Pay Per Click is a type of online marketing in which an individual or business can direct traffic to a website by paying for ad placement. They system normally works as an auction, and only charges participants when an ad is clicked. I’ll try to break down more plainly how Pay Per Click works below (it took me 3 times to come up with a definition that halfway makes sense).
How Does It Work?
Having a website is about visibility. If you don’t have a website that shows up at the top of search results, then the website can’t be used to its fullest ability. Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising can be used for retargeting customers that bounce from a website, for ad placements on other similar websites, and even for video advertising, but showing up as a top search result provides what I believe to be the most valuable results.
Essentially you choose a daily budget, select the keywords that you would like to show up for in searches, write the ads that you would like for people to see when they search for your keywords, and place a bid on your keywords. A value is attached to each keyword, and any time that your ad is clicked on after a keyword gets matched with a search an amount is deducted from your daily budget.
Do You Pay Every Click?
Google Ads typically invoices customers every $500 or 30 days (whichever comes first). This means that if you have a $500/day marketing budget, you’re likely seeing invoices in your bank account from Google Every day. If you have a $100/day budget, then you’re probably getting billed once a week.
When a campaign runs out of budget for the day, then the ads stop running until their next scheduled date/time.
How is this Beneficial?
Online lead generation requires traffic. Traffic requires visibility. No visibility, no traffic. No traffic, no sales. PPC allows businesses to gain visibility in search engines and on partner sites without having to wait months to do so organically. This means that you can launch a new business idea, setup a site, and take advantage of high value traffic online within a week.
Yes, the investment in paying for clicks up front may seem like a pain, but it allows you to have a surgical approach to how your marketing dollars are spent. You can select the terms that you want to show ads for, when you want to show them, where you want to show them, and you control how the information is presented using ads.
A Word of Caution
The one mistake that I see the most is inadequate budget. Many business owners want to “dip their toes in the water” to see if PPC is going to work for them. PPC platforms are not the place to do that. It is an extremely competitive marketing source because it is an extremely successful marketing source. If you’re not sure about whether PPC is right for you, send me an email to info@leadfarmersppc.com and I’ll help you determine what a successful approach might look like.