We've already explained to you what PPC advertising is; now it's time to look at why you might want to do it. There are many benefits to pay-per-click advertising - here are a few of the big ones:
  • You can set your own budget depending on your advertising goals. If you own an ecommerce website, you will probably want to be a bit more aggressive with your ads; therefore, a larger daily budget would be more beneficial, as you will achieve more clicks and more potential sales. However, this does depend on your market; for example, if you are operating in a very niche market, you might not need a very big budget, whereas if you stock a more widely available product, the keywords will cost more as there will be a higher number of other companies aiming to attract the attention of potential customers.

  • If done correctly, PPC advertising will get you to the top of Google's results pages. Whenever we ask clients about their SEO goals, 95% of them say, "We want to be at the top of Google." Well, by using PPC, you can reach the 'top of Google' instantly - that is, if your AdWords account manager has done a good job and created a top-quality advert for your product. This means that you will get noticed, get clicks, and get sales. Even if you are already at the top of Google's organic results, PPC can still be used to support your current rankings. With your products at the top of the organic results, the PPC results AND Google's Shopping feed, customers would find it difficult NOT to click through to your site!

  • You can target specific demographics. Are you planning on expanding your business to another area of the country, or even to a different country altogether? Would you like to expand and test to see if there is a demand for your product/service elsewhere? Or perhaps you just have a bricks-and-mortar shop, and you only want to advertise to people in the immediate surrounding area? Whatever your target area is, search engine adverts can help you to reach it with ease.

  • You can track everything. Between AdWords and Analytics, you can see where your customers are coming from, what they are searching for, and the paths that they take through your website to come to a purchasing decision. For this, you can see if you are pointing your customers to the correct landing page, as well as if they are converting then and there or if they are just adding things to the basket and comparing prices with your competitors. You can also test the success of the keywords you're using - are people coming through to your site via a broad keyword search, then failing to convert? If so, why aren't they converting? Are they converting, but taking a long time to do so? What are they looking at on your website? AdWords and Analytics can answer all of these questions and more, providing a wealth of valuable information for you to analyse.

  • You can test quickly. Do you remember the good old days of direct marketing, when you'd step through your door to find piles of marketing communications lying on your doormat? Or the days of Web 1.0, when online advertising platforms were nowhere near as intricate as they are now, and you had to sort through hundreds of pages of data? Back then, the campaign results took ages to interpret, and you wouldn't know whether or not a campaign had succeeded until several months later. Nowadays, Google AdWords allows you to see data almost instantly, and meaningful data interpretation can be achieved in weeks instead of months. You can test all kinds of strategies and factors in a very short period of time.

  • You can compete with global companies. Whether you're a one-man band selling products out of your garage, a modest SME, or a multi-national company, you'll be in direct competition with everyone else when it comes to PPC advertising (something that was unheard of until quite recently). Don't let this put you off, though - sure, the big companies may have a slightly larger budget than you, but if you're clever with your advertising, you could well receive a better response than a large company that's been around for years.
If you would like to try PPC advertising for your company, we strongly recommend hiring an experienced PPC expert to handle your account for you. Click here to request a PPC management quote from Designer Websites, or give us a call on 01446 339050 to discuss your requirements and, if necessary, set up a meeting with our AdWords specialists.