What Are The Pros And Cons Of PPC?

What is PPC Marketing?

Often pitted against Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) as a good way of accelerating your digital marketing campaigns, PPC means ‘Pay-Per-Click’ Advertising. 

It’s basically paid advertisement with a twist: you only have to pay for the advert when it gets clicked on. 

That means no flat fees. It also means you don’t have to pay for impressions which don’t generate some sort of action. 

To understand how it all comes together, we first need to understand how search engines work.

Let’s Tallk Search Engines…

When you search for anything on the internet, a whole bunch of possible pages are offered to you. 

These possible pages are called ‘Search Engine Results Pages’ (SERPs). 

Now, most people will only ever look at the first few SERPs. That means, to have any success, businesses need to appear among the top results for particular keywords and key phrases.

As a business, then, it’s helpful to know which keywords people are searching for when they find you. These will be things associated with what you sell. 

How Does PPC Work?

When you employ PPC to run an advert, you have to spend some time thinking about the keywords you want that advert to appear under. 

i.e What do you want people to be searching for, when they find you? What unique themes and ideas are an important part of your business? And under what search terms are people most likely to click on your advert? 

Knowing this helps you to optimise your adverts for a busy digital landscape.

From there, you bid on the best keywords, and phrases; those most likely to generate results. 

You’ll get charged for every click that advert generates. 

What Are The Pros Of PPC?

There are many benefits to using PPC advertising:

• You only pay for what you get. No clicks? No payment. That means you don’t overspend on ads that don’t work, but can instead put that money towards new campaigns
• You can achieve high levels of tailoring, so that you can suit your marketing to ideal customers
• Results are highly measurable and trackable, so they can actually inform future adverts, too
• You’re offered a flexible budget and control over how much you spend
• It can be used as complement to other efforts such as SEO, social media, and email marketing
• Offers quick results to get your name out there with speed and efficiency

What Are The Cons Of PPC?

As with all marketing methods, there are also several cons to be aware of: 

• You have to invest time into a PPC advert. They don’t run by themselves, nor adapt. Much like with SEO, you have to keep optimising and improving them, as Search Engines change
• Practice makes perfect. You’ll need to get used to the things that your customers want, so you can maximise the keywords they search and bid on the optimal advertising spaces
• Keep an eye on costs. While you only pay for clicks you generate, these can add up (especially if you’re successful!) 
• Remember, clicks don’t always lead to sales. You might spend lots on clicks, without receiving anything in return, unless you have complementary efforts in place to drive sales. 

The Benefits Of PPC for Small Businesses and Start-Ups

At Zap, we talk a lot about how potential customers need to interact with your brand—on average—seven times before committing to a purchase. 

It takes time, and that’s okay. But it does mean that those initial months as a new business can be tricky. 

Similarly, as a small business, it can be hard to get your voice heard amidst all the noise online, where keyword giants can really monopolise. 

If this is you, PPC does have one particular benefit: you don’t have to have high search engine rankings in order to compete with other brands. The speed of results can also make a difference to your growth.

Another benefit for businesses like yours is that you are afforded a level of control over your ad, once it leaves your own desktop to make its way in the world. 

By definition, you’re made aware of how they’re performing, because that’s when you pay. 

That means you can easily monitor and track what’s working and what isn’t, and which adverts are popular. This is the best way of expanding and growing your advertising campaigns in the future. 

Can We Help?

We know that optimising your marketing campaigns is a long process. All those different acronyms and requirements. It can seem like a new world. 

And that’s because it is a new world. It’s changing all the time; searchers want different things from their Google results than they did even five years ago. 

We can offer you a huge library of written support, via our KnowledgeBase. 

Sounds helpful? We’re glad. Let us know how we can help today.