Virtual Secretary Services and Remote Receptionist

Pay Per Click Advertising

Answering Service > Call Center Resource > Web Development and Promotion > Pay Per Click > Pay Per Click Advertising

Pay Per Click Advertising

by Ian Lurie

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

How it fits into your Internet marketing strategy

Ian Lurie, Portent Interactive, Seattle, WA
December 29, 2003

Pay-per-click marketing is a great way to get visitors when you need traffic and you need it now. But its risky: You can spend a fortune, generate many visits, and end up with nothing to show for it. This article will provide you with a high-level view of pay per click marketing, provide some general strategies and provide an example of what to do, and what not to do.

What is Pay-Per-Click Advertising?

On its face, pay-per-click marketing, or PPC, is pretty simple: Search engines and services, such as Google or Overture, provide listings on a per-bid basis. This is in addition to their natural search results, which are still powered by a combination of keywords found on your site, link popularity and other formulae.
If you place the highest bid for a specific keyword or set of keywords, then you rank number one in these paid listings. On Google, , PPC listings show up in the Adwords column on the right-hand side of the screen. Other engines, such as MSNSearch or Yahoo, display P P C listings as sponsored listings in the same column as the natural search results.

If someone clicks on your PPC listing, they arrive at your web site. And you are charged the amount you bid. So, if you bid $.15 per click on widgets, and thats the highest bid, youll show up first in line. If 100 people click on your P P C listing, then the search engine or PPC service will charge you $15.00.

Why PPC Advertising is Bad

But PPC advertising can cost a fortune. Its easy to get caught up in a bidding war over a particular keyphrase and end up spending far more than your potential return. Some PPC engines, such as Overture, offer convenience features such as autobid that will automatically increase your bid amount to maintain a particular rank. That sounds great on its face, but it can get expensive in a big hurry.

Also, ROI can be very hard to measure. Some PPC engines (Adwords and Overture, specifically) provide conversion measurement tools, so that you can track whether your pay-per-click campaigns are generating the desired result. But these tracking tools arent 100% accurate, and at the time of this writing the smaller PPC providers dont deliver any conversion tracking.

And watch out for junk traffic. Most pay-per-click services distribute a segment of their results to several search engines. While you certainly want your listing displayed on Yahoo, AOLSearch and MSN, you may not want your listings showing up and generating clicks from some of the deeper, darker corners of the Internet. The resulting traffic may look good in statistics reports but is very unlikely to generate a return.

Finally, pay-per-click advertising does not scale. If you get more traffic, you pay more money in direct proportion to that traffic - your cost per click stays constant, and your overall cost increases. Compare that to natural search engine optimization, where you invest a fixed amount of time and/or money to achieve a better rank, and your cost per click goes down as you draw more traffic.

Why PPC is Good

Pay-per-click advertising can generate traffic right away. Its simple: If you spend enough, you can get top placement, and potential customers will see you first. If folks are searching for the keyphrases on which you bid and youve placed a well-written ad, you will get clicks the moment the ad is activated.

So PPC advertising is fast: With some systems, such as Google Adwords, you can generate targeted traffic within a few minutes of opening an account.

PPC advertising is also nimble: Where natural search engine marketing or other forms of advertising can lag weeks or months behind changing audience behavior, you can adjust most pay-per-click campaigns in hours or days. That provides unmatched ability to adjust to market conditions.

PPC can also be a bargain: Sometimes, you can find keyword niches for which the top bid is around $.10 - in that case, PPC is a great option, because you can generate traffic to your site for a fraction of the cost of any other form of paid advertising.

So, balancing the good and the bad, where does PPC fit in? As a focused advertising tool.

The Role of PPC Advertising

Most businesses cant afford to solely rely on PPC advertising. Its too expensive, and bid amounts inevitably climb. But pay-per-click can fill a few important roles:

Campaign- and issue-based traffic: If you have a short-term campaign for a new product, service or special issue, pay-per-click can be a great way to generate buzz. You can start a pay-per-click campaign within, at most, 24-48 hours, and you can generally change the text of your ad in mid-campaign, so adjusting your message is easy. If you need to focus attention for a finite amount of time, PPC is perfect.

Direct-response business: If you sell a product or offer a service that folks can purchase the moment they arrive at your web site, pay-per-click is a great tool. Online stores are a great example: You know that each click generated is a real potential customer, so spending money to increase the number of clicks makes sense.

Niche terms: If you are trying to generate traffic for a highly specific keyphrase, PPC can often provide bargains. For example, you might not want to pay the top bid for bicycles, but Landshark Bicycles is probably a lot less expensive ($.10 per click as of this writing, actually).

The overall rule of thumb? Focus, focus, focus. Natural search engine optimization is a PR-based, long-term attempt to grow your brand and image. Pay-per-click advertising, however, should be handled like any other form of paid advertising: Gingerly, and with a clear, quantifiable short- or medium-term goal in mind. In other words, concentrate on conversions, not clicks.