Pay Per Click Advertising for Beginners
If you would like to learn more about Pay Per Click Advertising and get a grasp on the concept without getting confused, please do continue reading. I will try to explain PPC as simply as I can, laying it out to a grade schooler, and even provide a rather crude image to help… an image looking like it was actually drawn by a grade schooler with a spelling error which was actually not done on purpose. My spelling skills are apparently not as good as my marketing abilities.
There is this interesting story I need to tell about PPC and a newbie’s dilemma, or so I thought at the time.
It was Valentine’s day, February 14, 2007.. a Wednesday and single friends of mine thought of getting together at a local restaurant. As far as I remember the first people to get there were myself and a friend of mine Bing Torre, who is also a colleague in the marketing and events world. Bing then began to tell me about Pay Per Click advertising, how she had to run some ads on Google on a very limited budget for a client. At the time I had very recently crossed over into the online marketing space, leaving behind the marketing/advertising industry that I had been a part of for over 15 years. I was managing PPC accounts that was spending up to $1,000 a day. Yes a DAY!
I then went on to tell her about how AdWords worked, which is pretty much the same way I will describe to you in this post.
Incidentally here is picture taken of some us, the “un-valentiners.”
So about Pay Per Click Advertising.
PPC is simply a method of advertising on search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN/Bing, where your ads get shown to people who are looking for what you have to sell. It is targeted advertising in the sense that, you target people who are already looking for what you have to offer them, your ad only appears when specified keywords are being used on the search engine. You make a bid for a certain keyword and when that keyword gets searched, your ad appears.. typically on the upper or right section of the results page, and usually appears boxed.
The bid is an amount you are willing to pay the search engine if your ad gets clicked. For instance if someone searches for Nike running shoes and you are bidding $0.50 on that keyword phrase, your ad will appear only when that phrase is searched for, and you will only get billed 50 cents if your ad gets clicked. Of course when an ad gets clicked the clicker gets sent to a website or webpage which has more information about what you are offering.
So there are 3 key elements that you need to pay attention to.
Keyword or Keywords
- these are words you bid on that will trigger your ads if searched
- your keywords have to be very specific to what you are selling or offering
- group together very similar keywords in a cluster called an Ad Group
- for instance a cluster of related keywords can be… Nike running shoes, Nike running shoes for men, Nike running shoes for women, men’s Nike running shoes, Nike running shoes kids..
The Ad
- this is the text that search engine users read on the search engine results page
- ad text needs to be related to the keywords you are bidding upon
- ad text needs to be very specific to the specific cluster of keywords or Ad Group
- for instance your ad text can say “Nike Running shoes at amazing discounts, Free overnight delivery”
- the ad must tell the visitor what you are selling, and tell them why they should buy from you, as an added motivating reason to get them to click your ad
The Landing Page
- this is the page where a clicker of an ad lands on
- this page should also have exactly what the ad offers, so if your keyword was for Nike running shoes, and your ad text tells the reader that you have Nike running shoes at great discounts and that you deliver overnight for free, then your landing page must have all that information on the page PLUS..
- the landing page makes it easier for the viewer to find more information and to get exactly what they want, for instance the page shows not only Nike running shoes, but the viewer can choose a specific size, color, model, check out reviews from other buyers about the product or about your service, and an easy and secure system to make a purchase
Here is that grader level illustration I told you about… click the image to enlarge.
PPC Vs SEO
New blog post title on WebProNews reads PPC Vs SEO; the new post features a video clip showing an interview with Kristine Churchill of KeyRelevance shot during the recent SES in Chicago.
Some people will say PPC is better because of this and that; the others on the other side of the fence say SEO is better because of so and so. With all that is being said, you now believe that you actually need to pick a side; you feel the urgency to decide whether you are pro PPC and anti SEO or vice versa.
What many people do not realize is that both PPC and SEO, being the traffic generation methods that they both are, are actually equally important for any online marketing strategy since they both achieve specific goals that are unique for each, objectives that the other may fail to accomplish.
