Nov
20
2015

The Advantages of Pay Per Click Advertising

Pay per click (PPC) advertising is the easiest way to drive traffic to your website. Offered by most major search engines, pay per click ads are easy to set up. When compared with traditional advertising models, pay per click ads have an easily measurable return on investment. This makes them popular among large companies that often have six-figure advertising budgets.

There are three main reasons for using PPC advertising. First, you only pay when someone visits your site. Second, it is usually cheaper than creating all the requisite content to dominate search results organically. Finally, you can easily target previous visitors to your website with relevant ads.

Pay Only When Somebody Visits Your Site

Most traditional methods of advertising are billed by the amount of reach they have, such as a television ad whose cost is based on the number of expected viewers. However, just because a broad group of people are viewing your ad doesn't mean they are interested in it. With PPC advertising, you only pay when someone visits your website. This makes it easy to track your conversion ratios and understand the efficacy of your campaign.

Typical conversion ratios range from 2 to 3 percent, although better ads and landing pages can achieve 5 percent or more. This makes budgeting easy. For example, if the product you are advertising sells for $50 and each PPC ad costs 50 cents, each 100 visitors to your website would cost $50; at typical conversion ratios of 2 to 3 percent, you could expect about $150 in total revenue from those 100 clicks. Because you only pay for clicks, a PPC ad campaign is much easier to budget for than other advertising methods.

PPC is Often Cheaper than SEO

Small businesses and individuals are often tempted to bypass PPC advertising because it appears too expensive initially. Frequently, they might believe, incorrectly, that generating SEO content is cheaper. To the contrary, generating good-quality textual content is neither cheap nor easy. Controlling for many search engine factors such as keyword density or PageRank is also challenging. Don't ignore the importance of creating website content; focus on building high-quality landing pages that will convert PPC traffic, rather than "organic" pages that appear high on search engine results. Many times these pages have to be contorted linguistically in order to be at the top, ultimately turning off your customers. Focus on creating good-quality landing pages that convert clicks into sales.

PPC Allows You to Target Previous Website Visitors

One of the other benefits of PPC advertising on many major search engines is that you can target customers who have already visited your website. You probably have had this sort of experience in the past: you browse a website about guitars, and then later on you notice ads on major news sites about the exact guitar model you were viewing. This is a great way to lure customers back to your website. Many times your customers will not be ready to make a purchase the first time they visit your site. However, they might be ready to make a purchase after they've had time to think about it. Buying ads that showcase the products they have already looked at is a way of gently nudging them into buying. Again, since you only pay per click, you have nothing to lose if people do not click on your ad.

Pay per click advertising is extremely popular with large brands, and it remains one of the most dominant advertising methods for three main reasons. Being billed for clicks to your website makes budgeting easy. It allows you to focus on creating quality landing pages without contorting content to be first in the search results. Finally, you can create campaigns that gently funnel people back to your website. Adding PPC advertising to your business is one of the easiest ways to build brand recognition and drive sales.

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