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What the heck is Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising?

What the Heck is Pay-Per-Click Advertising?

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is the model on which search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo sell advertising space on their search result page. Look to the top, and to the right of the free search results on any of the major search engines and you will notice additional search results under the discrete heading ‘sponsored links’.

Search Specific Ads

These small text based ads are triggered by the search itself, so if you do a search on ‘paint’ for example, ads from painters, paint retailers, interior design companies etc. will show up in the sponsored section. Advertisers bid against each other on the amount they are willing to pay when a potential customer clicks on their ad (hence the name Pay Per Click) and the order of preference is set by those with the most relevance x $$ they are willing to pay.

Self Managed or Managed for You

You can either pay to have someone manage your search engine advertising or manage it yourself. Google in particular makes it easy manage your own PPC advertising, allowing you to nominate what you are willing to pay per click and also a daily budget. Clicks can run from a few cents to many dollars depending on the competitiveness of the industry you are in. Like any form of advertising, PPC can be expensive if poorly executed or exceptionally cost effective in generating leads if things are done right.

Turning Clicks into Customers

If you get the clicks but are unable to convert these clicks to sales, your money will be wasted. One of the most effective ways to increase conversion ratios is to create a landing page (the page searches click through to) that matches and builds on the theme of the ad. If you are advertising under the keywords ‘ Rheem Hot Water’ for example, you would create a landing page all about the benefits of buying Rheem with a strong call to action. You can then test and measure by adjusting and monitoring each element in the PPC chain to maximise the effectiveness of each campaign.

PPC Advantages

There are four great advantages to PPC over print media and other traditional advertising.

Set the price you want to pay per click
You only pay if a potential customer actually clicks on one of your ads regardless of the number of impressions (number of times shown)
PPC ads are relational to the users search. For example, typing ‘Paint’ into Google will result in ads from painters, paint retailers, interior design companies
Advertisers can nominate a daily budget which will never be exceeded regardless of the pay per click cost.
Ads can be targeted by location and shown only to people in the areas you nominate.

Should You PPC?

The context based positioning of PPC ads is what makes PPC so powerful. If you have a website for your business and you want it to be found by more potential customers, PPC is an easy, instant and measurable method to achieve this aim.

Ask Webhead about a PPC campaign to drive new business to your door today (and we mean today - you can be set up in just a few hours!)