Category: Top » Internet-marketing » Pay-per-click »

Author: rdokoye | Total views: 67 Comments: 0
Word Count: 937 Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 2:00 AM

PPC Advertising: How To Make Your Business

PPC basically means Pay per Click - a well known advertising method on the Internet. Located on websites, advertising networks, and mostly on search engines, PPC advertising uses sponsored links which are commonly in the format of text ads. These are commonly placed next to the search listing, that's where the advertiser pays a certain sum to all visitors that click on their links or banners taking them to the advertiser's web page.

So basically, PPC advertising is just concerned with bidding for the top or leading listing on the search engines listings. Advertisers are able to do this by purchasing or bidding on keywords and phrases that are related to their products and services - the more they bid, the higher up the search results they will be, this will result in more people finding the ad (and click on it) and getting to their websites (this is the reason some people call it "keyword auctioning"). Advertisers will then pay the bid price each time a potential customer clicks and goes through to the website.

PPC advertising can also be known under different names such as:

* Pay per placement
* Pay per performance
* Pay per ranking
* Pay per position
* Cost per click (CPC)

PPC advertising is normally done with these typical standard procedures:

1. Signing for an account and/or placing a deposit or some funds.

2. Putting together a keyword list.

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

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

5. Putting together some written ad copy.

6. Setting up the 'landing pages' for your advertisements.

7. Placing the ad in the search engine.

There are loads of benefits to Pay Per Click advertising, which makes it a good way of promoting any business 'online'. Some of them are presented below:

* You can be up and running immediately. PPC ads are activated very quickly - they can be 'online' within the hour after you have won the bid and paid for it.

* You can get specific, pre-qualified, and very high quality traffic. PPC gives you a quality and well-targeted traffic. Your visitors will be narrowed down to 'qualified' people that are actually searching for specific products and/or services which you are offering - these are most likely to become a 'lead' (a convert) and go through the whole transaction (this can be by either purchasing your product or signing up to the service that you are offering.

* Increase your reach. PPC advertising will give you more traffic to your website, besides from the normal "organic" search engines.

* Track your investment. PPC advertising usually makes use of a tracking system this will let you know precisely who comes to the site and what they are actually doing when they arrive - so you can assess the length of their visit on the website and the amount of WebPages (including the actual pages) that they are viewing. These are good tools for determining stats, most importantly your return on investment (ROI), acquisition cost-per-visitor, and actual conversion rates (the percentage of visitors who are converted into customers or leads).

Below are some vital things to think about when planning on starting a pay per click campaign:

1. You should know about the product. Make a list of the product and/or services that you have to offer (before anything else).

2. Stay inside your budget. Work out your daily or monthly budget; and stay with it. This means keeping your budget in mind, preventing bidding wars if you can.

3. You should bid just right. Find out how to bid right - a bid that's too high can waste all of your money, and also a bid that is not high enough can make you lose the spot.

4. Watch the bottom line. Work out your profit margin compared with your spending and expenses. Work out when you should stop and terminate your PPC program - if you put a lot of money into advertising but have little or no sales at all.

5. Look for the right keywords. Decide which keyword phrases to use and bid for. Be sure to do some keyword research, either by really scrutinizing your current search terms or by using online keyword suggestion tools, to find out which terms are commonly used when people are looking for the items that are related to the services your business is providing. Concentrate on specific keywords, not on general type of ones.

6. Write effective advertisements. A well written PPC advertisement is that which may persuade and move a searcher. There are several techniques 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. Always have a professional-looking website. Your web information has to be frequently updated and checked for spelling and grammatical errors. You should make sure there are no broken links or images. The site should be straight forwardly - designed in a manner that it will be simple for visitors to navigate it. Be sure to provide contact details to give a good impression among potential customers.

If done well, PPC advertising can be a very useful marketing tool that will definitely maximize your return on investment.