How PPC Can Benefit Your Business
Imagine if you only paid out every time someone actually acted on your print advertisement and visited your website, maybe making a purchase that first time? Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising does just that, only online rather than from a magazine advert or direct mail item. It has a much better return on investment than many other traditional advertising methods and allows you to stay in control of your spend.
There are a handful of well-known PPC platforms out there, the biggest being Google Ads. Bing also has its own online advertising platform and Facebook Adverts are also well used by online marketers to reach their core demographic in the most efficient manner. Google ads appear at the side of search result pages and on the sidebar or header of many other websites which take a small commission for hosting the advert. These are tailored to appear next to relevant content and can be further targeted by user behaviour; if a customer is signed in to a Google account they will see adverts related to their search history and interests.
When you, as a business, run a PPC campaign you can set your parameters for the times of day, locations, types of people, or interest and types of content you want them to appear alongside. Online marketing is so highly personalised now that people are used to seeing advertising content that tallies well with their own interests and geographic area, so are more likely to pay attention to an advert that speaks to them over one that does not. With the clever targeting tools PPC platforms provide your advert will only be seen by your potential customers, so you're not paying to reach people who will never be interested in your product.
So, your advert is appearing to the right people in the right places and at the right times, but the final control is how much you spend. This differs from platform to platform; some keywords can be very competitive, meaning you may have to pay more for each click on your advert than when it is linked to another, lower value keyword. If you know how your potential customers search you can cleverly target lower value keywords that you know are relevant and still appear to interested parties yet pay less for each click you get. You can also set a maximum spend per day making you totally in control of your online marketing budget.
PPC platforms have great reporting features which allow you to check how your campaign is performing very quickly. This speedy feedback can be advantageous when running an A/B campaign which involves running two adverts simultaneously and seeing which performs best. You can then divert more spend towards paying for clicks on the better advert and get customers faster. It also allows you to refine and improve your adverts for maximum appeal. It’s one of the most appealing features to many customers – PPC is black and white: you can test and then refine, test and then refine, seeing whether what you are doing is selling your product.
The speed of PPC advertising is another great benefit as the results are instant. It can take a while for Search Engine Optimisation activities to really pay off but in the meantime your brand and product can still be promoted by using PPC advertising. Taking advantage of relevant news stories or trending hashtags to make your PPC advert stand out as current is also possible at the drop of a hat – within half an hour you could have an advert running and getting clicks while your competitors are not.
PPC is a great way of marketing online and gives clear, fast results. It works even better as part of an intelligent multi-channel marketing strategy and can support product launch activities, promotions and sales events.
