Is Pay Per Click for You?

By Heather C. Conover
Conover + Company Communications

Pay per click (PPC) has become a popular way to increase traffic to web sites and generate qualified leads. For those unfamiliar with PPC, it’s a service that enables a company or other entity to advertise products or services on search results pages. The advertisements usually appear along side or above a web navigator’s search results. By clicking on the advertisement, the navigator is linked to the advertiser’s web site.

The advertisement cost is generally based upon how much the advertiser is willing to “pay per click” that results in a visit to its site. According to a recent article, “Search Marketing Beyond Google and Overture” in SearchEngineWatch, the best known PPCs, Google and Overture, currently have approximately 98% of the paid listings distribution on the web. However, as the article states, this can be misleading when selecting a service. Not only is the paid listings distribution actually greater than 100% because people use multiple search engines, but also the so-called remaining 2% amounts to hundreds of millions of searches.

The price paid per click typically ranges anywhere from $.01 to $50. If other advertisers have chosen the same key words or phrases, the one that is willing to pay the most, “wins.” In this case, winning means that the highest bidder is generally first in the listings and others follow according to how much each was willing to spend.

Many smaller companies may feel they are priced out of this market. However, lower spots in the listings can generate almost as many leads as the top spot and at a lower cost. Furthermore, second tier services and those that allow advertisements within a particular category, known as verticals, are less expensive and, according to a number of reviewers, are providing more quality leads. For those worried about how much the ad might ultimately cost, PPC advertising allows the advertiser to pause or cancel the ad at any time. Similarly, if the advertiser wants to change the content of the ad, it’s easy and quick to do so and it takes effect immediately.

If you don’t have a marketing or web consultant, there are a number of sites that review the various first and second tier and vertical services. These can be a good place to start narrowing your own search for the pay per click service that will work best for your company.

Winter 2005 -Volume 15, Number 1

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