|  Guide to Pay Per Click Advertising Networks | Where do they Appear? | Getting Started | Business Benefits | Success Factors  What is Pay Per Click Advertising? - pay per click advertising is the fastest method of paying to advertise products and services online. It works by displaying textual adverts next to or normal search engine results. The user to a search engine is not always aware that a search engine result may be a pay per click advert (associated with the search term they entered into the search engine in the first place). Pay Per Click Advertisers can bid for any 'search term', in a never ending auction system set up by the worlds leading search engines (like Google's Adwords system) and other pay per click networks. Pay Per Click Advertising represents the bulk of Global advertising spending online as it has been accepted by users who can easily finding the specific product, service or company based on a simple search engine query. What is a Pay Per Click Network? - There are many well established companies offering advertising space on both search engines and on a network of 'content partner' websites. Most offer advertisers the ability to bid on keywords or phrases, with a minimum bid per click. These advertiser auctions never end, with the highest bid advertiser ad appearing at the top of the list. As 80% of prospects only bother with the first three results, there is intense competition to bid to have an advert displayed at the top spot. PPC networks are available to any site meeting their quality approval guidelines. So, within hours an advertiser can buy their way to the top of the 'Sponsored Links' of Google or Yahoo. PPC networks offer advertisers the ability to exclude their advert appearing in certain geographies or content partner sites, deemed not relevant by the advertiser. This reduces unnecessary clicks that would have otherwise wasted advertising budget. Pay per click networks are developing new innovating ways to advertise on mobile phones, geo targeting at local level and presenting adverts via product xml data feeds. These networks are literally facilitate the explosion on online advertising by enabling advertisers to access new markets, traditional 'bricks and mortar' businesses could not possibly hope to reach using traditional advertising. The main networks are:- Do PPC Adverts Only Appear in Search Engines? - most uses of search engines are familiar with the sponsored links appearing on the right hand side of the normal search results. However, text based pay per click adverts also appear across a network of search engine partner sites that have been approved to display those adverts. For instance, Google's Adwords appear across hundreds of thousands of approved websites. Webmasters of those sites simply apply to become an Adwords advertiser. Google then manually approve those applications to make sure that those websites meet Google's guidelines with regards to a quality, relevancy, decency and anti spam. Webmasters can then place a simple piece of HTML code on their website. When the web page is loaded by the visitor, a highly relevant contextual advert is displayed using Google's advanced search algorithm. Google algorithm instantly analyses the content of the page and displays a set of highly relevant adverts associated with the content of the page. For instance, if the webpage is about nuts and bolts, the adverts that appear may be for local hardware stores selling tool boxes. Google also uses Internet protocol (IP) Technology to deliver relevant adverts in terms of the website visitors physical location in the world. The owner of the website (typically known as a webmaster) also has control over how the adverts are displayed. Most pages per click Advertising Networks provide a level of flexibility to allow the webmaster to customise the appearance of the adverts in terms of their location, colour, size and whether or not the advert as an image, text, banner or even video. How Do Advertisers Set Up and Manage Campaigns? - once an advertiser has been approved by a network the next task is to set up adverts which involve creating a title, compelling description and url which the end user will click through to. The advertiser can user various keyword tools to establish what search terms are are being used by people in search engines. These search terms can then be linked to the advert created and saved within the advertisers campaign. Of course, the advertiser cannot receive free credit and so the advertiser must place a deposit (e.g. £500) in their account which is 'called off' just like a mobile phone pre-paid voucher. Each time a website visitor clicks on the advertisers advert, the outstanding balance gradually goes down and down until it must be refilled by the advertiser. Once the campaign is live, advertisers can constantly bid on those key phrases (at any time), in the hope that the end user will click on the advert, visit their website then buy something. For instance, a mortgage broker in the UK may bid on search terms such as 'mortgage UK', 'mortgage quote UK', 'discounted fixed rate mortgage' and so on. Of course the financial services market place in the United Kingdom is a mature and competitive one with lots of other mortgage brokers also competing for the same search terms with their own adverts. Conversely if the search term/ product is niche, new or highly specific to a local area, it is likely very few advertisers will be bidding on the targeted search term. The advertiser with the highest bid for a particular search term (the one with the deepest pockets) will have their advert automatically displayed at the top of the advert listings. As the auction for keywords is never ending, the price does not necessarily go up and up; instead it finds a market equilibrium over which no advertiser is prepared to bid any higher cost per click. This the point at which there typically is no return on investment. By tracking the costs of a PPC campaign, against the margin generated from sales as a result of the PPC campaign, it is simple enough to calculate the break even point. All pay per click networks have advanced reporting and statistics so advertisers can understand the number of page impressions and click through rates over any given period of time. What are the Business Benefits of Pay Per Click Advertising? :- Return on Investment Tracking - by using tracking measures on your advert you can measure the exact return on investment over a period. For instance, you can deduct your ppc click spend from your sales resulting from click thorough from the same ppc ads. Once you have sufficient average trends established, you can judge what the break even bidding levels on targeted keywords. Budgeting — most traditional forms of advertising require a minimum spend or commitment over a period, for your advert to appear in a publication, etc. With pay per click, you can turn off the tap instantly by turning 'off' your campaigns from appearing in a search engine or across a content partner site (therefore clicks will not result in depletion of your budget). Critical Success Factors - the critical success factors advertisers must aspire to in managing profitable PPC campaign's are:- Understanding what buyers needs are in the context of 'search terms' used to find and then buy things with. This includes geographic terms as well as product based terms. Ability to create a compelling and unique PPC advert title and description of around 20 words. The carrot much convince buyers to choose your advert above your competitors. Identifying the average cost per click over any period and associated margin generated from sales. Time and tenacity to constantly bid up and down based on daily traffic peaks and troughs or when competitive bidders leave the bidding temporarily Patience and the budget to check and test a campaigns ultimate return on investment over a reasonable test period (i.e. one month) What Makes is a Compelling PPC Advert? - The headline and description of your advert (the sale copy) has to compel the prospect enough to want to click though to your website. Otherwise you pay per click campaign will fail. As PPC networks limit the amount of words in your advert its critical you get straight to the point. In particular, you must highlight your unique selling point, set timeframes or deadlines and translate the benefit for the prospect user. Are Pay Per Click Results More Relevant than 'Organic' Search Engine Results? - there is much debate over which method is more profitable. 80% of internet users only click on the top five organic listings and it can take one year to get to a top five listing! A pay per click advert can appear next to top search engine listings in minutes (without much search engine optimisation effort). So is the time saved in adopting pay per click strategy worth the costs of advertising itself? The is no correct answer to this.. it depends upon a number of factors related to the competitiveness of the organic key phrase versus the break even point to sell a widget related to that same paid key phrase in a PPC campaign. If the key phrase is quite niche it make not take one year to achieve top search engine rankings naturally; and once achieved and maintained all traffic is essentially free. Conversely, a PPC campaign for the same key phrase may have a large number of competitors all bidding at high rates for top spot for that term.  |
