Can Pay Per Click advertising (PPC) really help your business? How does it work?
PPC advertising is a simple method of using search engines like Google to deliver qualified prospects to your website. It is cost effective, simple to use and can be started with a very small budget. This article is designed as a simple introduction to PPC advertising but if you would like more help in setting up your own PPC campaign, please check out our services page.
Pay per click advertising is an online advertising model where you only pay when someone clicks on your advertisement and visits your site. It doesn’t matter how many times people see your ad or how often it is displayed – if nobody clicks on it, you pay nothing.
The most common PPC advertising example is Google Adwords. When you type something into Google it searches the web and then displays the pages it thinks are most relevant based on the terms you typed in (your keywords). For example, if you type in ‘tropical fish’ it will give you a list of pages that use the term ‘tropical fish’ in order of relevance and importance.
There are lots of thing that you can do to get your website to the top of the list for keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business – you can find a good introduction to these in our free report on Search Engines in Plain English.
However, search engine optimization takes time and you might be up against some pretty big players.
Google’s PPC advertising lets you buy your way onto the first page of the results in the form of the small text advertisements that you see along the right hand side of the screen, and under the heading ‘sponsored results’.
Opening Your Account
To start a pay per click advertising campaign you will need to set up an account. With Google, you can do that at the Adwords Sign Up Page. Once your account is opened you can create a simple text based advertisement – usually a headline plus two additional short lines, using select keywords, of course.
This is the ad that will be displayed next to your chosen search terms. You will also be able to select which countries your ad will be displayed in. In fact, if you sell to a local market only you can even select a county or city.
Choosing Your Keywords
The next step is choosing the search terms that you want your ad to appear next to. Using our tropical fish example, you might want to show up when someone searches for ‘tropical fish’ or ‘Japanese fighting fish’ or any number of terms.
Before you start typing them in, do your homework and find out the terms that people are searching for – Google has tools to help you do this.
Setting a Budget
The next step is to set a budget – both for the total amount that you are prepared to spend and the amount you are prepared to spend per click. For example, there may be 10 businesses that would all like their ads displayed next to the term ‘tropical fish’. So whose ad does Google put first in the list? Google ranks the ads by combining two factors:
You can decide how much you are prepared to ‘bid’ for your terms starting from a few cents. Based on your business, select an amount that you are willing to pay – it can always to be changed later. At this stage Google will show you your estimated position and the average number of people you will attract each day. If you’ve ‘bid’ $0.10 per click for the term ‘tropical fish’ and attract 10 clicks per day, that’s means you will have spent $1 per day on your ads. If nobody clicks you will have spent nothing. Based on these estimates you can set the maximum amount that you want to spend in any day or month. Once you have reached your budget your ads will simply stop getting displayed.
You will be charged by credit card or direct debit each month for the number of clicks you had.
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Online Radio Stations?
Due to their size and ability to reach niche audiences, they tend to attract a much more targeted audience than mass market, traditional radio stations.
Potentially…
This makes advertising on them an attractive proposition to marketers who target niche groups. Moreover, most Internet radio stations will also create podcasts of popular shows – recorded versions that can be downloaded and listened to at any time – creating an added attraction.
The natural starting point is an Internet search to find stations that suit your target audience. Ideally you will find stations that combine information relevant to your niche with a relevant audience. If you sell widgets, it might make sense to advertise on Widget Radio – unless, the only people who listen to Widget Radio are widgets makers like you.
Like any traditional station, online stations should be able to provide you with key demographic information about their listeners. Study this info and listen to the shows before going any further.
Depending on the outcome you want, you can choose between audio ads, onsite advertising (like banners or text links) or sponsorship. Budget permitting, you can combine sponsorship and audio ads with banners and buttons to increase visibility, CTR (click through rate), retain attention for better conversion and ultimately, increased ROI (return on investment).
One of the most attractive aspects of internet radio advertising is the simple fact that your customers are only a click away to your website. Not only can this significantly increase your ROI but it also allows exact, detailed tracking of results. By carefully measuring what works – and what doesn’t – you can more effectively plan your marketing.
