Other possible disadvantages of PPC marketing

PPC marketing ads also require continuous funding, as discontinued payments will also result in discontinued ads. This can be unfavorable for a website that has already built high rankings with their PPC marketing ads, only to have them switch off unexpectedly or because your budget runs out.

Bidding on keywords can also be quite costly, as the growing number of websites on the internet struggle against each other to bid on the most popular keyword for their PPC marketing ad. However, if you target your keywords carefully, write tight and relevant PPC ad copy, and land them on a page which is also carefully keyworded, you should convert your visitors into ‘buyers’-get them to sign up for an email newsletter at the very least, and if you are very fortunate, you might even get a sale.

Obviously small business websites can be at a disadvantage in the PPC playing field because they have far bigger budgets than most of us. However, if you learn the PPC game well, you can actually perform better than their ads, which often use automatic keyword insertion, and thus create nonsense results (like many of the ads for amazon or ebay)

Possible drawbacks of PPC marketing

Despite the obvious advantages of PPC marketing, there are possible drawbacks that can cancel out its benefits. One of the most common problems associated with PPC marketing is the inexperience of many people attempting to use this profitable advertising method.

Simply submitting PPC marketing ads to a search engine such as Google does not make up the entire campaign. In fact, structuring the campaign correctly is often the difference between success and failure.

But Google, Yahoo and MSN all have different ways of setting up the campaigns, which can be confusing to a newcomer to PPC advertising.

PPC marketing requires a calculated and systematic approach to setting up ads. PPC marketing involves the use of appropriate keywords, relevant ads, and strategic bids in order to get top placement on a search engines list of ad results. Getting top search engine placement (on the first page, and preferably above the fold) helps boost traffic to a website quickly and easily, and a well-designed webpage relevant to the keyword that you have bid on can easily translate into sales and thus into profits.

Without the necessary experience and knowledge to carry out a typical PPC marketing ad, your first PPC campaign may turn into an expensive disaster that will not convert at all, so you need to track and test every step of the process in a methodical manner.

Other reasons why PPC is so popular

 In addition, websites can control their advertisement costs with the use of PPC marketing, through budgeting daily. You can monitor your return on investment immediately, and there are various strategies for writing excellent ads and thus getting the most from your PPC marketing budget.

 Therefore, PPC Marketing is truly a winning solution for both parties, you as advertisers, and the consumers who are looking for almost exactly what you sell.

 Instant Traffic

Finally, it is the fastest way we know of to drive traffic to test your product, your sales message/sales letter, test different offers, and be able to turn on and off campaigns and traffic at will. You can experiment, split test, learn what people are really interested in and gear your message toward them.

 You can get a Google pre-pay account up and running in as little as 15 minutes, and start split testing and running ads.

PPC marketing or pay per click marketing is the most popular method of advertisement employed by various search engines and websites on the Internet.

 PPC marketing may often be referred to as search engine marketing, pay for position, cost per click or pay for performance.

 But regardless of the term used, PPC marketing is the online advertiser’s medium of choice for promoting products and services to online consumers.

 Why is PPC so popular?

 PPC marketing is beneficial to both the advertiser and the consumer.

 Advertisers using PPC marketing only need to pay for the actual click throughs linked to their sites from search engines. At the same time, consumers don’t have to constantly be subjects to annoying emails or pop-up ads for products and services they are not the least bit interested in

 This is known as interruption marketing-it is stopping you in your quest, in order to shove an ad in your face.

 With PPC ads, they are ALREADY LOOKING for something related to your product, via keywords, and your ads are shown at the same time as the organic search engine results being delivered up as most relevant of all the pages in the internet.

 If you then make a point of capturing information about your website visitor though a simple newsletter or free report sign up using the targeted keyword, you are engaging in permission based marketing.

 The visitors to your site who have come through organic search and pay per click search form a highly targeted consumer group that is more likely to purchase a specific product or service.

THE BASICS OF PPC 5

6. Write effective ads. A good PPC ad is that which can persuade and move a searcher. There are several approaches to this:

· Discount offers

· Testimonials

· Celebrity/famous endorsers

· Money-back guarantees

· Free trials or sample offers

· Freebies

· Reverse psychology

· Major benefits (“Lose weight”)

· Direct instructions (“Click here”)

7. Maintain a professional-looking site. Your web content should be regularly updated and checked for spelling and grammatical errors. There should be no broken links or images. The website should be simple – designed in such a way that it will be easy for visitors to navigate and load. Include contact details to create a good impression among potential customers.

