Chapter 1, Part 2: Why Pay Per Click?

The first question businesses and PPC advertisers should ask themselves is how to outmuscle the competition and win quality time with the desired audience. What makes the business better than the existing advertisers? What does it offer that they do not?

To catch the eye of a potential partner – someone interested in the services and products advertised, a pay per click campaign shouldn’t be content to simply stand out from the crowd. Wearing a funky hat or lurid shirt may attract attention in the dating arena but search marketing is an altogether more fickle affair. Numbers might be limited on a speed date but pay per click providers issue an open invitation to every singleton in town.

This means advertisers looking to purchase a bundle of cyber real estate need to work out the best way to make a statement in the four lines of text available to PPC advertisers on the Google network. Rather than simply sitting on the page, the campaign has to jump up and down and demonstrate as much unwavering self-belief and love of the limelight as any reality TV show wannabe. A tricky task for the inexperienced but one that this book will address in the following chapters.

Unlike dating and showbiz, PPC has the one advantage of only costing money when someone actually clicks on the online advert. The advertiser isn’t obliged to splash out on a ‘must have shirt’ or ‘super sexy shoes’ in the hope of netting a dream date. Any cash leaving the current account has already yielded results in the form of a single click. This relieves some but not all of the pressure.

A bad PPC campaign is the dating equivalent of being left standing at the alter -low click through rates, poor internet visibility, badly written advert text and no sales leads, making the business world feel like the loneliest place on earth.

A good pay per click campaign blots out all other disappointments. Suddenly you’re gliding down the aisle to flashbulbs popping like confetti– all eyes are on you, for all the right reasons.

Bride or eternal bridesmaid? The only way to find out for sure is to dedicate time and money to setting up and managing a pay per click campaign. Nurtured with science and creativity, it could well be the best investment your business ever makes.

Get ready to pay to play.

Tips From The Top: The Pros Of Pay Per Click

1. Control and flexibility – pay per click adverts can be activated, paused, edited or deleted at any time

2. The advertiser decides how much to invest, setting a maximum monthly budget that can be raised or lowered an infinite number of times

3. The advertiser selects keywords to trigger the ads, allowing each campaign to finely target users

4. Multiple adverts can be used for each campaign and can be changed at any time

5. Geographical and time functions mean the advert can be precisely managed to appear in specific locations at specific times of day