Few people now doubt the importance of the internet in our daily lives but it is still amazing just how few businesses actually exploit the internet for their own marketing advantage. 

 

UK businesses are spending more and more on paid advertising on search engines – where you pay the search engine for each visitor that clicks on your advert and visits your site.  Online advertising now exceeds 20% of total advertising spend in the UK and it is growing fast. If you haven’t tried paid internet advertising yet or have done so and have been disappointed then it is worth reviewing this option because it is something which really should not be avoided.

 

Pay per click (“PPC”) has some great benefits to offer business and in particular:

 

1)      Traffic is immediate and there is no having to wait around for a publication date like a newspaper or magazine advertisement

2)      You can measure and monitor what search terms and adverts are generating the visitors and making the conversions

3)      You can focus very careful on your ideal target searcher by geography and demographic profile

4)      You can determine your budget with considerable precision

5)      You can turn the costs off at the drop of a hat

 

By careful tweaking and management of search terms, advertising content and a number of other variables the majority of  PPC campaigns can be made cost effective and an extremely valuable source of new business and activity.

 

Of course the success of pay per click advertising also depends on the quality of your website – there is little purpose in sending visitors to your website if there is little chance converting those visitors into enquiries or customers.  The site should therefore be carefully reviewed and its performance monitored.  Changes should be effected and then again reviewed and monitored and then slowly but surely an appreciation will develop of the sorts of things that actually make a difference to your PPC performance.  Measure one page against another, one form against another, different wording and graphics and establish what makes the difference and what works best.

 

In the fullness of time you should develop the most optimised kewords, advertisements, landing pages and conversion tools to make the very best of the budget you have set aside for your PPC campaign.

 

If you are new to PPC advertising then the time and expertise required to fulfil your PPC ambitions are usually only met if you hire a professional to assist you with the campaign.  Not only will they have the immediate experience of what works, and what does not, but they have the time and the skills to devote to this process.  There is therefore no expensive learning curve or time lost by the busy manager trying to learn a very specialist skill.

 

Experience with numerous clients in this area indicates that running a PPC campaign badly is very easy and once clients have handed over a PPC campaign to a professional then they are usually surprised by the difference in performance.  We very often find that professionals are able to reduce the cost of each visitor to such an extent that the feels of the professional are offset by the reduction in advertising spend.

 

Google operates a certification system and you are recommended to proceed only with a qualified Google Adwords Professional at your side.  Armed with your briefing and targets then the professional should be able to deliver measurable and profitable results on an ongoing basis.