Chapter 1, Part 1: Why Pay Per Click? Pay per click advertising is a lot like speed dating. You only get a few seconds to show off your best features before the other party moves on to a more attractive prospect. Worse still, if your table is positioned at the end of the line you’ll usually find that the best ones are already taken. The same is true of pay per click advertisers looking to find their perfect sales match online. Millions of websites– particularly small and medium size business offerings- use PPC to attract web traffic, turn surfers into shoppers and clicks into sales. But whether it’s a small part of an online marketing strategy or the main way of attracting visitors to the site, there are only a certain number of user eyeballs to go around. So like the speed dater shoved in a dark corner, many pay per click advertisers go home unhappy and unloved. That’s a shame because PPC is the blonde bombshell of internet advertising. It has the potential to be all things to all people. While there are certainly more attractive search marketing prospects out there, pay per click deploys its considerable charms with unwavering panache. It’s the third most popular form of advertising in the United Kingdom, usurping radio and magazine advertising with aplomb and is easily the fastest growing new media format in the world. Pay per click’s biggest selling point is undoubtedly its interactivity and willingness to enhance its best assets. The Madonna of its generation, search portal Google has led the PPC image overhaul, re-inventing its range of services more times than any of its rival search offerings. Like a skilled cosmetic surgeon called in to buoy the fortunes of fading c-list tabloid fodder, it slices and splices the best bits of other media formats together, moulding them into an altogether more attractive package. The search portal has taken TV and used it as inspiration for video ads. The glossy sheen of high-end magazines has been replicated and offered as image advertising. The immediacy of SMS texts harnessed for mobile ads. Telesales has been copied and improved upon with click to call… Not even established bastions of business have been spared with Google Maps now serving up local business listings to pay per click advertisers in much the same way as the Yellow Pages and Thomson Local. The Google twist is interactive markers allowing the advertiser to show exactly where they’re located down to the nearest corner shop. Around 80% of all internet traffic passes through at least one Google page en-route to finding what they’re looking for online. This virtual treasure trove of potential clients, all searching for a specific product or service, coupled with the sheer diversity of advertising formats, makes PPC an almost unmissable prospect for business owners. With a well written advert and carefully chosen set of keywords, their web site could well be the internet users´ first port of call. And if it’s not, then the business doesn’t pay. Not only are companies reaching potential clients at the exact moment in which they are searching for relevant products and services, they’re doing so on a pre-determined budget. Depending on how successful the campaign is and how much capital the advertiser is prepared to invest, the budget can be raised and lowered at any time. If the advertiser is running a special offer or selling time-sensitive seasonal products for example, the daily budget can be temporarily boosted without worrying about sustaining the increased expenditure long term. No other advertising medium gives advertisers this same level of flexibility. Pay per click advert text can be updated daily and adapted as the business grows. Introductory offers, new product lines, special events – all can be added at the touch of a button for no extra cost. With traditional radio or print advertising such changes would require expensive new campaigns. And if something isn’t working, it can be paused, edited or deleted immediately. Unlike traditional advertising which continues for a pre-determined quota of print runs or advert slots, the PPC advertiser unhappy with campaign results can stop the campaign immediately or opt to change advert text and keywords until fortunes are reversed. Advertising on a PPC platform such as Google AdWords also gives the business owner greater control over who sees the advert and when. Advertisers can set languages, time zones and even choose to show ads to users only in specific cities or regions. Add to this the option of creating several different campaigns for disparate product areas or client bases and it’s easy to see why an estimated 150,000 businesses are currently using AdWords to promote their business online. This sheer volume of competition is both a strength and weakness for anyone running or thinking of running a pay per click campaign. On the plus side, web traffic and more importantly consumer demand clearly exists for such a service. For advertisers offering niche products and services, it’s reassuring to see other advertisers battling it out online. The business advertiser can see it as a powerful indicator of the existence of lucrative online client bases and multiple user-entered search queries. In other words, without the reward of tangible results, most of these advertisers would long since have moved into more profitable pastures both on and offline. For that reason alone it’s worth jumping aboard the PPC bandwagon whatever its destination. The flip side of this consumer demand is obviously the level of competition from other PPC advertisers. Before joining competitors online, the potential advertiser must therefore invest one of his most valuable assets – man hours. Part 2 of Chapter 1, coming 1 Jan 2007! |    |
