Making the most of Pay Per Click advertising
With Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, you put a value, or bid, on the amount you’re prepared to pay per-click to have your web page displayed prominently on search engine result pages when people type in a search for selected keywords. PPC advertising can be an effective way to encourage visitors to your website or increase sales.
A florist, for example, might decide to run a PPC campaign to include their website in the paid results on a search engine results page when people type in ‘wedding bouquets’.
On this page:
- How does PPC advertising work?
- How much does it cost?
- Benefits of PPC advertising
- Potential PPC advertising problems
How does PPC advertising work?
You’ll need to register with the search engine of your choice. Google, Yahoo! and Bing all offer PPC advertising. Then you’ll need to decide which keywords people are likely to type into a search engine query when looking for businesses like yours – and indicate how much you’re prepared to pay for each click your advert receives.
Typically, the three web pages that offer to pay a particular search engine the highest amount per click will be listed at the very top of a search engine results page, normally in a tinted box to help them stand out. Those offering a lesser amount per click are listed in a separate column of ads on the right-hand side of the page, with those paying more featuring higher in the list.
How much does it cost?
With PPC advertising, you don’t pay to list your advert; you only pay when an Internet user clicks on your ad, also known as ‘click throughs’. If you bid $0.20 per click, and 100 people click on your PPC ad, the search engine or PPC service provider will charge you $20.
However, your click-through rate will vary depending on competition between advertisers. It’s normally determined by a keyword bidding system, where the highest bidder gets the most prominent listings on search engine results pages, and presumably the most traffic.
You can control the cost of PPC advertising to a certain extent because you can set a maximum amount to spend. But be warned – the cost of PPC advertising can be very expensive if you’re competing for clicks on popular keywords.
Benefits of PPC advertising
PPC advertising helps drive targeted traffic to your website quickly. If people are searching for your chosen keywords and your ad is well written, you’ll get clicks (and increased visitor numbers to your website) as soon as your ad is activated. If you sell directly from your website, each click is a potential customer.
If you sell a wide range of products, you can use different key words to take Internet users to different landing pages for these products on your website. For example, a shop selling sporting goods might pay for several PPC ads using different keywords depending on which sport and associated gear is in season.
PPC advertising is usually most cost-effective if you use niche keywords that few people are bidding on. In this case, you’ll be able to drive traffic to your website at low cost.
If you want to run a short-term campaign for a new product or service, PPC advertising is ideal. You can set up a landing page and PPC ad within days – and it’s easier to monitor the effectiveness of your campaign using your website stats.
Potential PPC advertising problems
Although most PPC providers are reputable, there are some issues with PPC that can cause problems or additional costs for you.
Because you pay per-click based on keywords, you’ll have to careful about what keywords are included. If you’re advertising gym equipment, for example, and you include the keyword “diet”, your result could be generating lots of clicks but little sales.
It might sound far-fetched but it is common for people or competitors to deliberately click on your link, bumping up your costs. There are ‘bot’ programs that can do this automatically.
Internet advertising is far less regulated than television or print advertising and consumers generally have less trust and are more sceptical about Internet advertising. As a result, paid adverts are often disregarded or given less attention, with users preferring “natural” search engine results.
This shouldn’t stop you from using PPC as part of your marketing strategy, but it does mean you will need to be careful about sticking to budget and making sure you are getting a return on your investment.
