goals in mind.
Unlike many marketing campaigns, PPC advertising allows you to target the specific group that may be interested in your product. Ads that are run on television and newspapers, for instance, are distributed to many different groups at once in the hopes that the right people will see your advertisement. PPC advertising offers more precision targeting by placing your online business on relevant websites and showing up in sponsored search results. You can also utilize ‘Geo location’ advertising, where your ads are directed to consumers located within certain cities, states, regions, countries, or continents. This is a great tool to use especially when advertising businesses such as restaurants and local specialized businesses.
PPC advertising also offers the ability to track the performance of your ad over time. Using the interface provided by the search engines, you can easily track what keywords are being searched, how many users have clicked on your ad, and how many users were transformed into customers after clicking your ad. This is a monumental tool for seeing how effective your campaign really is and how to modify it to see even better results.
When it comes down to it, PPC advertising can be an incredibly effective way to grow your online business or if done incorrectly, has the potential of being a financial hurdle to your business.
Jeremy Miller is the owner of Bugon Website Services and firmly believes in the power of PPC advertising methods when utilized to proactively target market a customer’s audience both from a keyword perspective and a demographic perspective. For any company just starting out with PPC advertising, I would suggest our keyword research services to help your business find the optimal keywords to market your business with. We also have solutions for more advanced pay per click advertisers so if you need additional assistance on maximizing your return on investment, contact us today!
