5 Reasons to Use Pay-Per-Click Advertising For Your Business

During a recession, successful businesses remember the value of advertising. While other companies slash their marketing funds and enter a quiet survival mode, these businesses invest in prompting their brands and their products, proactively going after new customers and market share. They do this not because they have spare cash sitting around, but because they know that “laying low” is not a marketing strategy, and right now their advertising can be heard louder than ever as their competitors focus on survival rather than growth.

But which of the advertising media should your business choose? Most forms of advertising including TV, Radio, Billboards, and print media require substantial investments to develop the ads and to buy and advertising package, which may lock you in for several months or even a year, adding up to several thousand dollars for a single campaign. For many small and medium businesses, this is a tough pill to swallow even in good economy.

When every dollar counts, internet advertising offers the best bang for the buck for most businesses. The most popular form of internet advertising is offered through the internet search engines and is called Pay-Per-Click advertising. Not only is this form of advertising very affordable, it also shines above all others when it comes to accounting for the effectiveness of every dollar you spend.

How does Pay-per-Click work?

Pay-Per-Click ads are brief text ads appearing usually to the right and sometimes above the search results on major search engines. The main three search engines offer Pay-Per-Click advertising: Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and Bing (MSN) adCenter. Below is what typical PPC ads look like.

Each ad is tied to specific keywords, so that it shows only when someone searches for those keywords. The fundamental difference between Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and traditional advertising is that with PPC, you pay ONLY when someone clicks your ad to visit your website. Compare that to a magazine or TV ad, for which you pay (and pay a lot) regardless of whether someone sees your ad or not.

Why use Pay-per-Click?

1. Invested audience
   Pay-Per-Click advertising is Non-Interruptive, which means your target audience is actively looking for the services or products you are selling. Compare that to a magazine or TV ad, which interrupts the person as they are trying to read an article or watch a TV program.
2. Flexible Budgeting
   Unlike many other advertising media with high cost of entry like magazines or TV, PPC advertising allows you to control your own campaign budget. Want to spend $1 a day? $10 a day? You set the amount, and your ads will simply stop showing once your daily budget is reached!
3. High Degree of Agility and Control
   Another advantage of PPC over traditional advertising media is that you can start, stop, modify, or replace your campaign at any time – you are never “locked in” to a set advertising package. Want to run a last-minute promo? With PPC, that’s a simple change, and it becomes effective immediately, which is not possible with any other advertising medium.
4. Flexible Targeting
   Not only can your Pay-Per-Click campaigns target specific keywords, they can also be optimized to target specific geographies, so that you can reach just the right prospective customers with just the right products or services. This is a great way to reduce campaign costs, so that you do not end up paying to show your ad to prospects outside of your geography (for example, if you are in the business of repairing cars in Chicago, you probably don’t want people in New York or Bangkok clicking your ads and driving up your advertising costs). Geographical targeting helps you make sure that you are paying only for viable leads.
5. Accurate Performance tracking
   Another advantage of Pay-Per-Click advertising is that it is very easy to accurately track. Real-time statistics allow you to see how your ads are performing, how many visitors are sent to your website (your click-through rate), and how your daily budget is being utilized.By comparing the “click-through” data to related new leads and sales, you can get a very accurate idea of your campaign’s performance, also known as your conversion rate (you are converting site visitors into customers or leads).

Ready to get started?

As you can see, Pay-Per-Click advertising is hard to beat when it comes to cost-effective advertising with sophisticated performance tracking, and you can get started for just a few dollars a day!

Like with any advertising campaign, you should start by identifying your specific goals. Your marketing agency should guide you through setting up your campaigns, choosing the right keywords, setting proper targeting, and designing effective landing pages for your ads. Look for marketing companies certified by Google or other search engines as qualified to run effective PPC campaigns, as they can help you get set up faster, avoid common pitfalls, and produce more effective campaigns.