Advantages & Disadvantages Of Pay-per-click (PPC)
Introduction
Pay-per-click (PPC) is a well-known advertising method used by most businesses to drive customers to their website. Its popularity and proven record of success is one of the main reasons why businesses include it in their budget plans and keep a close eye on it to make sure it is done properly. However, one of the key questions to ask is, how often do we consider its advantages and disadvantages before using it? This article will give you a quick breakdown and explanation of what PPC is in general and what some of its advantages and disadvantages are.
What is Pay-per-click (PPC)?
First documented in 1996 by a company called Planet Oasis, in simple terms, PPC is a way of buying visits to your website rather than gaining visitors organically (via SEO). Advertisers can bid for ad placements to improve where their advert rank on the relevant search engine to be easily seen by searchers. Although this pushes the ads on top of the list when the relevant keyword or terms are searched, every time the ad is clicked and leads the consumer to the appropriate landing page on your website, you will be charged for it. Businesses are keen to invest in this method as the main idea behind this is to make ads that would be applicable to their audience and would almost guarantee a return of investment as they visit their website.
Some key advantages to consider:
1. PPC is cost effective if properly monitored.This is because you only pay when consumers reach your website after clicking on your advert. It also means that it depends on you how much you would like to spend and on which keywords and terms – Giving you control on what you would like to be displayed.
2. it’s fair to say that you can see an impact quite quickly and almost immediately in most cases when using PPC. This is something that’s unlikely to happen when advertising organically as it can take months to see any improvements.
3. Your ads can also be targeted, which would help with your budget as you’re likely to appeal to the right audience. Targeting the right audience to click on your ad, should hopefully increase your conversion rate as consumers purchase or use your service.
4. Although you may need to learn how the platform you’re using works, PPC is very easy to use in general and free to set up. All you need to do, is create an account and enter the relevant details without any guidance or support as it’s self-explanatory.
Some key advantages to consider:
1. PPC can be very competitive. This means that you may not be the only one bidding for a particular keyword as you could be competing with millions of other companies – Therefore you could be spending a lot of money before seeing your ad being successful.
2. On many occasions, people consider PPC as a ‘standalone’ activity which isn’t the case. To see the success of in your PPC ads, you need to keep on top of your website to provide a good reason for consumers to buy you’re selling/offering. It’s also important to note that writing up the ads require a good level of creativity, as it needs to stand out for people to click on them. This means it could be very time consuming and require a lot of effort as you may need to change things every now and then.
3. It’s been recorded that some business owners competing with one another could simply
sabotage their competitor’s ad by clicking on the ads several time to increase expenses.
This way there could be a high click through rate with a low conversion rate, which essentially would mean that the ad isn’t doing as good as it should be. A way to control this is to keep on top of your ads and making relevant changes (which again can be time consuming).
Conclusion:
As mentioned before, PPC is very effective in most cases and has a proven record of working successfully for most businesses. However, whilst it has many positives, it’s important to point out that its successes are mostly only seen when given full attention and monitored constantly (Which is likely to be very hard as you focus on other things). Therefore, it would be very crucial to have a full and in-depth understanding of the platform you’reusing to manage your ads and ensure you’re on track with your RIO to reap the benefits of PPC as an advertising method.
Lilian Tsumbu
Digital Marketing Assistant
UKExpertDigital
EMAIL: lilian.@ukexpertdigital.co.uk
PHONE:
0161 236 5794