If your business does any marketing at all on the Internet, you should consider using Pay per Click (PPC) advertising as one tool available to you. I will be talking specifically about Google Adwords here because they are the biggest player and a great place to start.
Essentially, Pay per Click allows you to:
- Select keywords (phases) that you think your prospects will type into a Google Search
- Create an advertisement you want them to see
- Set a budget for what you are willing to spend per click, per day and/or per month
- Decide where to send the prospect when they click
It’s Targeted
The keywords you select allow you to focus like a laser on a market, market segment, niche, product or customer need. If you want to sell everything to everyone, then this is not for you. If you have identified and segmented your target market, or if you want to do more segmentation, then this is a great tool to use. In addition to keyword targeting you can do geographic and some demographic targeting, too.
It’s Controlled
Lots of PPC campaigns are setup and forgotten. This does not do the medium justice. It is very easy to control all aspects of a PPC program from the search terms to the budget to the message. If you have one main campaign, you should at least be testing some different ads to see what performs best. I love to use mini campaigns to test all kinds of ideas, new products, new niche markets and new sales messages. Test something new for a day, a week or a couple of months. Test different budgets, time of day, all kinds of stuff.
It’s Flexible
It is really easy to start campaigns, pause campaigns, change budgets and test just about anything. You can use this flexibility to analyze how PPC is working for you and you can also use it to make things happen in your business. Maybe you want to introduce a new product or a variation of an existing product. You might want to sell off some old inventory. You could even do a quick campaign to generate leads to motivate a sales team.
It’s Informative (you get great feedback)
However you use PPC campaigns, you will get lots of information about how people on the web are reacting to your offer…and you will get that feedback fast. This fast feedback, coupled with the flexibility to test, change and improve your offer, is really powerful.
It’s Influential
Lots of people tell me they never click on Google ads. Whatever. If you click on them or not, they are influential. In the first place, someone clicks on ads or Google would not have over $20 Billion in sales. In the second place, the ads are visible even when nobody clicks. In traditional advertising, they used to measure ‘impressions’ as one of the most important things they did. They had no direct response measurements – just the indirect result of product sales through various channels. In the PPC world, they GIVE AWAY impressions. Even if you never get a click, that has some value.
I am happy to discuss your specific situation. Give me a call at 717.718.1208 x101.