The Pros and Cons of PPC

Standing out from your competitors can be a hard – and seemingly endless – task. This is especially true in the online marketplace. Online advertising is one of the ways to ensure a wider audience sees your products and services, but what are the pros and cons of using PPC?

What is PPC

PPC is an abbreviation of the phrase “pay-per-click”, an Internet marketing model used by a lot of companies online to help boost their brand awareness, with the aim of appearing at the top of search engine results. It’s sometimes referred to as “cost-per-click” or CPC.

What does PPC mean

If you hadn’t already guessed, pay-per-click (PPC) is a fairly simple concept. Search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo allow businesses or individuals to purchase premium adverts on their search result pages.

Buying these adverts means that companies are essentially buying visits to their websites. In comparison to organic SEO, where you would use organic SEO strategies and to rank for specific keywords. Organic SEO results mean you do not pay every time someone clicks on your website in the search engine results.

But what are the pros and cons of PPC? That’s what we’re here to explain. Remember, PPC might not be suitable for every business, so we suggest doing your research before jumping straight in.

Benefits of PPC

A/B Testing. One of the benefits of PPC is that it gives you the opportunity to test out the keywords that you’ve chosen to see what gets the best response from web users. A/B testing lets you explore different keywords or phrases for a single product/web page.

You only pay for Interested Clicks. Compared to traditional advertising, most of the time you only pay for interested clicks. But what does this mean? In short, you know that only Internet users who are interested in your product, service or business are going to engage with your adverts.

PPC results show quickly. This gives you the ability to see how your campaigns and keywords are performing quicker than organic search. Google Adwords gives you a breakdown of how your adverts are performing on a daily basis. This includes:

• Daily budget (if you’ve set one)
• Total clicks
• Total impressions
• The CTR (or Click Through Rate)
• Total amount/cost of the advert since it launched

Measurable targets. You may only want to increase the site visits to a certain web page, but PPC allows you to set – and monitor – measurable targets. This is a great way to establish future methods of advertising your products or services, whilst still allowing you to test certain keywords and phrases.

Disadvantages of PPC

Can be expensive when not done right. One of the most obvious disadvantages of PPC is that it can be extremely expensive. You’re probably thinking, you said it was great for a limited budget, but jumping straight into Google Advertising can be a costly mistake.

You need to make sure that you’re targeting keywords that are profitable (remember that you still pay for each click) even if someone visits your website and doesn’t buy anything.

Adding ‘Negative Keywords’ to your campaign can also help keep any irrelevant search terms being used to display your adverts.

People will ignore your adverts. Don’t take it personally, but it will happen. Many Internet users have an inherent mistrust of advertising, especially when they see the little green label saying “Ad” next to your text. The way to counter this is to make your adverts more relevant to your targeted keywords and appealing to your target demographic.

It’s a competitive market. Another disadvantage of PCC is that it’s a very competitive market. If you’re trying to create campaigns that outbid your competitors, then chances are they’re going to be doing the same to you. You should be monitoring your campaigns on a regular basis, don’t just set them up and leave them to run their course.

It’s never guaranteed to sell. The art of advertising is far from an exact science, and even if you carefully craft the most persuasive PPC adverts, there’s no guarantee that you will sell a product or service. Imagine walking into a shop having seen an exclusive offer outside, and the inside is a mess. The same is true for websites.

The advert may be the first impression Internet users have of your company, so you need to make sure that your website reflects what they expect having clicked through.

So there we have it, the pros and cons of PPC. What do you think? Do you use PPC advertising for your business? What kind of results have you seen?

We’d love to hear your thoughts, so leave us a comment below. Alternatively, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter where you can get in touch with us. For those of you who want to learn more about the world of SEO, take a look at some of our previously published blog posts.