New to Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising?

Is PPC marketing right for my company? What are the main PPC search engines? Where can I go to learn and get help? The questions are endless and, though we can’t answer them all in one blog post, we’ll do our best to address the main ones for you and hopefully make your first steps that little bit easier.

So, let’s start with the most important question: is PPC Marketing right for you and your business? The answer is most likely ‘Yes’. If as an individual or a company you sell a product or service of pretty much any kind, then PPC Marketing will be a viable option for you to expand your income. Set up correctly, some businesses can generate huge incomes through PPC marketing so, if you do have a product or service and you are not using of one the Pay Per Click platforms, then you are most likely missing out.

One of the main features of PPC marketing and a reason why it is so successful is that it allows advertisers of any size to compete in the same market place. Unlike traditional advertising like TV and magazine ads, PPC advertising is not the sole domain of big business, since PPC search engines use a formula of relevancy multiplied by Cost Per Click (CPC) to determine the order in which ads are shown. So, it is entirely possible to compete with larger companies with deeper pockets, assuming you are relevant to the search result.

Who are the main players?

Google AdWords is the most well known, and allows you to reach over 80% of internet users worldwide. It is also the most popular with advertisers which makes for a competitive market place and potentially higher CPCs. The interactive system (interface) that an advertiser uses to set up their ads is also the most developed, which means it can get complicated. So, if you are going to use AdWords then we highly recommend at the very least learning the basics. There are lots of self help guides out there, but the best resources come from Google itself in the form of Google AdWords Help, and we would also recommend the Google AdWords Forum. The forum allows you to post questions and, although you probably won’t receive an answer directly from Google itself, you will find help from some great individuals who give up part of their working day to answer questions for no charge.

Yahoo SM and Microsoft adCenter are second and third respectively. However, we have grouped them together as they have now joined forces under the name Search Alliance. There are many features to this partnership, but the most important is that, once all the changes have been made, all ads for both companies will be maintained through Microsoft adCenter. This will make your job much easier and allow access to 581 million users worldwide through one interface. Both Microsoft and Yahoo have been in the PPC market for some time now, though both systems are far behind the Google AdWords platform. However, there is less competition in the market place so most advertisers will see a much lower CPC and ultimately a lower Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), so they are both certainly worth a try. We expect the Search Alliance and move to one system to be completed by 2011.

There are other Pay Per Click search engines in the market, and even the likes of Facebook now has its own PPC adverts. These adverts are based on demographics rather than searches, but for the right kind of product can work very well. For instance, if you are selling a “remote control helicopter” you could select to advertise on the profile pages of women in a relationship who have a partner’s birthday coming up.

If you’re just starting out, for the moment we would recommend concentrating on AdWords, Yahoo and Microsoft. However, here are a selection of others to look out for: (US) Ask, ClickRiver, Looksmart (Europe) Miva, Splut.