Paying for Website Visitors: The Allure of PPC for Small Biz OwnersThere are good reasons why many webmasters and website owners choose to pay for visitors to their website as opposed to
involved and often grueling method of search engine optimization. Improper SEO may not only waste time and resources, there is never a guarantee that what your site is optimized for will result in actual sales or conversions. Choosing Bid for Placement advertising can help ensure that you get what you pay for and pay as little as possible to do it.
How You Know if Pay Per Click is Right for You The single biggest mistake most PPC advertisers make is paying a higher amount for visitors than they can afford. Pay per click search engines are ideal to generate traffic if you already know what it costs to generate one sale or conversion. By not going over their predetermined amount, advertisers can dramatically increase likelihood of their websites' success.
High-End Pay Per Click is Not Right For You if… There are millions of websites online but only a small percentage of these sites can benefit from traffic that high-end PPC resources such as Google Adwords or Overture provide. When it comes to generating conversions from top-tier of PPC's, low profit margin categories of business (members of affiliate programs for example) would do well to avoid higher priced bid for placement search engines (as bid prices are often too high) and focus on 2nd tier pay per click services or vertical portals working on a bid for placement model.
How to Choose A PPC That is Right For Your Campaign When choosing a PPC campaign for your website, take into account not only bid prices, but traffic volume, customer service and account management tools.
Check Bid Prices A significant mistake that novice PPC advertisers make is to jump immediately into largest advertising networks, namely Google Adwords and Overture. While these PPC's certainly have most extensive reach, bid prices per visitor are higher than any other network and can easily drain your account before even one visitor converts. Check bid prices before signing on anywhere and match as closely as possible to what you have determined you can pay for each website visitor.
Inquire about Customer Service No thanks to their size, larger PPC's usually have much less attentive customer service (unless you are one of larger advertisers - this means spending $10,000 a month or more). Many second tier PPC's pride themselves on their attentive customer service. Always ask your PPC company if they can help advise you before and during your campaign to ensure highest ROI.
Investigate "Reach" Bid for placement search engines (PPC) are simply advertising networks that help you spread your message to their users. As some PPC networks have greater access to more users, it is important to investigate reach not only of their own network but network size of their partners. When speaking with sales or customer representatives ask for a list of their partners.
Top Tips for Success with PPC
There have been many small business website owners who have lost their proverbial shirts with bid for placement advertising. Case study after case study has shown that reason that most fail with PPC is a lack of understanding on how to maximize bid for placement model to their advantage across various networks simultaneously. Here are a few tips to make most of an online advertising campaign using a PPC methodology:
