Pay-per-click, popularly known as PPC or CPC (Cost-per-click), is an online/internet marketing/advertising technique which makes the advertiser pay to the publisher (a website owner or typically a search engine) whenever a visitor clicks on his advertisement.

PPC is associated with the leading search engines like Google AdWords and Microsoft Bing Ads, Google AdWords being the single most popular system in the world, for PPC advertisement. Search engines operate on a pay-per-click bidding model. This means the advertisers bid for a specific keyword or phrase which is relevant to their target audience and the search engine analyses all the bids to choose one winner and this winner is awarded with the valuable Ad space in the search engines. On the other hand, there are content sites those charge a fixed price per click. These sites put the relevant Ads on their website which they agreed to show and these are not typical PPC advertising. Then, why do people go for PPC advertising!!

You will be surprised to know that in 2014, Google earned approximately more than 68% of its yearly revenue from PPC (Google AdWords) and/or online marketing. And, did you know this, that popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter also use PPC as one of their advertising methods!!

So, what’s the big deal with PPC?

Nothing, except it just puts you on the top of each search when a search for a matching keyword as yours is made. Now once the visitor gets you on the top and clicks on your Ad, it’s your responsibility to convert him into a customer. And, what you need to convert!! Of course a great design and content that showcase your offerings and communicate what you want your clients to know about you/your offerings. How to convert visitors into clients is altogether a separate topic. Let’s not dilute our discussion and continue with PPC.

What makes PPC good!!

PPC can drag traffic right away. Just spend enough to get yourself on top of the search engines and people searching with a keyword or phrase matching yours will find you first, it’s as simple as that.

PPC advertising is really fast and comes with systems like Google AdWords which lets you get targeted mass within just few minutes of an account opening.

PPC is also agile. Where normal SEO campaign and/or other forms of advertising takes several weeks or even months to generate good traffic, PPC is able to do so in just few hours or a day or so. PPC effectively adjusts to changing market conditions like no other can do.

If you choose right keywords and spend on them, then, PPC can generate you revenue that is much more than the amount you spent on the PPC campaign.

Can there be any loss from PPC?

Well gray areas exist everywhere and same is the case with PPC.

PPC can cost you a substantial amount of fortune. During bidding wars, sometimes you might go far to get a keyword and end up in paying more than actually required.

If you fail to select the appropriate keyword for your campaign that in real means communicate your message to the visitors and seduce them to contact you for business, then you might end up with junk traffic, those are not relevant to you/who are not your target audience.

Lastly, PPC does not take into account the relevance of the clicks. It just counts the clicks and charges accordingly. If your ad is clicked more, you will pay more. It does not matter the clicks were genuine or not.

To conclude, PPC is good if you focus and target it to the right audience. You can really benefit more from your PPC campaign if designed properly. In case you fail to analyse the market demand and focus on your target, PPC can cost you a lot.

So focus, target and convert should be the solo mantra of your PPC campaign. If you are not sure on how to do this, consult the experts