Done properly, PPC advertising can be an effective marketing tool that will maximize the return on your investment.

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Below are some important things to consider when planning on a pay per click campaign:

 1. Know your product. Take an inventory of the product and/or services that you have to offer (before anything else).

2. Stay within the budget. Determine your daily or monthly budget; and stay with it. This means keeping your budget in mind, avoiding bidding wars if possible.

3. Bid just right. Know how to bid right – a bid that is too high can exhaust all of your money, while a bid that is too low can make you lose that spot.

4. Watch the bottom line. Measure your profit margin against your spending or expenses. Know when to stop and terminate your PPC program – if you spend more on advertising but have little or no sales at all.

5. Find the right keywords. Decide which keyword phrases to opt and bid for. Do some keyword research, either by actually looking at existing search terms or with the use of online keyword suggestion tools, to know which terms are mostly used when searching for items that are related to your business. Focus on specific keywords, not on general ones.

There are many benefits to Pay Per Click advertising, making it an effective way of promoting a business ‘online’. Some of them are listed below:

·           Get launched immediately. PPC advertisements are implemented very quickly – they can go ‘online’ within an hour after winning the bid and paying for it.

·           Obtain specific, pre-qualified, and quality traffic. PPC provides you with a quality or a well-targeted traffic. Visitors are narrowed down into ‘qualified’ people who are actually looking for specific products and/or services that you offer – those who are more likely to become a ‘lead’ (a convert) and complete a transaction (either by buying your product or subscribing to the service that you are offering.

·           Widen your reach. PPC advertising provides additional traffic to your site, aside from the natural or “organic” search engines.

·           Track your investment. PPC advertising makes use of a tracking system that will determine exactly who comes to the website and what they do once they arrive – the length of their stay on the site and the number of pages (including the actual pages) that they view. These are valuable tools in determining statistics such as return on investment (ROI), acquisition cost-per-visitor, and conversion rates (the percentage of visitors who are converted into customers or leads).

PC advertising is usually done with the following standard procedures:

 
1. Setting up an account and/or deposit funds.

2. Creating a keyword list.

3. Choosing (and setting up) an account with a PPC search engine.

4. Bidding on the ad placement, including the search result words or phrases.

5. Writing out an ad copy.

6. Setting up the ‘landing pages’ for your ads. You might want to have multiple landing pages to precisely match the terms you have bid on.

7. Placing the advertisement in the search engine. The search engine will expect your ad to be well-written and will show it or not based on their criteria and your bid.

PPC stands for Pay Per Click – a popular advertising technique on the Internet. It is found on websites, advertising networks, and especially on search engines. You pay when a prospective customer clicks on the link.

 PPC advertising involves sponsored links that are typically in the form of text ads. These are usually placed close to organic search results. So a computer user types in a keyword or phrase, like Xbox repair manual, and can get both the results ranked as the top sites by the search engine, according to their own criteria, and the ads which are relevant to that topic. The advertiser pays a particular amount to visitors who click on these links or banners and land on the advertiser’s web page.

In essence, PPC advertising is all about bidding for the top or leading positions on search engine results and listings. Advertisers do this by buying or bidding on keywords and keyword phrases that are relevant to their products or services.

 The higher the bid, the higher the spot on the search results, the more the people will see the ad (and possibly click on it) to go to their websites (this is why some people call it “keyword auctioning”).

 Advertisers then pay the bidding price every time a visitor clicks through the website. 

Each search engine positions their ads differently, but generally they are on the top or the side. Many people wish to be the top ad in the list, but that can result in automatic clicking, or confusion as to whether or not the result is an ad or an organic site.

 
Prices can range from pennies, to hundred of dollars for clicks.

 
PPC advertising is also known under the following names/variations:

 
·           Pay per placement

·           Pay per performance

·           Pay per ranking

·           Pay per position

·           Cost per click (CPC)

PPC BASICS 5

6. Write effective ads. A good PPC ad is that which can persuade and move a searcher. There are several approaches to this:

· Discount offers

· Testimonials

· Celebrity/famous endorsers

· Money-back guarantees

· Free trials or sample offers

· Freebies

· Reverse psychology

· Major benefits (“Lose weight”)

· Direct instructions (“Click here”)

7. Maintain a professional-looking site. Your web content should be regularly updated and checked for spelling and grammatical errors. There should be no broken links or images. The website should be simple – designed in such a way that it will be easy for visitors to navigate and load. Include contact details to create a good impression among potential customers.

Done properly, PPC advertising can be an effective marketing tool that will maximize the return on your investment.

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