One of the most effective ways to market a website is through pay per click (PPC) efforts. However, as much as it is effective, this is only the case if it is done properly. This is why proper PPC management has to be in place. Through this, websites can be found online with ease, driving more traffic and ultimately growing the business. Done wrong, however, and PPC efforts can be incredibly costly.
How Does Pay Per Click Work?
PPC, if done right, drives traffic to a website and is therefore very cost effective because it leads to a strong return on investment. The way it works is by bidding on keywords rather than having to pay for advertisement. Every time someone clicks on your advertisement, you pay the bid you made, up to the budget you have set.
Because each click is paid at a flat fee, it is a fantastic way of building traffic to your website. But do it wrong, and you will have to pay for people who don’t really have an interest in your website and immediately leave again. While you can set a budget, you want to make sure that the budget goes to something that eventually pays for itself.
Once you reach your budget, your ads will no longer appear and you won’t be billed again until you increase your budget. Some companies, and particularly those with large budgets, leave their ads running permanently. However, they usually only do this once they know that their advertisements are successful. Others leave advertisements running until they have as much work as they can handle, and then manually pause it.
Value for Money in PPC Management
Calculating value for money is very complicated, but it has to be done. Essentially, you need to determine what the value of a visit is, in dollars, so that you can determine whether or not you are getting a return on investment. If, for instance, you sell products for $1.50, of which $0.50 is your profit, then you couldn’t spend $0.50 on a PPC ad, as you would lose out your profit. In fact, considering not everyone who clicks will also buy, you would end up with a deficit on your budget.
Generally speaking, PPC management is best left to the professionals. There are companies that have focused specifically on this area of work, and many of them combine it with search engine optimization (SEO) as well. This is because the two are inextricably linked together. They will help you to determine the value of your customers, how much you should bid on keywords, which keywords to choose, and more. Mainly, they will show you regularly how successful your campaign has been. This will enable you to determine whether you should make changes to your current approach, such as bidding more (or less) on specific keywords. By working together with the experts, you will be able to see the greatest benefits.
