It's a brave new world in online, search-engine advertising and a rapidly changing world at that. Pay-per-click (PPC) – also called cost-per-click – is the fastest growing type of advertising for small business. Little known just a few years ago, PPC advertising is evolving at break-neck speed as more small businesses use it and advertisers become increasingly smart about how to draw the best results.
That includes a combination of things, such as placing your PPC ads in the right places, and writing them in a way that appeals to your best prospects. That might sound simple for a little ad that might count a dozen or two words at most. But that means each choice must be terribly precise.
There's a lot to understand before you rush off and sign up. Here's the skinny on getting the most from pay-per-click.
It's all about the keywords
Pay-per-click is driven by searches on big search engines like Google and Yahoo!, among others. If you want people to find your pet groomer, it helps to understand what words they are likely to type in (groomer? poodle?) when seeking help with their lovely little furball.
I recommend: Google Adwords provides a free keyword generator that also estimates cost per click for those words, based on your word choices or by entering your existing Web site address.
Yahoo! Search Marketing will quickly generate search terms based on actual current searches through its sites.
Read this next paragraph carefully!
Reading carefully now, aren't you? A call to action, as direct language is known in marketing-speak, is a big part of any text ad. Tell the person what to do, or they likely will blink and look away. Now keep reading this article!
I recommend: Find out how effective your ads are by tracking conversion rates, that is, how often people do the thing you specifically ask in the ad. Ad networks are beginning to offer this as a service, but keep them honest with tracking services like
Interspire.com,
AtlastOnePoint,
ConversionRuler,
BlizzardTracker and
Keywordmax.
Consider the context
The more relevant your ad to the actual search, the more likely you'll get a click-through to your site. Accordingly, if you sell a product, it's better to appear in shopping databases — that much closer to the buy! — than in straight information search.
I recommend: Sites that specialize in providing space for your ad next to shopping results include
PriceGrabber,
Bizrate,
Dealtime,
PriceScan,
NexTag and
MySimon. Also, specialty sites like
CNET and
Amazon offer similar services.
Pay-per-call could be a better fit for small businesses
If you sell rock T-shirts online, a click to your product is likely a sale. But if you sell anything more complicated or more local, like legal services or plumbing, well, that's what sales people are for. The next step is pay-per-call, essentially a lead-generation service over the Web.
I recommend: The click kings likely get into this, but the leaders in this space for the moment are
Miva, yellow-pages offerings like Verizon's
Superpages and
Ingenio.
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