Pay per click (PPC)
Pay per click advertising is one of the quickest and most effective ways of driving traffic to a website. Whatever the size of the business or budget, PPC is an invaluable tool in the online marketing mix and can deliver outstanding return on investment.
Google's Adwords as well as Yahoo!'s Overture are two examples of PPC advertising services, but there are many others. PPC services allow a business to have its ad appear in the "sponsored results" that appear when someone searches for a term on which that business has chosen to advertise. PPC ads are also shown on other websites that are paid to host the ads.
Keywords and phrases relative to an advertisers business are selected. Bids are placed on these particular keywords and search phrases. The order in which the ad appears is relative to the bid amount.
As the phrase "pay per click" implies, advertisers only pay for the PPC advertising service when someone actually clicks on their ad. As a result, PPC advertising can be a very cost-effective way to increase targeted traffic to your site and drive sales.
Although selecting keywords and phrases is a key element, it is not enough on its own. Creative adverts need to be written encouraging the searcher to click through on your advert by using call to action phrases.
Attention must also be given to landing pages. When clicking through from an advert a visitor will want to land on a page directly related to the search term. Otherwise a high “click off” rate will occur resulting in low conversion and poor ROI.
A key benefit of to PPC is that budgets can be controlled very closely. As soon as the allocated budget has been used up (i.e. the advertiser’s ad has been clicked enough times that the total amount paid for the clicks has reached the budget level) the ad will no longer be displayed until the account has been replenished with more funds, or the next month arrives and an auto-renewal of funds takes place.
Effective PPC advertising involves a continual is cycle of testing and developing keywords, writing effective adverts and ensuring key positioning, managed correctly it is a highly successful form of marketing.
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