Pros & Cons Pay Per Click Advertising

Pros & Cons of PPC or Pay Per Click Advertising

All business owners and webmasters would agree about the value of their web sites and the need to increase the number of site visitors. When it comes to whether to use PPC, or pay per click marketing for their sites, there’s usually a great deal of disagreement. Whether to use PPC or not is an individual business decision that should be based on accurate information. Here’s what you need to know to make an informed choice.

Click fraud is real, but don’t let it stop you. Too many people have decided against PPC because they fear “click fraud.” This is a real problem with this type of marketing, but it doesn’t have any significant impact on the average advertiser. The stories of competitors running up clicks to drive up an advertiser’s costs are mostly urban myths. Few have the time or care enough to do it, and Google and Yahoo track the IP address of clicks and refund if multiple clicks from the same IP address follow each other too closely. When you see comments about click fraud, check to see if they’re first-hand accounts or the much more likely “I heard about” rumors.

Don’t blame lack of sales on PPC. You’ve seen it written in a forum somewhere. The statement “PPC isn’t worth it. I tried it and got lots of traffic but no sales.” First, you must have a product or service that someone wants to buy. Then you need to create content on your site that matches the information the searcher wanted in the first place. Bring them to what they’re looking for quickly, in a click or two. Give them the information they want and an easy way to order your product or service right on that page. If your service or product has a longer sale cycle, then you’re likely looking for a lead to work with for a period of time. The same practice applies. Get them to the information they want quickly, and give them a reason to request more information or a free trial in order to capture their contact information for follow-up.

Pay per Click seems “way too expensive.” PPC can be very expensive. However, if your product or service is sellable on the internet, then there’s probably a way to market with PPC economically. A lot of the expense is related to the competitive nature of your product and how many advertisers are using PPC. But there’s a wild card in both Google and Yahoo’s systems that can stack the deck in your favor. Both of these systems reward higher click-through ratios (CTR). CTR is the percentage of people that click to your site after seeing your ad. You’ll have to start out bidding high enough to get in the top five or so positions to get your ad exposed enough for clicks. However, if your ad experiences a higher CTR than the one above it consistently, then you’ll start to see your position getting better while your cost goes down! That’s right, better position at lower cost per click. The search engine’s goal is relevant information to the searcher. Your better CTR tells the engine that your ad must be saying something that searchers like.

When it comes to keywords, there’s more than meets the eye. Too many new PPC advertisers immediately seize on the commonly used keywords and phrases for their product or service. Well, that’s just what their competitors are doing too! There’s a phrase coined for another method that works, and that’s “using the long tail.” This refers to using key phrases that contain the more popular words, but expand on them. A simplistic example might be using “single room humidifiers” instead of “humidifiers.” This results in less competitive phrases that cost less. True, there won’t be as many clicks on thes phrases, but they’ll be a lot less expensive. You can also get so many of these “long tail” phrases going that you’ll get plenty of quality traffic at a lower cost.

If it seems like there are only pros and no cons when it comes to PPC, that’s not the whole truth. However, it usually depends on the web site and the ability of the business person to implement pay per click effectively. It’s definitely not for those who want to throw money at marketing to see what sticks. There is a great deal more up-front planning required for PPC than for placing a newspaper or magazine ad. And there are those that say those dont’ work either.