Taken together, the targeted listenership, ability to combine visual and audio advertising and detailed tracking possibilities make internet radio an attractive alternative that could give you a leg up on the competition.
Online Radio Listenership Figures
“In any given week, 8.1 million people listen to radio via the Internet, either live or through a Listen Again service, and 1.87 million listen to a Podcast.” Source: Rajar/Ipsos Mori
In America alone, the number of people watching less TV and spending more time on the internet has grown by more than 400% in the past few years and more than 50% of them have consumed streaming media. Source: Rajar/Ipsos Mori
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There are lots of ways that you can effectively advertise your business. In fact, you probably get phone calls all the time from the directories, the local newspaper or some website company looking to sell you advertising space. However, effective advertising is more than just buying lots of advertising space and seeing what happens.
Yes, letting people know you’re there is good – but advertising is expensive. That means you need a plan of attack.
The good news is that planning your advertising strategy isn’t difficult – you just need to ask yourself three questions:
All good marketing starts with knowing your customers. From an advertising point of view, you need to know two kinds of information:
Do good research. Ask lots of questions. If you’re really stuck, try asking your existing customers – there’s a good chance that your future customers will be a lot like them.
Once you know about your customers, you can start crafting a message to appeal to them. In the most basic terms, your message has to say:
“I know what your problem is and we’re the best solution because …”
Once you’ve found your message, make sure everything about your advertising matches that message.
Now that you know who you’re targeting and what you want to say to them, you can start thinking about what advertising methods you’d like to try.
You can create a bit of a checklist for yourself with the answers from the questions above, along with information about your budget.
With each possible advertising idea, you can use this checklist to see how well it stacks up against your needs.
For example, if you’re selling widgets, then an ad in Widget Buyer magazine would be a good bet for targeting your customers. But if the ad size is too small to get your message across, you wouldn’t see a return for months and if the price of the ad is half your overall budget, you might decide that this isn’t worthwhile.
To advertise effectively, you need to:
Effective advertising needs proper planning before embarking on a campaign. The last thing you want to do is lose your hard-earned cash on advertising that doesn’t work.
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Using a direct mail campaign can be a great way to grow your business and generate leads. But direct mail is not just a leaflet in an envelope, and you don’t want yours to be seen as junk.
Spend a little time…
Understand the basic do’s and don’ts of direct mail, and you’ll see the results of your efforts.
Direct Mail is a process that goes something like this:
Start with your target and develop a list
Direct mail is a tried and tested method for generating sales and sales leads. Done well, it allows you to create a system with predictable results. And if you’re not a wordsmith, don’t worry. You can outsource the writing part of your direct mailing to someone with better writing skills and a persuasive tone.
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Online or offline, an advertising network (or ad network) is a business that connects advertisers with media owners. They help advertisers place ads in a variety of relevant media. They help media owners earn money from the readers, viewers, visitors and listeners they attract.
Online networks work mostly with websites but also they place advertising on blogs, in software applications and in email for example. The advertising itself can range from text links to banner ads to rich media like audio and video.
If you are an advertiser, placing your ads with an ad network can be a great way of distributing your advertising across a wide range of different websites and media. This can help gain you exposure in less competitive places.
Usually you will be able to decide what kind of websites and blogs that your advertisements will appear next to. If, for example, you want to advertise to teachers then it may be possible to arrange through an ad network to have your ad displayed in places that fall into their ‘education’ category.
In most cases big media companies sell only their remnant space through adv networks – i.e.the advertising space that they have been unable to sell themselves. Occasionally this will mean lower rates for the advertiser but this is not guaranteed.
In most cases advertising networks can be lumped into two groups:
Throughout both groups you will also find representative, blind and targeted adv networks.
Whatever kind of network you choose to work with, always do small test runs of your online advertising first. If these tests are successful, you can increase your advertising budget in confidence. If they are unsuccessful, you can choose to move your budget to a better use.
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Contextual Advertising & How to Buy Leads & Target Marketing
