Paid search advertising is when a company pays a search engine to display their ad when certain search queries are run. For example, when you run a search on Google, you’ll see the sites that paid to be advertised there, and you’ll see the other links that are related to that topic.
This type of advertising is also called PPC or “pay-per-click,” since the buyer of the advertising space only has to pay if the user clicks on their link. The great thing about this is that your name is getting out there, even when they don’t click. So in a sense, you’re getting some advertising out there for free, and when someone does click to read more, you can expect them to really be interested and engaged in the material that you present.
Google (Adwords) is the biggest player and should be your first choice when utilizing Paid Search Advertising Services.
The main reasons, businesses large and small, choose Paid Search Advertising Services are as follows:
- Immediate visibility – your ads, targeted on the keywords of your choosing, can be seen virtually the same day.
- No website development is required except for the design and development of landing pages specific to keywords, ads and Ad groups associated with the PPC campaign. However, an effective PPC campaign might require a deeper design.
- Complete accountability – everything is tracked, all stats linked directly to ad dollars invested so ROI is immediately known at any point during the campaign.
- Budget sensitive – you decide what your budget is so your page displays and billable clicks are limited to not exceed any pre-defined daily budget.
- Geo-Targeting – you can specify exactly who sees your ads by zip code, county or state et al.
Beyond the ease of starting and the simplicity of the PPC model itself, it is absolutely critical that you learn, possess or outsource the processes involved in managing and optimizing your PPC campaign. No PPC program can survive without expert monitoring and constant testing, adjustment and measurement. The ultimate success of PPC is primarily focused on optimizing the following 2 key metrics:
1.Click through Rate or CTR – this is the number of times your ad is actually clicked divided by the number of times your ad is displayed … displays are typically referred to as impressions. So an ad with a 10% CTR is getting 10 times the rate of clicks than an ad with a 1% CTR.
2.Conversion Rate – this is the number of times landing page visitors actually perform the conversion act (purchase, sign-ups, registrations, lead forms, subscriptions, etc.) divided by the number of visitors coming from the ad itself.
You can’t achieve optimized ROI without optimizing your Google PPC campaign and you can’t optimize your Google PPC campaign without optimizing your CTR and your conversion rate.
Keep in mind that the more specific your keywords are, the more likely they are to bring people to your site who are truly interested in what you have to offer. And if that’s not who is coming to your site, you may be just wasting your time (and money). You can target an ad specifically for a relevant group of keywords that you select, to even better snare a new site visit.
Remember, you need to invest the time to test, monitor and test again. That is what the online tools are there for. If you do not have the time, but you still want to achieve online success using PPC, contact us for a no obligation initial consultation.
December 1, 2009
