Cost Effective Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising
Pay per Click providers such as Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, MSN, or Mirago quote the following benefits of PPC Advertising:
- PPC Advertising is Immediate or very fast to implement
- PPC Advertising is Measurable
- PPC Advertising is Cost Effective
- PPC Advertising is for Businesses of all size
Is this true? Is pay per click cost effective? Below is an independent viewpoint on the cost effectiveness of pay per click advertising based on our extensive experience of PPC management since 2004
Pay per Click (PPC) Advertising is Immediate
Pay per Click is certainly very much quicker to implement than most other forms of advertising. It is also very fast to respond to changing market demand or company situation and campaign budgets can be increased / decreased or paused almost instantly. Some PPC Campaigns are faster to set up than others - Google AdWords in particular is easy to get started within 10 minutes. Yahoo! or MSN take longer - typically 1-3 or more days. New accounts on International PPC accounts (e.g. Yandex) typically take 3-5 days to get setup.
It is this fast speed of response which helps keep campaigns cost effective, as the less effective keywords or ad groups can be stopped before too much money is spent.
Pay per Click (PPC) Advertising is Measurable
The Internet makes it very easy to measure and quantify the actual benefit of the PPC advertising campaign as a whole, but also each part of the campaign. Similarly with the costs. This is usually done by adding tracking code to the website but there are other methods as well if this is not possible. Cornish WebServices utilise both methods to continuously monitor and improve the performance of different client campaigns.
This type of advertising is called pay per click and it is very easy to measure"click through rates" or "Cost per Click" and this give an idea of how many visitors arrive at a client website. But cost per click is not the most useful measure of a campaign success. Some website visitors are more useful than others. A more useful measure is number of relevant visitors or cost per sale or cost per conversion. PPC advertising makes is very easy to calculate the cost per sale through this form of advertising.
Pay per Click (PPC) Advertising is Cost Effective
Maybe.
In the short term, PPC advertising is usually one of the more cost effective forms of advertising on the Internet, especially where industry bid prices are low. But in some market segments, fierce competition has driven bid prices to such a high level that the cost of generating a sale is more than the profit from that sale. This is most unlikely to be cost effective. But there are exceptions, particularly for products which have a high customer loyalty. For these if the cost of the lead needs to be compared to multiple sales, and this will change the decision on how effective the campaign is.
In most industries it appears that natural listings get a better click through rate than sponsored (PPC) listings and in our experience natural search engine optimisation usually offers a better return in the longer term.
Pay per Click (PPC) Advertising offers potential for smaller business
Pay per Click Advertising enables small and medium sized enterprises to compete very successfully against the large national / multinational companies. Pay Per Click (PPC) creates a level playing field for small businesses, and by careful choice of PPC parameters your ad can show above those of large business or multi-nationals. Pay per click advertising can offer small business one of the most cost effective forms of advertising, especially for niche markets.
Is Pay per Click (PPC) Advertising Best for your website?
Cornish WebServices have extensive PPC experience in both B2B and B2C type markets (both in the UK and for International markets), and in a variety of languages (e.g. English, French, Dutch, Russian). We also provide natural search engine optimisation services and often offer a combination of services where we gradually decrease PPC spend as the client website gains top rankings.
Contact us for a realistic assessment of the benefits of PPC (pay per click) advertising for your business. We only use qualified Google AdWords Professionals to handle client budgets. Our management fee is designed to help us provide you with the most cost effective advertising, and we have often suggested a reduction in advertising budget when this is in the clients interest.
