The truth about pay per click advertising
A few years ago, an online search engine company called GoTo introduced a revolutionary new service--pay per click advertising.
The premise was simple: if you were an online merchant who wanted top position in the search engines for specific keywords, all you had to do was pay, much like you would for any advertising media.
Furthermore, you only paid if the prospect actually clicked on a link, and you got to determine how much you paid "per click"--the more you paid, the higher your listing. Pay Per Click was a smash hit, and is now all over the internet. GoTo changed their name to Overture (stupidly, in my opinion), and Google introduced their Ad Words, which have supplanted Overture's advertising as the most popular on the internet.
Should you use pay per click advertising for your business? The answer is: it depends. The benefit of using Pay Per Click is you can get traffic almost instantly. You can test websites quickly, and cheaply. If you have a consumer oriented product, you can get a decent amount of traffic in a short amount of time.
The drawback to Pay Per Click is, you can't "roll it out" meaning it's very difficult to increase the amount of traffic you get once you've identified a few key words. There's been a lot of nonsense written that the way to get lots of pay per click traffic cheaply is to come up with all kinds of keyword variations and bid on those. The problem with that is, there are so few people searching on these variations, and even less clicking that you're lucky to get a click per month using this strategy. So, you'll have 500 keywords you're bidding on, and no traffic--not good.
The other issue with Pay Per Click is, for the most part, the customers you get are cheap--it's hard to get them to come back and buy more, and harder to get them to buy expensive products, unless you're using more personal media, like telemarketers. The exception to this is if you're in a tight business niche--for example, if you're a printing broker, the customers who are searching for "printing brokers" are likely to be good customers.
Why? First off, the nature of that business lends itself to repeat business, and secondly, no one is searching on the term "printing broker" for fun. They're looking for people to do business with.
With consumer type products, many people are just whiling away the hours surfing the internet with no intention to buy. So, while they may click on your ad, they're doing so to get their jollies, not to buy. You've got to get through a lot of trash before you get to the buyer, and that can be expensive.
So, my recommendation is, yes, you should test pay per click traffic, but understand its best use is for rapid testing purposes. In the right circumstance it can provide a nice income stream, and it should be part of your mix, but you're not going to build a business completely on pay per click.
Let's get to it...
Mr. X.
Group M Marketing
Kimble and Kennedy Publishing
The premise was simple: if you were an online merchant who wanted top position in the search engines for specific keywords, all you had to do was pay, much like you would for any advertising media.
Furthermore, you only paid if the prospect actually clicked on a link, and you got to determine how much you paid "per click"--the more you paid, the higher your listing. Pay Per Click was a smash hit, and is now all over the internet. GoTo changed their name to Overture (stupidly, in my opinion), and Google introduced their Ad Words, which have supplanted Overture's advertising as the most popular on the internet.
Should you use pay per click advertising for your business? The answer is: it depends. The benefit of using Pay Per Click is you can get traffic almost instantly. You can test websites quickly, and cheaply. If you have a consumer oriented product, you can get a decent amount of traffic in a short amount of time.
The drawback to Pay Per Click is, you can't "roll it out" meaning it's very difficult to increase the amount of traffic you get once you've identified a few key words. There's been a lot of nonsense written that the way to get lots of pay per click traffic cheaply is to come up with all kinds of keyword variations and bid on those. The problem with that is, there are so few people searching on these variations, and even less clicking that you're lucky to get a click per month using this strategy. So, you'll have 500 keywords you're bidding on, and no traffic--not good.
The other issue with Pay Per Click is, for the most part, the customers you get are cheap--it's hard to get them to come back and buy more, and harder to get them to buy expensive products, unless you're using more personal media, like telemarketers. The exception to this is if you're in a tight business niche--for example, if you're a printing broker, the customers who are searching for "printing brokers" are likely to be good customers.
Why? First off, the nature of that business lends itself to repeat business, and secondly, no one is searching on the term "printing broker" for fun. They're looking for people to do business with.
With consumer type products, many people are just whiling away the hours surfing the internet with no intention to buy. So, while they may click on your ad, they're doing so to get their jollies, not to buy. You've got to get through a lot of trash before you get to the buyer, and that can be expensive.
So, my recommendation is, yes, you should test pay per click traffic, but understand its best use is for rapid testing purposes. In the right circumstance it can provide a nice income stream, and it should be part of your mix, but you're not going to build a business completely on pay per click.
Let's get to it...
Mr. X.
Group M Marketing
Kimble and Kennedy Publishing
