Pay per Click Advertising
Forbes magazine reported that pay per click ads accounted
for $1.4 billion in 2002 and are expected to increase to
$8 billion by 2008. The fundamental core elements of a successful
pay per click program are constant monitoring, analysis,
and refinement.
Pay per click search engines offer a way to buy your way
to the top of search results for any term you wish. With
proper management, and a clear focus, pay per click search
engines can offer some of the most well targeted and economical
advertising on the Internet.
Pay per click advertising works through a bidding process,
and the ads appear prominently on the results pages of search
engines such as Google and Yahoo. The highest bidder for
a particular word or phrase receives top placement, and depending
on the engine, the top three to five bidders also generally
also receive placement on the first page of unpaid search
results.
Fundamental questions to be addressed when formulating
a pay per click search engine strategy include the following:
●When is the top pay per click
bid necessary for highest conversion, and when will
bidding for a second or third place position create
a more attractive return on investment (ROI)?
●How can you keep your PPC bids
from cannibalizing your search efforts on other (non
pay per click) search engines?
●What percentage of your pay
per click budget should go to each search engine?
●Does either Google Adwords
or Overture work better for your particular product
or service? Or, perhaps neither one is appropriate
from a return on investment (ROI) perspective. |
It is of critical importance to focus sharply on identifying
the search terms that convert most frequently for your particular
site, eliminating those that don't perform, and most importantly,
calculating and maximizing your return on investment. The
cost structure of pay per click is action-driven and each
time a user clicks your ad, the pay per click engine deducts
the amount of your current bid from your account. Pay per
click offers a high level of assurance that your ad is reaching
the proper target.
Pay per click campaigns, however, are not perfect. Without
CONSTANT monitoring, you sometimes risk incurring advertising
costs that can spiral out of control, focusing on terms that
don't convert well for your product or services, or falling
way down in position during a bidding war.
PPC advertising can be a great help to a site's success,
but only with very close supervision and a thorough knowledge
of the unique characteristics of each PPC search
