A Buyers Guide to Pay Per Click Advertising
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Although PPC may initially seem like a very easy method of increasing awareness of your product on the web, making the most of this method can be a complicated and time-consuming process. Some pitfalls which you should take care to avoid when implementing your PPC campaign include:
- Targeting very general keywords: For a business offering a localised or specialised service, offering target keywords which are too general may lead to a proportion of clicks from visitors who are unlikely to make a purchase, effectively raising the cost of your campaign.
- Not targeting a wide enough range of keywords: Many advertisers simply target a small range of the most obvious words, and as a result there is much less competition for more specific or less obvious terms, resulting in lower costs. These less obvious keywords are often searched for by users who have refined their search, and will therefore be more likely to make a purchase.
- Bidding more than is cost effective: In some markets there is a great deal of competition to be ranked as highly as possible for the most obvious keywords, which can result in a bidding war and advertisers moving past what is cost effective for them. Always keep your campaign in perspective and consider what other advertising options you might have, as well as their effectiveness with relation to the product you are marketing.
- Not considering the target website: All too often a large percentage of the budget is invested in the advertising campaign, whilst little thought is given to the process and decisions the client will have to go through once they reach your website. Making a client’s journey simple, establishing your product’s credibility and effectively providing key information can all help turn a visit into a sale.
An obvious question on everybody’s mind is what happens when competitors keep clicking on your adverts in order to drive up the costs of your campaign. This practice has been coined ‘click fraud’, and is a serious issue that the main PPC providers are keen to combat. The use of computers to commit this type of fraud is a felony in many jurisdictions, and in the past there have been arrests relating to click fraud with regard to malicious clicking in order to deplete a competitor's advertising budget. Proving click fraud can be very difficult, since it is hard to know who is behind a computer and what their intentions are. Often the best an advertising network can do is to identify which clicks are most likely fraudulent and not charge the account of the advertiser.
In today’s market most businesses use the web as a way to get their product known to the world, but because of its popularity, advertising on the internet has become more competitive and as a result new strategies have had to be adopted. PPC is one of these strategies, and its popularity in current advertising campaings speaks for its effectiveness. The main benefits of PPC advertising are:
- It is immediate or very fast to implement.
- It is measurable.
- It is cost effective.
- It is for businesses of all sizes.
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