Pay Per Click, commonly known as PPC, refers to a model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Pay-per-click is calculated by dividing the advertising cost by the number of clicks generated by an advertisement. The basic formula is −
Pay-per-click ($) = Advertising cost ($) ÷ Ads clicked (#)
Essentially, PPC is a way of buying visits to your site, rather than attempting to earn visits organically.
Search engine advertising is one of the most popular forms of PPC. It allows advertisers to bid for an ad placement in a search engine's sponsored links when someone searches using a keyword that is related to their business offering.
For example, if you bid on the keyword “marketing classes,” several ads might show up in the very top spot on the Google results page. Every time a specific ad is clicked, sending a visitor to their website, they have to pay the search engine a small fee. When PPC is working correctly, the fee is trivial, because the visit is worth more than what is paid for it.
The unique advantage of PPC marketing is that the ad networks used to manage PPC campaigns don’t just reward the highest bidders for that ad space, rather they reward the highest-quality ads (meaning the ads that are most popular with the users).
Ads are rewarded for good performance.
The better the ad, the greater the click-through rates and lower the costs.
Many marketers choose to use Google AdWords to manage their PPC campaigns. The AdWords platform enables businesses to create ads that appear on Google’s search engine and other Google properties.
How often your PPC ads appear depends on which keywords and match types you select. While a number of factors determine how successful your PPC advertising campaign will be, you can achieve a lot by focusing on −
Keyword Relevance − Crafting relevant PPC keyword lists, tight keyword groups, and proper ad text.
Landing Page Quality − Creating optimized landing pages with persuasive, relevant content and a clear call-to-action, tailored to specific search queries.
Quality Score − Quality Score is Google's rating of the quality and relevance of your keywords, landing pages, and PPC campaigns. Advertisers with better quality scores get more ad clicks at lower costs.
Your entire PPC campaign is built around keywords, and the most successful AdWords advertisers continuously grow and refine their PPC keyword list.
In conclusion, PPC advertising offers a unique opportunity to −
Grow Your Customer Base − Connect with searchers actively looking for products and services like yours, and respond to the need by providing them with an offer relevant to their search query.
Generate Leads at Low Costs − As pay-per-click marketing allows you to reach leads and prospects when they’re researching and looking to buy, it’s a highly effective way to bring interested visitors to your site. In addition, you can enjoy an algorithmically generated discount from the search engines in exchange for making their users happy.