Chapter 7 – Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)

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While SEO is the most cost effective method of capturing searchers on the web, it does tend to take time (anywhere from 3 to 12 months) to produce results due to a variety of factors.

Hence, businesses wanting quick results can tap into the most popular form of paid online advertising, which is PPC (Pay Per Click). All you need is a credit card, a website, and you can be receiving visitors to your site in as little as 15 minutes using PPC.

Google’s AdWords program is the most popular PPC service in the world at the moment, offering the largest online advertising network. You can display your ads on any and all Google Search pages (ex. google.com.au or google.co.uk, etc – Google calls this their Search network) and/or you can display your ads on sites that feature Google ads in exchange for a % of the ad revenue (Google calls this their Content network).

The differences between advertising using AdWords and other “traditional” forms of advertising are:

  • Your ads only show when someone searches for relevant keywords that YOU decide ahead of time.

Hence, if you are an accounting firm based in Perth and wish to use AdWords to find new clients, you might bid on keyword phrases similar to those listed below in this report:

adwords keyword tool
Approx Search Volume report – AdWords

 

The obvious benefit of this is that you are not paying for broad stroke advertising (such as TV or Radio), where you pay for exposure to a lot of people who are NOT looking for your product or service. Your marketing is HIGHLY targeted, which reduces overall ad spend and tends to also reduce cost per qualified sales lead.

You could never get a decent sized ad in the major local newspaper for as little as $10/day, but with Google AdWords, you CAN have your ad show to highly targeted prospects worldwide (or local) for as little as $10/day.

  • Also, PPC advertising does NOT cost you money to actually display your ads.

Rather, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad because they think it is relevant to their needs. Hence the name “pay per click”.

  • AdWords also allows you to advertise locally, city-wide, regionally, state-wide, country-wide and even worldwide – hence the market coverage is potentially massive (especially if you wish to target potential clients outside your local area).

For example, some of our clients direct their advertising to a small region – 15km radius surrounding Moonee Ponds (a suburb of Melbourne), other clients are targeting the whole state of WA, others are targeting 7 different countries (USA, UK, Australia, South Africa, Ireland, Canada & New Zealand) and so forth.

 

adwords geo-targeting map
Geo-targeting 7 countries in AdWords

 

Google AdWords is a very powerful advertising tool that can offer benefits for all different sizes and types of business, with budgets ranging from as little as $10/day thru to $10,000/day (and more).

Having said all that, AdWords is a complex beast that takes a lot of knowledge and hands-on practice to get the best results from it, so most beginners tend to spend too much money for limited results, and decide it’s not worth the effort.

In reality, it just requires some expertise to make it work – you should be hiring an AdWords specialist to manage your account because they’ll ensure you get the best results for your dollar compared to you trying to make it perform profitably.

AdWords allows small businesses to compete with large businesses on an equal footing, and is a powerful tool for even a very local-based business. You can control your budget very precisely by setting daily spend limits, and every cent you spend can be measured & tracked.

I recommend you trial Google AdWords before, or in conjunction with, SEO services as an initial means of getting targeted traffic to your site. It’s a great way to test different ad creatives and concepts, as well as finding out which keyword phrases produce the best results for your business.

 

The next chapter discusses Referrals.

About the author 

Eran Malloch

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