Pros and Cons of Pay per Click Advertising (PPC)

If you have been researching ways to promote your business online and drive traffic to your site, you’ve likely encountered the topic of pay per click advertising, or PPC.

Is that the right method for you?

To help you decide, you need to look at both sides and examine the pros and cons.

Pros of PPC

1. It’s available to anyone, although you’ll need to have a few dollars in your pocket to start. Because PPC is based on bidding system, you decide how much you want to spend.  You are in control.

2. You don’t need to be a marketing expert to get started

3. The results can be seen right away. Unlike other marketing strategies, PPC doesn’t require you to wait weeks or months to see whether your campaign has been successful.  You can track the results virtually in real time, as they happen.

4. Because you can watch the results of your campaign right away, you can make the necessary budgetary adjustments on the fly, too.

5. You aren’t bound by the rules of SEO when it comes to your content. Whereas getting ranked on an organic search engine requires your content to strategically feature certain keywords in certain densities, etc.  You don’t have to worry about that with PPC.  With pay per click, you essentially buy your spot on the search engine ranking list for certain keywords.  No SEO is required.

6. You can bid on any keywords or keyword phrases that you want. The trick is understanding the keywords that most people would use when searching for a business like yours.  For a competitive bid, you can buy your spot on the search engine ranking based on as many keywords as you want.

Cons of PPC:

1. The possibility of fraud. Although it would be nice to believe that in a marketplace as vast as the internet, everyone could get along and want the best for each other, that’s not always the case.  Not every click your website receives will be from a legitimate prospect looking to buy your product.  In some cases, those clicks could be coming from your competitors, looking to cost you money.  Remember, you’ll pay for every click your website receives!  For this reason, it’s important that you take the time to periodically analyze your click traffic.  If you can prove that you have received suspect clicks, you can potentially get your money back.

3. To be really effective, PPC can be expensive long term. You’ll have to spend time tracking your campaign and analyzing its effectiveness.  Otherwise, costs can be prohibitive.  PPC campaigns do not run themselves; you will need to be involved if you want things to run smoothly and without costing you a fortune.
4. You can’t slack on your bills. You’ll have to pay for your PPC campaign every month.  Otherwise, your campaign can be cut off.  This is another reason that account management is so important with pay per click advertising.

To learn more about how pay per click advertising can help your business consult an internet marketing company such as http://www.celerify.com/ for more information.