 You've heard the term pay-per-click
advertising but you aren't really sure what it means and
how it applies to you?
In order to better understand PPC advertising there are
three key questions that need to be answered:
~ What Is It?
~ Why Use It?
~ How Do You Get Started?
Pay per click advertising, often
known simply as PPC, is the fastest and easiest way to
gain targeted traffic for your web site.
What exactly is PPC advertising?
It is very much as it sounds. You place a bid (sometimes
mere pennies ranging up to many dollars) on a key word or
key phrase. Your bid guarantees you a place in the search
or ad listings for that particular key word or phrase.
Your anchor text and link (sometimes accompanied by
descriptive ad copy) then appears in search engine results
relative to the price of the bid. If you are the highest
bidder, your web page appears at the absolute top of many
search engines.
Every click on your ad will cost you the agreed upon
amount (or bid) and your ad will be displayed until you
have generated that number of clicks.
Why would you use PPC advertising?
There are several advantages to PPC advertising.
Probably the single greatest advantage that PPC offers
over other forms of advertising is that you only pay for
performance. In other words, you only pay when someone
clicks on your ad.
PPC advertising also offers a great deal of flexibility to
you as an advertiser. You can continually change and tweak
your campaign or even run different campaigns at the same
time to test performance for different key words,
descriptions, and sales pages.
PPC advertising also gives you a great deal of control
over when your ad campaign will start and stop as well as
the exact phrasing of your displayed ad text and the
target sales page.
Timing is another key reason why many people seek out a
PPC campaign. While it may take weeks or months to achieve
a listing for a new site (or to change the listing status
of an existing site). With PPC you can achieve top ranking
literally overnight and see a dramatic jump in your
traffic.
How do you get started with PPC advertising?
Your choices for arranging a PPC ad campaign are many. The
top players are Google and Overture, recently purchased by
Yahoo. Microsoft has added MSN Search and there are many
smaller engines out there as well.
It is important that you have an idea how much your
visitors are worth to you and that you watch your
conversion rate (the percentage of visitors who become
customers) closely. You need to do this so that the PPC
rate you are paying is worthwhile for you.
PPC advertising requires planning and careful management.
You should do a lot of homework and testing before
embarking on a PPC campaign. Test out your sales copy and
optimize your conversion ration before you put money into
a PPC campaign.
You need to know your target audience and have a pretty
good idea what search terms they are likely to use.
Most PPC engines, certainly the big ones, offer this
calculation and tracking for you so it is fairly painless,
but you should always double-check it before adding more
funds to a campaign.
Most engines let you know what placement your bid will
give you so you can jockey for the best position at the
lowest price. They often will also often give you an idea
of how many clicks to expect at various rankings.
The more specific your key phrase can be to your product
then the higher your conversion rate is likely to be.
Often the PPC rates for select key words is high but you
can quickly find phrases that are actually more apt for
your product and cost you a lot less.
PPC advertising can be tremendously powerful and
profitable, but it can also be very costly and confusing.
Start small, test all the angles, and then build on your
success. Unless you are experienced and knowledgeable you
can easily lose a lot of money with PPC advertising, but
carefully management and cautious planning can help you
achieve the success you desire.
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