PPC (pay per click) services are not something to ignore if you need to increase sales in a big way. I worked for a company a couple years back that sold language learning software. I managed their PPC campaign with Yahoo. They were spending about $900 per day on advertisements and making in sales anywhere from $1500 to $3200 gross, which was basically net because they made all the products in-house.
You, and all your competitors are struggling to find channels that work and increase sales. PPC has the potential to really add to your bottom line. In the instance above, that company was making about $500 to $2100 per day extra because of their PPC campaign with Yahoo. When Google started theirs they jumped into that with both feet also. When PPC is working there aren’t a lot of alternatives that can compare to it. It’s like minting cash. When it’s not working – it’s just like throwing cash out your car window.
Pay per click means that you pay something when a visitor to a website or on the Google, Yahoo search engines clicks on your ad. Usually you’re aiming for as low a rate as you can possibly pay per click. I don’t think anyone lets you bid 1 cent anymore, but 5-10 cents seems to be the minimum.
Currently Google’s Adwords PPC is jthe most popular. Google has more advertisers and more traffic to their search engine than any other site, so they pair that up to effectively call themselves the champs.
Google also has the 2nd most popular website, which is YouTube. Now there are Google Adwords ads on YouTube, and so – there is another place for you to run your ads.
Though PPC campaigns are difficult to setup so they’re running profitably, once they are, you’ll be happy you went through the effort. One issue is that your margin on the products and services you sell might not be enough to turn a profit using PPC. This happens often.
For example, if one person buys your product out of 50 that click your ad leading to your product and you pay 20 cent per click then that is $10.00 you paid to get a sale. Add that to the cost of producing your product – maybe another $3.00. Now you spent $13.00 to get one sale. Problem is, your product sells for only $9.00. You just lost $4. If you can’t make that up with re-orders or upsells then you’re probably going to have to find another product to sell with a higher margin.
The real way to get PPC working for you is to test many different variables as you sell. Change the ads considerably. Use text ads and graphics ads. Use different colors. Target different demographics. Choose to display your ads at different hours. Add bonuses. Change your landing page and test different ones to see which converts best.
You’ll probably pay someone to set up your PPC campaigns. If at all possible, use someone that is certified with Google to create the campaigns. If at all possible, also use someone that has a track record of success with PPC.
Budget a couple of hundred or thousands of dollars to run your tests and see if you can come up with a winning combination of variables that makes you a winner with PPC. It’s well worth the risk in many cases.