PPC – Pay per click is one of the fantastic online advertising strategies and great lead generation tactic that has potential to deliver targeted leads to the website.
Many small-medium sized businesses rely solely on organic search rankings to build their online profiles. Local and small businesses typically operate on a smaller budget, and enterpreneurs often feel that investing in pay per click (PPC) advertising campaigns may be expensive.
After all, organic SEO techniques offer solid results for a much smaller financial investment. Several start-up entrepreneurs misunderstood that since their organization is just a start-up, pay per click advertising doesn’t really apply to them. But smaller businesses can draw great benefits from pay per click advertising. Even those businesses with healthy SERP’s may find that PPC ads can help to improve their online profiles, while generating increased revenue for the company.
Pay per click advertising is important for online business success and an important component for a complete and successful digital marketing campaign for small businesses in India.
What Makes Pay Per Click So Desirable For Your Small Business
As the term implies, as an advertiser you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. Over the years this model has evolved and PPC campaigns may use other pricing models such as CPM -pay per thousand impressions, or CPA -pay when a click on the ad leads to a conversion.
The general idea about PPC is that it allows you to reach targeted audience fast by specifying who will see your ads (either by entering specific keywords or demographic characteristics) and you only pay when someone performs an action on your ad.
Benefits of PPC for Small Business in India
Many small business owners underestimate the benefits of ppc and as a result they are missing out on a big opportunity to grow their online businesses fast in a controlled and profitable manner.
Pay per click advertising, whether this is through Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads or even Twitter promoted tweets, is a great way to reach your potential customers fast and promote your products or services.
Let’s review in detail why Pay Per Click is important for start-ups, small businesses that wants to do business online:
1.Pay Per Click is cost effective when compared to other marketing methods
ne of the misconceptions around PPC campaigns has to do with cost. Many people believe that PPC is a waste of money and that keeps them away from using it.
It is true that if you are not careful on how you spend your money, you will end up draining your budget on buying hope and not real results. But, If you follow these simple rules, you increase your chances of making your campaigns profitable:
Start slow, measure and grow big, When you start with PPC don’t throw all your money on your first campaign but start with a small campaign and then depending on the results you can spend more money.
Everything is measurable from the impressions your ads will receive, clicks you will get, visits to your website and conversions so make sure that you study these numbers well before spending more.
If you are new to Adwords, Bing or Facebook ads, it is better to hire professionals to set up the campaigns for you and then if you cannot afford to have them optimize the campaigns on a monthly basis, at least you will know that your ‘base’ is correct.
A good ppc campaign is one that is optimized and there are many ways to lower your CPC costs and achieve more with less budget. Don’t think that these techniques are useless, PPC is like SEO where optimization process is a fundamental component.
This is perhaps the most important rule of PPC management: increase your budget on campaigns that are profitable and not on campaigns that are not.
At the beginning it is normal to run non-profitable campaigns because the optimization period may take a couple of months but in the long-run, you should not spend money without a positive return.
Another reason that makes PPC a cost effective advertising solution is that you have the ability to control your budgets and allocate it on keywords or audiences that are profitable.
2. Pay Per Click is the fastest method to get targeted leads
When you manage an online business you need good web traffic, not any type of traffic but targeted traffic that can potentially lead to more sales and business.
SEO is the first thing that comes in mind when talking about targeted traffic but we all know that it takes time to work so the next best alternative that can get you targeted traffic fast is PPC.
With Google adwords you can choose for which keywords to show your ads and these will appear on the top of Google search results. With Facebook Ads, you can define your target audience based on the many demographic characteristics facebook has for all of us.
It may take months or years for SEO to bring in targeted traffic while PPC is almost instant. Of course the benefits from achieving high organic rankings are enormous but you need to be patient and have a good SEO plan to get there.
3. Pay Per Click helps in letting you know if your services/products need improvement
You have a nice looking website and products ready to ship, or services are awesome to sell, but don’t know if your products/services sell. What is the fastest way to find out the truth? Run a campaign on Google Adwords and get 1000 targeted visits and measure the results.
It will cost you to make this test but if you are aiming for a long term online presence the money you spend now on optimizing your website and product/service offerings will generate more revenue in the future.
Small businesses that don’t follow this path of testing and optimization but go blind believing that their website works and their products sell because they think so, are doomed to fail. What your designer and web developer consider to be user friendly and converting is not always what actually works for users and a targeted PPC campaign will help you find the truth.
4. Pay Per Click gels well with other digital marketing channels
PPC advertising is an important component of your digital marketing strategy and works well with all other marketing channels. For example:
By using dynamic search ad campaigns and let PPC tell you which keywords are a good match for your website.
You can use PPC to test the effectiveness of different keywords so that you know which keywords to target with long term SEO.
You can use PPC as a way to get more installs for your mobile application and strengthen your mobile marketing.
You can use PPC to get more email signups and enrich your email marketing campaigns.
It’s great for local SEO optimization – You can use PPC to drive customers to your shop door or get direct calls from customers looking for products and services in your area.
5. Pay Per Click lets you execute advanced marketing techniques like re-targeting
One of the most effective ways to increase conversions is to use re-targeting. Re-targeting is a technique where you create campaigns and target people that have already visited your website but did not convert.
For example, assume that you have a website selling engagement rings. Customers looking to buy engagement rings online go through a buying process which includes searching for the products they want and taking a look at different websites.
The time frame to make a decision can expand to 30 or 60 days since the products are expensive and the available sellers a lot. This is a classic case where re-targeting can generate great results.
By adding a piece of code provided by Google Adwords, Facebook or even Twitter, you allow these networks to identify through cookies people that visited your website but did not purchase a product from you.
When should you use Pay Per Click?
Pay per click is a good fit for almost any type of business. You can use it to sell products, services, raise brand awareness or get new leads from Google or social media platforms.
As a startup you can use PPC and take advantage of all the benefits described above and as an established business you can use PPC to further expand your business online.
Use PPC when you have time-sensitive offers or events since no other digital marketing tool besides social media marketing can give you instant access to your target audience.
Source: Smejoinup
