PAY-PER-CLICK (PPC) ADVERTISING:
Advertising through the PPC method allows you as a business owner to place ads with keyword usage within search engine result pages, of course, for a price. The goal of PPC is to help website business owners attract targeted customers. Target customers are those that are already looking for your product offerings or the similar; this helps you by putting your ads and business in front of those who are most likely potential buyers. The goal of PPC methods of advertising is to provide you, the site owner, to control your budget while still gaining maximum site exposure.
Understand, you do not pay for the placement of your ad; instead, you pay once a potential customer clicks on your ad and goes onto your website. The amount you pay for that customer has already been agreed to through a bidding system. It is imperative to your site’s success to appreciate that you are paying each and every time your link is hit and your landing page is accessed – remember your budget!
When first starting out with your PPC campaign you must keep an eye on your budget and be prepared to spend a bit more during your first few weeks while you learn the system. Once you have your funds ready, it is time to determine your keywords. Make sure you properly research not only the best keywords or keyword phrases, but also the value of those words in terms of competition. Move onto creating your ad and creating an account and before you know it, you will have plenty of data to help you steer your efforts.
Often times, third-party companies allow for ads from search engines to be placed on their site; these are often referred to as a content network property. This is a benefit for all involved; especially considering it is not often in life you get a situation is win-win-win. See, the third-party gets a portion of the revenue paid by you the advertiser. In fact, they can earn upwards of eighty percent. Consider when you have searched for an item or information on the web and landed on a website full of information; remember the ads that are on the page? These ads usually have something in common and complementary with the item or information you sought.
It is not uncommon for consumers to ignore the ads on the content network and this place is not nearly as valued as listing high on the search engine results page. When your ads appear on a content network property, do not be concerned – your ad is still being seen! In fact, your ad is being displayed and seen along side similar or complementary information to your product. Now, there may not be a high click through rate, but these searchers will most likely resemble your target audience and therefore, resemble your customers.
Types of PPC
There are mainly two different types of PPC, flat rate and bid-based.
Flat-rate
Flat rate is an excellent option, especially if you are selling products at great prices. This is often the option selected by those who have a need to show-up in the comparison shopping results page. On these types of search engines, customers are highly targeted along with the choice of product with minimal rates.
Remember, you can always pay more for higher ranking, but you may find you do not need to after gathering some baseline data for comparison. Question if paying more will actually gain you any more attention than the current or if changing your ad would prove wiser.
If you decide that you want to change your ad or even pay more for a higher level of exposure, check to see if that site uses rate cards. Rate cards have a fixed amount due per click but are according to the possible areas available as advertising space. Now, do not assume you are restricted to those prices only; no, you can negotiate if you are offering the search engine owners a long-term and valuable contract.
Bid-based
Bid-based provides you the buyer lots of opportunity to control your budget; this type of PPC is like an auction for advertisers. Each PPC client informs the networks how much they are willing to pay to rank higher on the search engine results page – you set the maximum amount you are willing to pay and compete against other advertisers. The competition is conducted as an auction and each advertiser bids for the spot and you dropout when the bid has become too high for your budget. Often there are several spots open and this is often dependent on keyword. When there are several spots, they will be put in value order of the bid and perhaps ad quality – make great ads!
Budgets & Bids
You will have to determine what your max rate will be when using PPC; when making this determination remember to consider that the web is open 24 hours a day 365 days a year. If you do not take the prior into consideration, you will find that PPC can get very expensive really quick. While you try to make this economically tough decision, try Yahoo’s Estimator Tool. This tool will help you develop and calculate possible budgets and is very useful in judging how much money you will spend to take on your competitors and if it will be worth it. Overall, you want to spend enough to grow into the top five spots in the search engine results page.
You will also have to consider the value of your bid in terms of keywords. Some keywords are worth more than others are; in fact, some of the most popular keywords will prove almost impossible to afford. The affordability of a keyword has much to do with the financial power of your competitors, especially national brands.
In these situations, you may want to look for keywords that are very specific so that when your ad does get clicked on your chances of conversion is greater.
Preparing Your Ad
When preparing your ad, make sure you consider your audience. Take the time to learn their language, their hobbies, their hangouts, and their demographics; doing this will provide with a great deal of knowledge. This knowledge will gear your ad in the right direction to create eye-catching ads that get attention that leads to conversions.
Do not forget to make your ad and landing page cohesive so searchers know they have landed at the right place. Additionally, make sure the ad links to the information that the potential customer is seeking or your bounce rate will be higher than you desire.
The Big Three
There are many different search engines on the Web that offer PPC, but the big three include Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter.
Google AdWords
Google AdWords is the largest player in the world of PPC. Because Google has built itself to be the most popular search engines and aims for customer satisfaction, it has the most possible amount of potential customers. The amount of clients possible is astounding – make a great ad and landing page and success can be yours. Start here with your endeavors; it is the easiest to manage and has plenty of instructions available to help you gain your PPC roots. It is worth noting that becoming successful on any search engine site takes time and effort; take the time to learn each PPC’s system.
Yahoo! Search Marketing
With more and more people turning to the Internet to do their shopping it is a good idea for people and businesses that are looking to sell products and expand their consumer base to have a presence online. This can be done with the help of Yahoo! Search Marketing. This program allows people or businesses to advertise on the search results page on Yahoo! And popular websites throughout the Yahoo! Network.
If you decide to set up a Yahoo! Search Marketing account, you can use what they call a “sponsored search” to make advertisements that contain keywords that you think that people will use when they search for a business like yours. When the keywords that you have chosen match what is put into the search engine, your advertisement will appear on the Yahoo! search results page. Then if all the person doing the search has to do is click on the ad and they will be sent to your website.
A nice feature about Yahoo! Search Marketing is that you are in control of how much money you want to spend on your advertising. All you have to do is set a maximum bid of how much you are willing to pay when your ad is clicked, at the same time you can set the limit of what you want to spend each day. So you will not be hit with an astronomical bill out of the blue. This is a good option if you want to start out with just a little bit of advertising to see how it goes before deciding if you what to spend on advertising in the future or find that there may be somewhere else where you would be better off spending your budget.
Microsoft adCenter
Microsoft adCenter is similar to Yahoo! Search Marketing accept it works with Microsoft’s search engine, Bing. With Microsoft adCenter you can target your desired demographic of customers by using over ten thousand keywords, which you can apply to reach customers locally, by gender, and age range. By being able to hone in on your target demographic you will have the best opportunity to maximize your return on the investment that you have made with advertising.
When you use Microsoft adCenter, they will provide you with data that will help you and your company streamline your advertising campaign to ensure that you know when you are getting the maximum benefit and reaching the most customers.
Microsoft ad Center is a pay-per-click advertising model. To get started using the program you set a maximum bid of what you are willing to pay for each click on your ad. You will also set up a monthly budget of what you are willing to spend on your advertising. Make sure that you keep that in mind when you are determining how much you want to spend for the month, if it turns out its too little your budget may be gone in less than a week, especially if the advertising campaign is more successful than you may think. So, make sure you take the time to think through it and do not be afraid to ask Microsoft for help in determining how much you should allocate to advertising.
