PPC Advertising

A term used as an abbreviation to Pay Per Click advertising and also called CPC advertising or Cost Per Click Advertising.

This format is growing at a crazy rate at the moment and one company has the overall share of PPC advertising around the world - Google.

The basics of pay per click are:

You write ads, based on relevant keywords for your business - these are displayed on search results pages and websites within that network. If someone types in a keyword/phrase relevant to your business and that matches your advert criteria, your ad will then show on the page. If someone clicks on your ad, you will be charged a fee based on the cost per click value that has been set for that advert. Therefore, it is important to make the advert clear, so to avoid wasted clicks from people who misunderstood your message.

A lot of the cost value depends very much on how relevant your keywords are to the content of your ads and also to the content of the landing page you are sending people to. If the case, of google, getting this right will be give you a better quality score and it is sometimes better to have separates, ads, keywords and landing pages for each one. This can target your ads more effectively and get your cost per click down.

Before setting up a ppc advertising campaign, you should consider what your competition is doing and how much you want to pay for your campaign. The more you pay per click the higher your advert will usually appear on search results and websites. However, don't be drawn into a 'Top spot' war just for the reasons of getting one up on the competition. The trick with PPC advertising is to get as many good quality clicks as you can, in the position you are happy with and at a price you can afford.

You can also set negative keywords which means that your ads will not be shown if certain keywords are typed in. This means that you can sut down on any wastage by being very targeted.

If you don't want to set up your account and do the campaign yourself, you could take on the services of a pay per click search marketing company or one that offers a ppc management service. These companies will usually set up your account, look at the competition, write your ads, set a budget and do the whole thing as per your instructions. Companies offering these Media Buying Services can save you a great deal of time and effort, but make sure you provide them with the necessary tools to research your competition.

See our full list of Advertising guide pages.

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