Running a Profitable PPC Campaign

Written by Mondo Humboldt Saturday, 07 May 2011 07:49

Pay per click marketing is an advertising model used on websites, advertising networks, and search engines where advertisers only pay when an internet surfer clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser's website. Businesses use pay-per-click, or PPC, advertising to generate sales to their target market from their web site.

Pay per click marketing is an advertising model used on websites, advertising networks, and search engines where advertisers only pay when an internet surfer clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser's website. Businesses use pay-per-click, or PPC, advertising to generate sales to their target market from their web site.

Basically, the advertiser pays for their ad to pop up when someone enters certain keywords into a search engine. The paid search results are displayed as the top three ads above the organic search results, as well as the ads down the left side of the page in most search engines. This allows businesses to pay for a better position on a search engine results page, even though they might not have a very high position in the organic or natural search engine results when certain keywords are input.The essence of pay-per-click management is to achieve more conversions for the lowest price. There are two primary models for determining the cost per click: bid-based and a flat-rate. In both cases the advertiser must consider the potential value of a click from a given source.

In a bid-based PPC marketing model, the positioning of an ad amongst the ads of the other businesses competing for the same keyword is determined by how much money the advertiser has bid. The top bidders will get the top spots in the results, but the quality of the ad and the website it links to also help to determine exactly which spot the ad gets. Each advertiser informs the host of the maximum amount that he or she is willing to pay for a given ad spot, often based on a keyword. Then advertisers pay for each click they receive, with the actual amount paid based on the amount bid. However, these rates are sometimes minimal, an advertiser can pay more for greater visibility.

Flat rate PPC marketing consists of the publisher and the advertiser agreeing on a fixed amount in advance. The advertisers pay the same fixed fee every time their ad is clicked on. Flat rate PPC is usually found on content sites. Some publishers like to use flat rate PPC over bid based PPC to avoid the constant adjusting of pricing in very little amounts by advertisers who are trying to win a bid and pay slightly less per click.

PPC management is a more results-oriented and interactive way of advertising instead of just placing a banner advertisement on a website. One of the benefits of PPC is being able to track the visitor's behavior. Being able to obtain this type of information about your visitors means you will know what tools you need to make your site perform better. Also, is very important to consider the structure of your site when you are planning a PPC campaign. Since you are paying for your visitors to arrive you should make sure the landing pages are search engine friendly and easy to navigate. To reduce your cost per click make sure you use targeted advertising. These are all things to help you direct qualified traffic to your website in order to make sure your PPC campaign is operating at it's peak performance.

PPC management is an inexpensive way to increase traffic to your website and gather more conversions. With so many PPC search engines you can get traffic from, it is important that you choose a good PPC professional to manage your PPC campaigns. If you are looking for an experienced PPC manager, or have any questions concerning your PPC campaign contact Big Squid Interactive for a free consultation.