In the techno savvy era, after exhausting all other possibilities, we are moving towards legit techniques in order to attract visitors to our website. We have seen it all from getting our hands on internet for the first time, where we were so much in awe of this new era, we thought it worked and served our commands and we didn’t bother ourselves with the back-end technology, to Google’s recent misuse of market position and Facebook’s controversial sharing of information, highlighting the fact that all is not in our control. In fact, everything is initiated by us and we intentionally (though, most of the times, unknowingly) surrender everything to the tech giants out there. Pay per click is one of those things which allow us some control over prospects as we are essentially buying visits to our site.
It is now the most talked about term in digital marketing context and essentially the most important. We might have come across a phenomena, which is ‘The demand for a product gradually diminishes if you can’t supply the product over a long period of time’, i.e. without properly advertising your product (be it your website, blog, video), you can’t expect a wide range of audience/viewers. People tend to forget things which are not part of the media frenzy. We are oblivion to quality as we only focus on the presentation of the product offered. Thus, it becomes a dire need to be in the front row. PPC comes into play, at this very moment, and it means to attract visitors with the help of online advertising. Now talking of getting free traffic, it is not meant for everyone. You need to get out there and make efforts in the right direction.
PPC stands for Pay per Click advertising. It is a method of online marketing today where you can place ads in strategic places online and you pay a fee only when someone clicks on the advertisement. It’s a way to buy visits to your site rather than attracting them organically. For example, if we work at a typical search results’ page i.e. Google, Yahoo or Bing, the paid ads are up top and are usually labeled as such. Organic results are the ones underneath. On social media, the ads are going to appear as feeds, banner ads on the side and in a variety of other forms too. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and even Pinterest have options for paid advertising. On top of social media and search engine pages, you’ll notice ads placed on strategic places on all kinds of platforms or websites all over the internet. Such is the world of PPC. It is one of the best ways to attract visitors online.
Now everytime a user clicks on any of these ads, the advertiser pays a specified fee. This fee is called the Cost Per Click (CPC). If you are considering paid advertising you might be wondering how much is the cost per click. The answer to this question is not specific as it depends on a lot of factors. It all depends on how much competition there is for the space where you want to place your ad. To put things into perspective, the average cost per click industry in the US is between 1 and 2 dollars. Some are as cheap as few cents, whereas some can cost even 50 dollars per click. Another significant key term is CPM which stands for Cost per Mille (Latin word for thousand). It applies to display video ads only. As opposed to CPC where you pay based on how many times you ad is actually clicked, CPM is based on impressions alone (per 1000 views). You are literally buying the right to simply show your ads a thousand times, regardless of how many times it’s clicked.
Let’s see why PPC might be a great addition to your online marketing strategy.
Extremely targeted – you can choose precisely who to show your ads to based on location, keywords, interests, age, gender, language and even the type of device. So, instead of wasting your money you can target people who are actually going to be interested in what you have to offer.
Not only that, you can even adjust your ads for people who have already visited your website. This type of PPC advertising is called retargeting. It is huge. On average, out of every 100 people who visit a website, only 2 will convert into an actual customer. That implies that almost 98% of virtual traffic, attracted initially, goes waste. Retargeting lets businesses retarget and place ads to remind the people, who left the website, to come back and check out the products and services they missed. This in turn helps businesses capture more of the 98% people who didn’t convert the first time.
Cost effective – PPC advertising is pretty cost effective. After all, the only time you pay a fee is when your ad is actually clicked. When you consider the fact that the top 3 advertising spots on the search results page get 46% of the clicks, the odds are really in your favour. You are up there at the top of the list, even above the top organic results. Let’s say it cost you 15 dollars to earn that one click, but if the product you sell is 400 dollars, that’s really not a bad return on investment.
Trackable – Paid advertising is also super trackable. Basically, this means you can monitor how well your ads are performing and adjust them accordingly if one isn’t giving you as many clicks as you like. You will always know which ads are exactly driving sales up in your business and which ones aren’t. Flexibility comes hand in hand with PPCs.
Fast – PPC advertising is fast. Ranking high in organic search results is important but it takes time to get there. But with PPC you can put an ad up and start seeing results in a matter of days, if not hours. So, if you are looking to immediately attract more traffic to your site and boost sales, you may want to get PPC some serious thought.
To sum up, the greatest benefit PPC has to offer is that it helps give your website the attention it deserves and from the people who would appreciate it the most.