Put simply, PPC “Pay-Per-Click” Advertising, also called SEM (Search Engine Marketing), is a way to purchase visitors to your website. There is a little more to it than that, but this is the overall purpose of most campaigns. This form of advertising is simply a piece of the aggregate strategy for successfully marketing products and services online. Consider the 5 reasons below when deciding if PPC is right for your business.

Don’t Pay for Ads that Don’t Work

As you can determine from their name, “Pay-Per-Click” Ads are only billed to the advertiser if someone actually clicks on the ad. This means you are not paying for “impressions” or being seen, but actual engagement with the potential customer.

Speed to Market and ROI

Search (SEO) is great way to bring in traffic, but the process of developing content that promotes specific keywords, eventually producing results, can be arduous. It’s necessary and is good long-term strategy, but I’ve compared it to steering a cruise ship. No one likes being on page 2, but in some situations, you will take months or years to achieve page 1 organically.

With PPC ads, however, you can pay for one of the top listings, where people are more likely to see you. You also begin seeing a return on these ads much faster: results start almost immediately, and most campaigns are near “full throttle” in 3 months, tops.

Hyper-Focused Targeting

PPC ads can address the exact pain point or problem your audience is trying to resolve. Thanks to the power of keywords, you can also target much more accurately than in other forms of advertising. The people that click on PPC ads are typically “ready to buy” right now. Compare this with people that find your website organically, or via other methods, who can be in the early stages of research rather than “low-funnel” buyers. You also have the ability to limit who sees your ad, geographically.

Everything is measurable, and results are actionable

PPC ads are extremely measurable. Instead of grasping at straws, you can see which campaigns are the most effective at getting the right customers, at the right time. We then use this information to tweak future campaigns, improving your ROI.

Mobile, Mobile, Mobile!

Mobile search is where a majority of your customers will come from in the near future, if not already. Your PPC ads will be created with these mobile users in mind. Features like “click to call” are convenient for customers to avoid having to search for and manually dial your number.

I am the first to admit that Pay-Per-Click advertising may not be right for everyone, but it is a great option for many businesses. The platform on which you choose to advertise, whether it be Google & Bing, or perhaps a social platform like Facebook, or both, is also an important strategy to discuss. If you are looking for aggressive growth and have specific sales demands that need to be met, or you have a very targeted audience you are trying to reach, it would be a good idea to look into PPC. Message or call us at 425.689.7991 for more information.