How PPC Advertising Can Help Your Business

PPC advertising can take a while to get your head around if you’ve never had a go at it before, but once it clicks it can be one of the best steps in online advertising you’ll ever take.

It’s often better if you start out with a low cost PPC campaign as picking keywords, writing copy and correctly managing your analytics won’t always go right the first time, in fact it definitely wont. However, once you move on up to bigger and better campaigns you’ll start seeing just how valuable PPC can be.

There will always be risks in any form of paid online advertising, but as with most things, the risks can often be worth it. So here are some of the ways PPC can be beneficial to businesses.

Harness the Power of Google and Beyond…

Anyone will tell you that Google is one of but a handful of internet entities that holds sway in any internet wielding country. Google’s network of services and applications now attracts over 1 billion visitors a month (as of May 2011) meaning it has more potential for PPC customers than any other website in existence. So, if you’re a business looking for world wide exposure, Google’s AdWords is somewhat of a no brainer.

Of course, Google AdWords has an array of location and language targeting which can be extremely beneficial for physical retail stores. However, with business putting more and more emphasis on ecommerce it’s crucial to look at other PPC outlets as they can prove to be a sort of mini Google for their specific industries.

Online directories are a great example of this, sites like www.webhostdir.com or www.clouddir.com, which act specifically as vertical search platforms for the hosted services industry, can prove to be just as beneficial to this industry as Google does. Directories will nearly always offer a more targeted audience of buyers that usually would have made at least one or two clicks to get to your ad in the first place.

It’s sites like these, as well as Google, that make us believe that PPC advertising can be beneficial for any business, in an industry; and if you can master the art of combining the two, you’re on to a sure thing.

Show me the Money… or Not

Another great thing about PPC advertising is that it can be relatively simple to determine whether or not you’re your ad is working, and even better, if it’s not working it won’t necessarily cost you very much, if anything at all.

For Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or Search Engine Marketing (SEM) experts, tracking your PPC campaigns is as easy as ABC, but not everyone running a business or website has access to that kind of knowledge or can afford to pay the people that do.

For those of you who do need a helping hand, there are a variety of programs and tools around now that make tracking the effectiveness of your PPC campaigns simple. With Google AdWords you should probably be using Google Analytics which is designed with AdWords integration and is also free, which is handy if you’re just testing the waters and not looking to invest serious money.

If you’re running PPC through another outlet, like the directories example used above, then these sites will have their own PPC management systems and should update you on a regular basis. You should also always be in control of your own Cost per Click’s (CPC’s) and your daily maximum budgets etc. (unless you have opted for a managed PPC account then these will be agreed on with your account manager.)

Maximising these kinds of programs will (over time) start to give you a good idea of what different keywords and positions are working for you and will allow you to optimise your PPC campaigns to show you the highest possible Click Through Rate (CTR).

Get Social

Probably the biggest benefit to PPC advertising is the diversity of platforms for it. Social media sites have been the latest to jump on board with this idea and networks like Facebook.com, EBay.com and Amazon.com have started offering PPC advertising across their sites, targeting a huge array of potential customers.

As with all other PPC options, social media sites allow you to determine your audience by location, interests and age which can act as a solid advertising foundation for everyone from local businesses up to world famous fashion sites.

Scalability

Depending on how big your business/website is and how much effort you want to put into your PPC campaign, you could make PPC work on an extremely large scale.

With AdWords in particular Google make it very easy for you to run multiple campaigns at once, and of course you can set your maximum daily budget, maximum CPC’s, location, language etc for each individual one.

You can run up to 500 campaigns at once and target 3 million keywords (across all 500 campaigns), so if you really wanted to you could turn a significant percentage of your online marketing efforts to maximising your PPC’s.

It’s not recommended you do this solo, of course, and Google say that the majority of their AdWords users don’t ever hit 500 campaigns, but the sheer scalability of the program means you can easily adjust your SEM depending on your situation.

Go Direct to Directories

Elaborating on the directories point mentioned earlier on in the post, the most beneficial aspect of using directories for your PPC campaigns is that you’re almost guaranteed more qualified traffic than you’d get if you were using Google, for example.

The reason that directories work fantastically for PPC is that you’re already in the presence of qualified (potential) buyers who have, more often that not, landed on the directory from a specific and usually long-tailed, keyword (search query). Or even better, they’ve gone straight to the directory. This means they are already actively searching for the product/service you’re advertising.

Whether it be to research for the future or make a purchase right then and there, this type of visitor has shown a direct interest in your product/service and is far more beneficial to you than a visitor who has accidentally landed on the site. It’s vital to remember with PPC that although a high number of clicks may look good in your analytics, if the intent of the user is not there, clicks don’t mean anything.

Get Paid for PPC

Though it strays from the traditional pay per click route, there are some PPC variations that work almost in reverse of what you would expect. There are sites, Amazon being the biggest example, that will offer to pay you per click if you advertise a product of their on your site that is similar to your own.

Although reverse PPC like this wont bring you in shed loads of money, if you don’t mind advertising someone else’s product it can be a constant source of pocket change (as long as you can provide the traffic to generate the clicks).

Affordable and Scalable Marketing

There are literally hundreds of reasons why PPC is a great marketing investment; whether it be the ability to pause or change your ads at any time, almost instantaneous appearance and results for ads, or the fact that it allows for custom budgeting, PPC advertising can offer an affordable and scalable marketing solution for businesses of all sizes.

See also: Making the Most out of PPC Advertising