Pay Per Click Explained

PPC is online advertising which allows a company to buy its way to the top of search results pages.

You may have seen when doing a search on a search engine at the top or side of the page results which are noted as a Sponsored Link.  These are paid for ads meaning companies will pay each time someone clicks on their ad.  Companies choose one or more keywords that they think people will search on for their product and then bid to get to the top of the search rankings.

The more generic your term e.g. silk tie, the more expensive your campaign will be, because there are many more companies vying for those search terms.  If you operate a niche business or in a niche area with very specific search keywords, the cost could be much lower.  You can also choose to advertise in specific regions rather than nationally or internationally to reduce wastage.

From a budgeting perspective, it can be difficult to forecast the results you'll achieve and how much you are going to spend, so you can choose to cap your spend at a certain level.  That said, the aim of any PPC campaign is to generate more profit than it costs to run, so in theory, you may be happy to continue spending once you see the sales coming in.

So, why use Pay Per Click?

It’s a good way to launch your online business as it immediately gets you to the top of search engines and stimulates awareness of your company.

It is useful as a short term promotional strategy; if for example, you have a special offer on one of your product lines.

It is useful to find out how effective your key words are, then you can build the good keywords into your website and boost your organic rankings.

And because you know that the person clicking through has searched on exactly the keywords you have specified, it can greatly increase the likelihood that you will convert to a sale.

Analysis of PPC advertising is significantly easier than for more traditional forms of advertising i.e. print, as you can track which of your ads gained a better response/achieved more sales than others and which search engines yield higher visitor numbers.  This ongoing process of evaluation allows you to react very quickly and tweak your spend to suit.

If you would like to find out more about how PPC could help your business hit the target, please contact us now!