A Couple weeks ago I discussed the benefits of an effective SEO campaign and the long term benefits it has on a website’s traffic as well as the overall monetary value of a website. This week, we take a look at the advantages that an effective PPC campaign can bring to an online business or any type of website.

The Benefits of PPC – Pay Per Click – Paid Search Marketing:

PPC, an acronym for Pay Per Click, literally refers to advertising on search engines via display advertising that you only pay for once somebody actually clicks on one of your displayed ads. The cost of the click is determined by a bidding system whereby relevance to a search term combined with the amount bid on an advertisement determine when and where your ad will be displayed. I could go into much more detail regarding the calculation of the actual cost per click, but that’s for another blog post on another day.

Due to the nature of PPC and the way campaigns are run, there are numerous benefits to this type of marketing over organic search marketing (SEO) and in general. Let’s not waste any more time and take a look at the advantages of PPC advertising.

1. PPC is Instant

Due to the nature of PPC, one doesn’t need to wait years, months or even days before being able to gain valuable traffic to your website. Unlike organic SEO which takes a while to build up an authoritive website that ranks for relevant keywords, PPC is instant and as soon as you start paying for different ad campaigns, your ads WILL start appearing in the SERPs and your website will start achieving increased traffic volumes. This is especially true if your campaigns are well constructed and implemented by a qualified PPC manager. PPC is particularly beneficial to new websites, however; older websites that are looking to invest more in their existing website traffic volumes can also benefit from PPC when fast results and greater ROI are required.

2. Reach only your Target Audience

Whereas organic search, especially when carried out incorrectly, has the potential to attract a certain percentage of irrelevant traffic to your website; PPC enables you to thoroughly refine your search campaigns to only display to an extremely niche audience that is highly likely to convert into paying customers. Google AdWords and other paid search tools such as Yahoo Advertising and Facebook, give one the ability to refine target audiences by near exact location, languages, categories and what devices people are using to search. Some social media PPC platforms enable you to go as far as targeting age, gender, race, income bracket and marital status. So whether you’re a large retailer in the middle of London, or a tiny boutique store that sells antique coins in a little village like Bridgenorth in the Midlands, you can define exactly how broad or focused you want your search to be. Speaking of large retailers, this brings us to our next point…

3. Get a Second Chance with Remarketing

What is remarketing I hear you ask? Remarketing is a feature in Google AdWords that enables one to target visitors who have previously visited your site, left and visited any other site that makes use of the Google display network. By placing a piece of code on relevant pages of your website, you can tag a user that has, for example, visited the LED television page of your website and left. When these users then visit another related page on another website that makes use of the Google display network, Google will then show the user your advertisement for LED Televisions, or cross selling categories such as DVD players for example. Basically, what it comes down to is that once a user has visited your site and visits any other sites, they will continue to be bombarded with ads for your business which could result in a sale on the second or third time round.

4. Who Needs Rich Snippets when we have Ad Extensions?

Rich snippets are in essence the extra markup displayed in organic search results, such as reviews, ratings or prices and more. We’ve all seen them at some point, but what we don’t see is the amount of blood sweat and tears that goes into getting these very limited snippets of information to actually work. Once we have them working, it’s really up to Google to decide if it’s actually going to bother displaying the snippets. This whole process is eliminated in PPC advertising where you have the ability to use what we call Ad extensions. Ad extensions enable one to display site links, products from the merchant feed, a telephone number, maps for location etc. All can be added and can be seen immediately in most instances resulting in an eye catching ad and improving clickthrough rate for ads. As I said before, who needs rich snippets when we have Ad Extensions?

5. PPC the Leveler

With organic search, it takes a lot of time and investment to be able to compete with and out-rank big, well established websites. As a new website for your small online shop starting out as a delivery service of groceries to your local village, it is near impossible to immediately, or even over a long term, compete with bigger retailers such as Tescos or Sainsburys online for keywords such as “online shopping” or “buy groceries online”. However, with PPC, one is able to bid on keywords and compete against the biggest brands out there. The overall authority of your website has very little to do with how well you compete against tough competitors and larger brands.

6. Short Term Marketing

For e-commerce stores in particular, PPC is an extremely useful tool for the marketing of short term promotions or competitions. PPC Ad text can be changed instantly to reflect special offers and prices that one doesn’t normally have the ability to list via organic search marketing. Carrying out a search for “LED Television London” can provide one with many general LED Television results, but the one that’s going to catch your eye is the sponsored ad advertising an exact special offer for the LED telly that you require. Once the promotion is complete, no sweat, simply stop the ad and move on to the next promotion or seasonal trend.

7. Dominate the SERPS

Whilst organic search results do generally have a slightly higher clickthrough rate from SERPs, paid advertising does still occupy a significant portion of real estate on results pages. If you are currently ranking well for organic search results in a particular category or industry, one can strive for page 1 domination by showing up for related keywords in the sponsored results of the SERPs as well. This results in 2 of your results showing up above the fold in SERPs which is great for your brand and will result not only in more traffic, but also increased brand awareness as your name continuously pops up in a particular industry for related keywords.

There you have it, some of the key benefits of running an effective PPC campaign. Whether you’re a new business looking to get some immediate traffic and increase your brand awareness amongst the SERPs, or a much more established site looking for ways to further increase traffic to your site by dominating page one of the search engines and social media pages; PPC is an extremely useful tool for any kind of business and should be considered an essential part of any all round online marketing campaign that has the required budget.

That’s it for part 2 of my three part series of blog posts dedicated to the benefits of SEO vs. PPC. My final part of the series will take a look at the key benefits of both PPC and SEO and see how we can effectively combine them together to form a flawless online marketing campaign that will guarantee not just increased traffic volumes and brand awareness, but also result in a great ROI overall for your website or business. Until then…