Generate sales with a pay per click campaign

If you want to make the most of your business's web presence, your first challenge is to get potential customers to find you. So how can your business get its website noticed? One way is by investing in pay per click campaign ('PPC') advertising.

By directly targeting the people most likely to be looking for your products and services, PPC can put your website ahead of the rest.

What is a pay per click campaign?

Pay per click, also known as search engine marketing (SEM), is a way of advertising your website to a targeted online audience.

Search engines such as Google and Yahoo sell advertising space within their search results, with the ads relating directly to what online users are looking for. For example, a search for 'new cars' could feature a selection of ads for new car dealers alongside the regular results.

How much does PPC cost?

The beauty of most PPC advertising is that you don't pay a cent until someone clicks on your link. This means that every marketing dollar results in a guaranteed visit to your website.

Major search engines all have different pricing systems, as do popular websites that host PPC advertisements. The costs of pay per click can depend on:

• the number of clicks you receive from internet users
• your chosen keywords - popular keywords are generally more expensive
• how prominently you want your ad displayed
• your 'quality score'; this is based on how often your link is clicked when it appears and ensures that your ad is appropriate for your chosen keywords.

Benefits of PPC advertising

• Targeting: pinpoints your prospective customers
• Transparency: provides clear usage statistics
• Immediacy: performance reports can be presented on a weekly basis
• Flexibility: easily and quickly altered according to your needs
• Control: allows businesses to set and maintain a strict budget
• Accountability: you only pay if your advertisement gets clicked

Challenges of PPC

Pay per click advertising provides many opportunities to your business, but launching a campaign also has its challenges. It requires:

• a high level of technical expertise
• a website designed to convert visits into sales
• keywords chosen for maximum effectiveness

After all, if your products or services don't match your keywords, people are unlikely to click on your ad or will quickly navigate away from your website, resulting in lost sales potential.

Hiring a PPC expert

Online marketing experts can guarantee the success of your PPC campaign by:

• setting up accounts with the major search engines
• choosing the most effective keywords for your business
• providing a PPC plan to suit your marketing budget
• monitoring results and optimising keywords daily

Clicks that count

PPC campaigns can give you an edge in the cluttered online market and help level the playing field between you and your bigger competitors.

Speak to a web marketing company to discover how a pay per click campaign can help your business capture new customers.