Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing …

is the most effective type of advertising on the internet today.  With PPC you only pay when a consumer clicks on your ad.  It costs nothing to display your ads on page ONE of the major search engines.

The concept is that only people interested in your product or service will click on your ad, which generates highly qualified and targeted visitors to your website.

Why Use PPC Marketing

PPC is ideal for new web sites when you want to generate instant traffic, which takes time when you are implementing an organic ranking campaign.

The graph above shows an example of this duo strategy in action.

How PPC works

With PPC you bid on the amount that you agree to pay for a click.  If your bid is the highest, you will get top placement; the lower your bid the lower down the list your ad will appear.

You choose the keywords that you want to be found for and write the ads accordingly.

When someone types a keyword or phrase that you want to be found for into a search engine, your advert appears in the search engine results along with other advertisers.

If your ad is of interest to the consumer and they click on it, you pay for that click depending on the maximum amount that you have bid and the amount that others are paying. If you bid $1 and the next highest bidder is 50 cents, you will only pay 51 cents and be in the top position.  If other advertisers bid $1.50 and $1.25 your ad will appear in 3rd position.

Ads can also be shown on related websites that choose to show advertising on them.   For example, if you sell specialist dog food, you can select to have your adverts displayed on websites that are related to dogs.

PPC -Vs – Traditional Advertising

With traditional offline advertising you pre-pay for your ad, and this is a cost whether the campaign is a success or not.

Traditional offline advertising can take weeks or months before an ad is even published, and then considerable time after that before you are able to assess the results.

PPC on the other hand, offers instant gratification.  You can have a campaign up and running in minutes and see results within hours.  If the campaign works you can ramp it up; if it fails, you can switch it off.

Pay-Per-Click advertising allows you to test new markets, products and advertising strategies much faster than any other medium.

There are a number of PPC companies available to you, the most well known being Google, Yahoo and Bing.

There are also a number of smaller providers available, although caution has to be taken with some of them as all traffic is not created equal.

These include:-

• abcsearch
• Pulse360
• 7Search
• Miva
• SearchFeed
• Facebook
• StumbleUpon
• Search 123

Ads come in many shapes and sizes, Text ads are most common but  image ads are becoming more and more popular, as is advertising on mobile devices like the iphone.

CPM – Cost-Per-Mille

‘Cost per Mille’ actually means cost per thousand impressions (mille being Latin for thousand)

With CPM you pay per 1,000 impressions that your ad is displayed.

CPM has a much lower cost than PPC and some companies prefer this type of advertising.  The fact that you pay whether an advert is clicked on or not, does mean that this is not always the cheapest form of advertising therefore the quality of your ad and the message is much more important.

A badly written or poor performing ad can quickly cost you thousands of dollars of your hard earned revenues.

CPA – Cost-Per-Action

CPA has fast become a very popular way for companies to acquire leads.

Advertisers pay when a visitor to a website takes some form of action.

The website owners can get paid when a visitor simply enters their email address or registers for a trial of a product or service.

Insurance companies use CPA for obtaining insurance quotes, credit card companies use CPA to generate new applications and Nutritional companies use CPA to promote a new diet system or vitamin supplement.

Banner Ads

Banner ads are the oldest form of advertising on the Internet.  Banner ads are historically paid for by the day, week or month.  This form of advertising is far less common these days, as it does not depend on visitors actually coming to a site.

You may pay for an ad that is never seen by consumers.