Pay per click advertising, or PPC, is a popular internet advertising model in which the companies that advertise pay the host only when a user clicks on their advert. Common places to find pay per click advertisements include search engines, and sites focusing on content, such as blogs, or involved in affiliate marketing plans.
In general, a pay per click search engine campaign operates on a bid-based model, where advertisers bid for certain key words. These keywords trigger the display of your website in the results, and are displayed in an order that corresponds with the value of your bid. Pay per click on content based sites can operate on a fixed cost per click, rather than bids, depending on the provider, but pay per click is the more common model.
Pay-Per-Click And Marketing
The pay per click advertising model, whether bid or fixed-price based, has a notable advantage in terms of marketing effectiveness. That advantage lies in the targeted nature of the advertisement. For bid-based search engine PPC, only people already searching for your keyword will even see your ad. They’re essentially a pre- (and self-) qualified audience, which makes it that much more likely that they’ll click your ad.
Fixed price pay per click ads are slightly less focused, since they’re usually displayed in predetermined locations. However, they’re still placed in such a way as to be relevant to the content of the page on which they’re visible. Since the people who see them are not necessarily actively searching for your product or service, the click through rate may be lower, but this depends on your specific service. Some products or services, such as insurance, have an almost universal target audience, thus some ads may be displayed even where the context may not support them.
Pay Per Click Management
Another reason that pay per click is one of the leading forms of advertising in the online market is the ease of use. Simple software is available that can make it possible for anybody to plan and implement a pay per click campaign, simple by choosing the keywords that will trigger their advertisement, and offering the bid they’re willing to pay per click for each one.
However, simple as it sounds, it’s worthwhile to put considerable research into the factors that affect pay per click advertising. Poorly chosen, irrelevant keywords will mean that your ad is only rarely seen, and competition for popular, common keywords can be fierce, and the bids correspondingly high.
Luckily, a pay per click campaign is one of the easiest to obtain measurable results from, and making changes to your ads, or testing the effectiveness of one type of ad versus another can be done with little trouble, and no additional cost.
The combination of the right keywords, with the right placement, can be very effective at provoking an action from your target market. And once your pay per click ad has brought a visitor to your site, the first part of your struggle is over.
Pay per click is easy to do, especially for experienced operators. However, the real skill becomes evident when it comes to the analysis of results. It’s accurate analysis and a few simple tricks that make pay per click really work. And that’s the hardest part.