What is PPC? How Does It Work?
If you’ve been looking at your online marketing options, you’ve come across pay-per-click marketing. But while PPC is an old standby when it comes to advertising on the Internet, it can seem confusing for those who’ve never used it before. So, before you decide to sink a lot of money into a PPC campaign, you need to know what it is, and how it works.
PPC Basics
The way pay-per-click marketing works is that you create an ad, and you tie that ad to certain keywords. So, for example, say you were selling burglar alarms. You would create an eye-catching ad that featured your company name and product, then assign that ad a keyword, or series of keywords like retirement planner, financial planning, 401k rollover, etc. Then, whenever someone searches for one of your keywords, your ad pops up.
Now, the advantage of PPC marketing is that it doesn’t matter how many times your ad pops up; you only have to pay a fee when someone clicks on your ad, and is taken to your landing page. That fee may be as little as a few cents, or as much as a dollar, and it will depend entirely on the keywords you’ve attached to your ad, and the details of how big it is, where it appears, etc.
Does It Work?
While the number of people who purposefully click on Internet ads is small, there’s no denying that PPC marketing does still reach people. A successful PPC marketing campaign will increase your traffic, increase sales, and earn you new customers… but like any other marketing campaign it doesn’t happen out of sheer, dumb luck. It takes careful planning, market research, and the correct placement of your ads to get the maximum results.
