Pay Per Click - the basics

Pay per Click (PPC) campaign is now the hottest area in Internet marketing, growing at a pace much faster than any other area in the sector. This article explains the very basics that are common to any search engine’s PPC campaigns. It gives a glimpse of some of the regularly used terms in a PPC campaign, a brief explanation of how the campaign works and some of the advantages it has to offer.

PPC campaign- An Introduction

Pay-per-Click campaign is a paid from of advertising on the net. What makes them interesting and different is the very principle on which they work. The simple philosophy of a PPC campaign is that you pay only if you receive a click. You first create ads on the engine for the keywords pertaining to your business; the ads appear on the engines results page when some one searches using the keyword and you pay for the ad if someone clicks on it.

PPC campaign – Their Mode of Working

PPC campaigns are one of the most popular paid inclusion methods of advertising on the net. Most of the search engines are venturing into offering this service, though Google and Overture remain by far the best and most popular. Each of these campaigns offers special services to their clients but the basic model and mode of working remains the same. We will now sequentially go through the process of creating, running, monitoring and managing a PPC campaign.

1. Creating an Account

To get a PPC campaign started, an account needs to be created. At this stage, you can decide the name of the campaign, the daily budget you are ready to allocate and the geographical location you wish to target (local region, country specific or world wide).

2. Running the Campaign

Once your account is created you need to start creating the ads for your chosen keywords. You then assign a maximum bid called the Max CPC (the maximum amount your are willing to pay when a visitor clicks on your ads). The best part about the PPC form of marketing is that no engine charges you money to display your ads if no one clicks on your site. Once the ads are generated and fed, the engines will display them when a user searches using those keywords. When you receive a click, you are charged the CPC you have quoted.

3. Monitoring and Managing the Campaign

To be able to leverage the PPC campaigns and obtain maximum ROI, you need to constantly monitor and manage your account. You would need to look at the performance of the ads and the individual keywords. For this you need to monitor the click through rate, average CPC, cost per day, conversions and cost per conversion.

PPC Campaign – the advantages

PPC campaigns are emerging as a very important mode of traffic generator. In fact the 2.3 m revenue that it generated in 2003, is likely to increase to 5.5 m in 2006. So why is this so popular? What are the benefits it offers to the marketer?

• The biggest advantage of using this model of marketing is you pay only when you receive a click on your ad.
• The result, unlike the natural listings shows up immediately.
• You have a good control over your marketing expenditure. You can set a daily maximum budget for your campaign based on your marketing allowance.
• You can increase your visibility and reach by choosing many keywords. All the engines let you add any number of keywords for an ad group. Unlike Paid listing where you purchase the keywords, here you can use all the keywords and you will pay only if you receive a click for that keyword.
• You can dictate the kind of traffic you get, by using the different type of keyword matching. You could either target very highly specific section of the traffic by using exact matching or general traffic with broad matching.
• You can also manipulate the position of your ad by bidding higher. This is useful for those ads you know are doing well and would give higher returns when placed higher.

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