People think that everything online is free. In reality, however, what is free on the internet is the flow of information. If you want to make sure that this flow goes your way, you will have to pay for it. And that is done through a good pay per click or PPC management campaign. In 2009, around $11 billion was spent on PPC marketing, which just goes to show that everything online is most certainly NOT free.
What Is PPC?
Basically, it is an advertisement that consists of four lines: a url, two short descriptions, and a headline. It is basic, but incredibly powerful because it can target the right people at the right time. The goal is to get people to actually click on the advertisement and thereby navigate to a certain website. When they do this, the advertiser pays – pay per click. The more you pay per click, the more visible your ad will become, so finding a balance between those two things is really important.
The Pros of PPC Marketing
So PPC isn’t free, but it is certainly effective. Some of its clearest advantages are:
- It can, if done properly, guarantee you a first place on Google, which is the Holy Grail in all things online marketing. In fact, it can take just a few minutes to achieve this, compared to the days, weeks, or even months it will take through regular search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.
- It is the only form of advertising whereby you can make sure only the people you actually want to reach get to see your advertisement. That is what you pay for, after all. You need to pick the right key phrases and keywords, however, which does take quite a bit of clever thinking. You may want to consider working with an SEO company that is able to achieve this for you, as they understand better than anyone what works and what doesn’t.
- You will build brand awareness on the spot. It is far more likely that you are spotted many different times by prospective clients and that they eventually click on you. This means you only have to pay for them once, for that one click, although you have already exposed them to you, and thereby started to build brand recognition, much sooner.
Secrets of PPC Marketing
Ok, so we now know what it is and how it works, so how do you start. PPC can be quite overwhelming and even scary. However, if you are committed to doing it properly, you will be able to be successful. There is really just one thing to know about getting PPC marketing right: either you learn how to do it properly yourself, or you leave it to the professionals.
The latter is generally the better option. There are no “secrets” as such. All there is are strategies, experience, common sense, and training. If you have time for that, great. If not, then leave it to someone who does and experience real success.
