Your business wants to show up when your ideal customer is searching for your offering, purchasing ads online with pay-per-click advertising is one of the most efficient ways to get your message in front of your target audience.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Pay-Per-Click is a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) activity that opens advertising up to any business — even small to midsize businesses that may not be able to afford traditional advertising due to budget restrictions. SEM activities are all viable and affordable digital marketing initiatives for any size business. Their goal is to make your business discoverable anytime and anywhere.
Within search engines there are two ways to get your business to be found and highly ranked:
- Paid Search, or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) activity is often driven by very specific objectives.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) activities adjust the content and technical aspects of your website to help it be found and better ranked by search engines..
The best digital marketing strategies consider both tactics and choose the activities that best meet their business objectives.
How does PPC work?
While the idea is simple — you pay each time someone clicks on your advertisement — it has become complicated with a wide variety of choices depending upon your business objectives. Essentially an online auction, you choose keywords to bid on. If you win the bid for any particular user’s search, you have paid for the right to deliver an advertisement (text, display, remarketing and variations of each ad type are all possibilities).
This form of advertising can be more effective at moving the needle in the short term with very precise business objectives.