Today competition is fierce online and it's very easy to get carried away with all forms of advertising from banner ads to solo ads. Before you know it your advertising budget (if you have one) is blown, your return on investment can't be measured and your profit margins have taken a serious dip.
So how do you know if your advertising efforts are being maximised and reaching the right target audience?
Well one of the most affordable, consumer targeted and cost effective forms of on-line advertising is Pay Per Click search engine advertising. Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is a huge business that by 2012 is expected to top $11 billion dollars in revenue.
In its simplest form, Pay Per Click is about producing leads, generating prospects and as a result connecting potential buyers with specific and relevant websites that will provide them with the product or service they are looking for.
To capitalize on this, a good website that is meaningful and has quality information or the right products is essential to successful PPC advertising. Regrettably this element is often left unchecked by many website owners, not realizing that potential purchasers are more likely to buy products or services from a web site that provides them with the relevant goods or services they were searching for in the first place.
One of the main benefits of Pay Per Click advertising is that it provides qualified and motivated traffic to your website. Users that click on a PPC ad are those in search of a particular product or service. To a great degree this filters out unnecessary clicks from non-prospective buyers therefore saving your advertising dollars from being wasted promoting to large groups of people who aren't in the market for your goods and services.
Unlike other forms of advertisement that adopts the scatter gun effect by advertising to everybody hoping that the ad will be seen by interested people, Pay Per Click advertising can be very specific. Also, as an added benefit, PPC is possibly the fastest way to get a return on your investment. A campaign that goes live can start producing results within minutes, followed by click throughs and ultimately sales.
The whole process of PPC is structured around keywords. To set the price of a specific keyword a bidding process is used. Generally the budget for PPC advertising can be as low as $50 ranging up to a possible $100,000 depending on the amount of keywords used. The price of any keyword can escalate immensely within minutes as more and more sites bid for the same keyword.
Pay Per Click ads are placed along relevant search engine results. The highest bid for a specific keyword or phrase is awarded the top spot on the results page. The second highest gets second place and so on.
Getting top placement naturally provides greater opportunity for a PPC ad to get clicked on by a motivated searcher.
A successful PPC campaign involves three core disciplines which need to be adhered to in order to have a successful campaign.
# A continual monitoring of the advert spend.
# Analysis and refinement of the advert response to ensure the maximum click through rate is achieved at all times.
# Management of the campaign to ensure that your PPC advertising results in good profits. It's not enough to break even.
PPC advertising makes it possible for you to monitor the productivity of each ad and switch off any ad that is no longer performing at its best, thus providing the most economical way to advertise your goods or services on the internet.
The cost in PPC advertising is dictated by the number of clicks made on a particular ad. The number of clicks made on a particular PPC ad is subtracted from the initial business outlay to a search engine company. Therefore to minimize cost and maximize ROI, a business needs to regularly monitor its advertising campaign.
Many businesses fail to get the most out of their PPC campaigns believing it is merely a matter of bidding the highest on their selected keywords or phrases, getting to the top of the results page and making a sale.
However, quality information and relevant products or services are key to converting your advertising budget into sales revenue.
Providing prospects with relevant information will help foster a longer term relationship with them that will more likely result in new and further sales.
By providing follow up information to your prospects in the form of a newsletter or email you can create spin off sales that will often be more than enough to offset the costs of any campaign, and if used to full advantage can dwarf the initial sales completely.
PPC advertising is a continuous process that requires hands on supervision and a thorough understanding of PPC search engines. Businesses may opt to hire the services of a professional or carry out PPC advertising with in-house experts.
However, knowledge is the key to running a successful campaign and this is quite often in the form of quality e-books, guides and free information.
Whatever course of action is selected, a business is sure to get a huge return on investment with PPC advertising.
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