PPC strategy

Pay-per-click strategy

To help you decide if pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is suitable for your business, we have provided a more in-depth look at the strengths and weaknesses of this medium.

PPC has a number of strengths compared to other marketing methods including:

Targeted

As with all forms of search engine marketing, the main benefit of PPC advertising is that it is targeted at people who are already looking for your products or services, meaning they are likely to be interested in your offering.

Cost-effective

PPC advertising requires very little investment or time to set up, making its use realistic for any size of business. As the cost of the advertising is controlled by how much companies are prepared to bid, in some places PPC is very cost-effective, although as competition increases, it will become less so.

Measurable

Conversion rates from PPC leads can be measured if some tracking code is added to a site, so that you are able to calculate the cost per sale and conversion rate that pay-per-click is giving you. This makes an effective PPC campaign very easy to justify compared to other forms of advertising. You can also monitor clickthrough rates (adverts served vs adverts clicked) to measure the effectiveness of your advertising messages.

Immediate

You can set up a PPC campaign immediately with Google Ads (AdWords) and within the space of a few days on Yahoo! Search Marketing. All the major pay-per-click tools also allow you to control your budget and bid levels online, which means that you can easily alter your activity and spend in line with business objectives such as market penetration, sales promotions and catering for seasonal variations.

However pay-per-click advertising can also be a highly complex arena, which can present a number of business issues: