PPC – What is Pay-Per-Click Advertising? (Mind Your Own Pay-Per-Click)

While it may seem obvious to some of you what pay-per-click advertising actually is, you are not alone in this world if you are still a bit confused.

I believe it is always good to take a step back and look at the big picture, so I wanted to define PPC and briefly explain where and how it relates to the many other online marketing channels you may have heard of.

Also as you may have noticed, another issue that we in the online marketing world are guilty of is acronyms, so if you are just starting out you’re probably completely and utterly confused by the sheer volume of 3 letter abbreviations we have in this space. From me, and hopefully I speak for other seasoned internet marketers, I’m sorry about these little things (acronyms) that make it harder to understand than it should be. We’re guilty as charged, but believe me, pretty soon you’ll be emailing your close ones using terms like “PPC”, “SEM”, “CPC”, “CPA”, “SEO”, etc. and do you know why? Well quite simply, because, like me, you will get tired of always typing out the full word! As simple as that!

PPC advertising (what we are all here to learn about) or Pay-Per-Click Advertising is first and foremost  a method of advertising online when the advertiser (you) will pay only for the ‘clicks’ received on a given ad, and nothing more. In PPC advertising you do not pay for exposure or ‘Ad Impressions’ (the number of times an ad was displayed) but only for actions that occurred. In this case – a click.

While Google AdWords is probably the most widely known and used PPC engine, it’s important to understand that PPC as an advertising model can occur across many different sites and applications online, not just search engines. Essentially any advertising model; banners, text links, sponsorships, etc, where PPC pricing is an option could fall under the PPC heading. However for the purpose of this course we’ll be focusing in on PPC as it relates to Google Adwords, and to a lesser extent, Yahoo! Search, Microsoft AdCentre, and Facebook Advertising – all that and more to come!

One common question asked about PPC is “How much does a click cost?” and to be honest, there really is no one answer as it depends on many factors (which we will cover later) but let us just say for now that a click could cost any where from a few cents, to many dollars. Don’t be put off by this however, this IS advertising, and advertising required an investment or some sort (time, money etc.) just rest assured that the aim of this PPC game is to make you money, and help make your business successful. In some markets, you will indeed be potentially paying upwards of $10 rather than a few cents, but again you’ll only be paying this if the end result for you is success!

This leads onto one of the key benefits of PPC. YOU are in complete control!

PPC (Google AdWords) works by allowing YOU as an advertiser to bid on keywords on the Google search engine that are relevant to your business. Or another way to look at it is to buy clicks only for keywords that you think are relevant to you.

So from the outset, the risk is only as large as your lack of understanding of the system…

Now that may sound a bit scary, but honestly, in this game, the more you understand about your business, your customers, the way they interact with the search engines, the things they search for (keywords), and the buying cycle, the more successful you will ultimately be.

Let’s face it, you are already and expert on your business, and you know your customers, so I’m here to help fill in the other gaps in the equation, how they interact with the search engines, what are they searching for, and how you can get your message in front of them!

While this has been quite a brief overview, next post I’ll be dissecting a search engine results page and go through exactly what it all means and how to get things rolling.

Till next time…

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