You cannot absolutely choose one over the other because doing so would be like deciding what you want to have all day long — daytime or night, which is just not possible. If you are not familiar with the distinct features and difference between SEO and PPC, click this link http://www.magrointernational.com/PayPerClick/SEOvsPPC.aspx
Again I stress, PPC and SEO are both important. PPC delivers quick traffic especially to websites that have just rolled out and without any incoming links or organic rankings. If you were one such website owner, PPC allows you to get stats rolling in that you may examine, evaluate and use as basis for optimizing your content to improve engagement or conversions, and optimizing your traffic generation or online advertising activities that would likely include ranking for search queries organically which are the result of SEO activity.
Here is that interview with Kristine Churchill.
Image Source: www.magrointernational.com
Banner Ads or Pay Per Click Advertising?
Banner ads or Pay Per Click advertising? Are you trying to decide which medium to advertise your business on?
I thought of writing this post after some time trying to explain to a friend of mine over Yahoo Messenger how one is different from the other and I realize a lot of people are undecided when it comes choosing which online advertising medium to use.
So if you were to advertise a product or service, what would you choose… banner advertising or pay per click?
For those who are new to this, let me give you a quick description of each.
Banner advertising is simply the process of purchasing banner space on other websites for you to display a banner about the product or service you wish to advertise.
When choosing the right website to advertise on, you have to take into consideration the website’s traffic (how high or low, and their demographic), how many page views or impressions your banner could get, if the website is using an ad-serving software that allows you to control delivery options, and of course cost which can either be in CPM (cost per thousand impressions), monthly fee or CPA (cost per action).
You can either do the research yourself, by identifying the right websites to make banner ad placements on, or you can advertise through an ad network which have a network of websites who will publish your banner ad on their sites.
Pay Per Click advertising on the other hand is the process of advertising on search engines such as Google. All major search engines have an advertising feature that allows you to advertise on them, but I will talk about Google AdWords since the latter enjoys 65% market share, a commanding lead over Yahoo, MSN and other smaller and regional search engines.
Google AdWords gives you two advertising options, advertising on their Search Network or the Content Network.
If you advertise on Google AdWords’ Search Network, your ad which is in text format, appears only when a keyword you are bidding on, gets searched. Keyword searches trigger your ads. These text ads are typically found in the upper box and the right side box that surround the regular search results. You only get billed by Google if someone clicks your ad, hence pay per click, and you only pay the amount your are bidding, or less, never more.
If you advertise on the Google AdWords Content Network, you can choose to place text, image, or media type ads on websites that belong to Google’s AdSense program, this is a network of websites that publish ads served by Google’s Content Network.
Google AdWords has since inception, added more targeting and payment options to include CPM and CPA, other than pay per click.
What is similar for both banner ads and pay per click ads is that, when the view clicks the ad, the viewer/clicker is taken to your website, or a page on your website specially created to get the visitor to perform a conversion; this is commonly known as the landing page.
What is significantly different for both, aside from the manner of distribution is that banner ads appear to the viewers of the page where the banner ad is found. PPC ads however only appear when a search engine user types in specific keywords, thus presenting itself only when there is a demand. This often yields to higher conversion rates because your service or product is put in front of a search engine user who already has a demand for that type of service of product.
One might be quick to conclude that PPC advertising would then be more effective than banner ads, but banner ads can actually serve a different purpose.
To answer the question about which medium to go with, I would say go with both.
Banner ads tend to work more effectively with high volume websites simply because the impressions are served to all website traffic which are not necessarily as targeted as a pay per click ad served to someone who is in the research phase of a buying process.
Thus, banner advertising can actually help a campaign if its goals are more branding and recall in nature and may not require direct response as a conversion goal, but will still deliver conversions but not as high a percentage compared to conversion rates delivered by pay per click ads.
At the end of the day, any business owner, marketer or advertising specialist is after one thing, return of investment, and the medium that delivers that ROI, after proper campaign planning and optimization, would have to be the best medium to use in advertising your business, regardless of what others may say.
If you have any questions about banner ads, pay per click or other forms of online advertising, feel free to leave your question in the comment section below. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade trailer
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