If you’ve been doing business online for even a short period of time, you’ve likely heard of Pay Per Click advertising. With this type of advertising, you’ll place an ad – generally with search engines like Google – and you’ll pay anytime someone clicks on your ad. This method of advertising can generate a substantial amount of clicks in a short period of time, but it’s not necessarily the best option for every business. Before jumping on the PPC bandwagon, you’ll want to consider the following four elements:
1. Your Marketing Budget
Without question, if you’ve got an unlimited ad budget, PPC is for you because as I said, you can generate plenty of traffic in a short period of time. However, if your budget is not unlimited, you may well be suited for other types of advertising such as using various methods and techniques to build up your standing in natural search. Once your advertising budget expands, then you may want to consider running some PPC ads.
But when you do get into PPC, don’t go all in. Dedicate a small piece of your ad budget to it first. Run several tests to see what ads work best and when. Analyze your results to see if the cost justifies the expense.
2. Your Product
Is your product line in demand and hard to locate? Or, is your product line made up of everyday items? If you sell products that will sell well to anyone who is able to locate your site, then PPC is a good way to go. However, if you are selling in demand products and the awareness of your company / site is high, PPC may really only be a cost effective method for you during special promotional time periods. Why pay for PPC ads if people are already visiting your site without them?
3. Your Product Margin
If you don’t move a whole lot of products, but have a high profit margin on each, PPC can be a good way to go, but only if you get a decent conversion on the traffic generated by the PPC ads. If you are making enough money from each sale to enable you to spend money to locate 10 new leads and get one of those ten to buy, it may well be worth your while to go with PPC. However, if you operate on a really small profit margin, you’ll need a ton of traffic and won’t be so worried about the quality of the traffic. In this case, PPC may not be for you.
4. Competition
Watch your competition to see how they are going about attracting customers. If your customer bases is more niche orientated, you’ll definitely need to find a way to divert the traffic from your competitor to your site. If you find that your competition is using PPC to generate traffic, it could be well worth it to outbid your competitor in PPC advertising. On the other hand, if you cater to the mass market, you’ll have plenty of options for advertising and outbidding your competition may not make any sense.
The benefit of PPC advertising is that you are able to generate a lot of traffic in a short period of time. Used correctly, it can really work wonders for your business. But, it can also bankrupt you if you don’t set a strict budget and pay close attention to your conversion rates to ensure that it’s worthwhile for you to be in PPC.
