Pay-Per-Click Management Services
When people think about Pay-Per-Click (PPC), they think about ads that appear when people type a search keyword into Google. But there’s more to it than that. PPC can be search related, which is referred to as search engine marketing or SEM, as well as contextual, where ads appear on third-party websites.
The objective of PPC is the same as search engine optimization, namely, to attract relevant visitors to your website. But, unlike the other two methods, PPC involves paying a fee each time a visitor clicks on your ad and comes to your website.
Advantages of Pay-Per-Click over SEO include the advertiser’s ability, within editorial guidelines, to specify ad content, and the ability to turn a campaign on and off at will. For example, if you want to promote a limited-time offer on your website, you would likely want to use PPC rather than SEO. PPC is also the fastest way to get your message to appear on the search results page, when someone searches on one of your sponsored keywords.
A major advantage of PPC that is often overlooked is the ability it provides to gather a rich set of customer response information. PPC allows us the ability to test offers, messaging and market acceptance, relatively quickly and cheaply. Think of it as an online focus group. It’s also a great way to test keywords before making major investments of time and money in SEO.
The disadvantage of SEM is that you pay for each impression or click, whereas visitor traffic from SEO is free from such charges. Therefore, SEO is more of a strategic initiative.
Why Hire a Pay-Per-Click Expert to Run Your Campaigns?
The major search engines have made it very easy for anyone to set up a Pay-Per-Click program. They provide tools for keyword selection, and tips on writing ads. Google, in particular, provides an extensive free online training program.
But the devil is in the details. While things may look calm and placid on the surface, the management interfaces and reporting structures of PPC tools are extremely rich and complex. In addition, an ineffective offer or poorly laid-out “landing page” will severely impact your results. There are many, many ways to waste money on PPC, and we often encounter prospects who say, “We tried it and it just doesn’t work for us.” Indeed, PPC does not work cost-effectively for every business. But we have found that most instances of failure are due to lack of expertise or insufficient effort on the part of the user.
The bottom line is this: if your return on investment for PPC is higher when you set up and manage the campaigns in-house, because you have the expertise and resources on staff, then that’s the way you should go. We have found, however, in most cases Market Vantage can improve our clients’ ROI to a far greater extent than what our services cost.
Next Step:
Let us assess your PPC strategy and/or PPC account and determine if we can help improve your ROI. Please contact us in confidence by calling +1-978-482-0130 or complete the form below.
Pay-Per-Click Management Services Information Request Form