Pay per click

Get your message to people exactly when they are looking for it·

• Test messages·
• Monitor interest in your issue·
• Find new “customers” through “guerilla” tactics

Pay per Click Ads [PPC] are the ads you see on the right hand side in search results that are “Sponsored Links”. Within websites these are called ‘content ads’ and are labeled “Ads by Goooooogle”. MSN, Yahoo, and other search engines have similar campaigns.

Pay per click [PPC]marketing has taken the commercial internet by storm. It took Google to $5 billion per year in revenue in 5 years, mostly a few cents at a time.

PPC ads are an incredible way to deliver targeted traffic to your site at a cost usually much lower than any interruption marketing campaign. Usually keywords go for 10 to 80 cents per click.

With Pay per Click marketing, essentially you bid for the opportunity to have your ad displayed beside search results when someone enters keywords you choose. Another variant allows your ad to be placed on websites in that box that says “Ads by Goooooogle”. Just recently, Google has allowed you to target the Ads to specific web sites.

Google AdWords are one of the most effective and certainly the most feedback intensive messaging tools ever created. By buying the right keywords, Google will tell you how many 'impressions' you had [i.e.: How many people searched your keywords]. You only pay for clicks, and therefore you only pay when someone interested in information on your topic actually goes to your site. This is a very cost effective way to get your message out 'unfiltered' to those most interested, when they are actually looking for the information.

You can even rotate ads, and see which ones are most effective at enticing traffic to your site. This can give you an idea as to which messages work best, or what motivates people who are searching.

Google AdWords is also fast. You could create an info sheet dealing with any inaccurate information, or on a breaking issue, post it to your web site, and have the ads direct guests directly to that URL within minutes. You can also add or remove ads or keywords at will.

The other benefit is that you pick the budget and the daily allocation, and set your keyword price. The AdWords system is initially a little complicated, but it has a powerful underlying elegance that helps make it efficient and effective. At least 20% of all searchers click on these types of listings. One study said just over 50 % of younger shoppers did so, while 75% of older people [ over 55] are likely to do so. Close to 100% of people say that they ignore them.

AdWords is the only way to know for sure exactly how many people are searching a given word or keyword phrase. You can also test different messages through rotating ads. By running a PPC campaign over time you can build up an industry “zeitgeist”- a tracking of the interest in an industry or certain words over time.