Pay-per-click or PPC is one of the most tried and tested methods of online marketing, and used well it can be a very cost-effective way to drive web traffic to your business.
PPC is commonly used to help businesses appear higher in online search results. The search engines facilitate this because the business will pay them a small commission each time a person clicks onto their website from the search engine results page. This same idea can be used in different ways on many other types of websites too.
However, like anything in business, it comes with both benefits and risks which must be considered. These are the main ones to think about.
Advantages of PPC advertising
Some of the benefits of PPC are:
- Cost-effectiveness: Unlike traditional television or printed advertising, with PPC you only pay when a person actually visits your website. With the former, you don’t really know how many people saw it or how many came to your business because of it. This means that PPC can offer better value for money.
- Targeting: Every niche has its own corner of the internet somewhere, meaning that you can really narrow down your audience and advertise to the people most likely to buy your products.
- Measurability: Because it is done digitally and webpages can easily capture information like the number of clicks on a page, it is easy to determine whether you are getting a good return on investment.
- Customizability: You can tweak your campaign as you go along to jump on new trends or fix things that aren’t working.
- Learning it yourself: If you contact King Kong or other digital marketing agencies, you will find that many offer courses to teach you how to get more traffic using PPC and other marketing techniques.
- Speed: When PPC works, it does so fast. Even overnight changes are possible.
Disadvantages of PPC advertising
PPC comes with some challenges for businesses, including:
- Time-consumption: Campaigns require continuous monitoring and tweaking to get the best results.
- Expertise: A successful campaign typically creates a profile of its target audience, figures out what searches they are making and what websites they are using online, then creates something appealing for them. These are all skills which require considerable expertise to do quickly and accurately.
- Costs adding up: Getting lots of clicks through to your website but failing to convert them into sales can cause costs to add up quickly.
PPC is one of the most flexible methods of online marketing. Now that you know the costs and benefits, you can see if it is the next step which will help drive your business forward.