I’ve noticed this week a lot of people talking about how good SEO’s (search engine optimisation) are and I totally agree but then I got thinking… why? What is so bad about PPC (pay per click) advertising that we’re all pretty much saying to leave it, so here it is the good and the bad of PPC.
Pay Per Click if you didn’t know are the annoying yellowish boxes that appear at the top of your search and also down the side bar.
https://www.hb-web-design.com/online_advertising/
Pay Per Click actually has some benefits so like the name says you only pay when someone clicks, so it’s not like traditional advertising how you pay X amount and you don’t know exactly what you get for it with PPC you know you’re getting views when you have to pay.
Of course PPC could become very expensive so you are also able to set a budget of course this means that once you reach your limit your ad will no longer appear in the PPC area until the pay period resets. (If you want to know how much should be spent on PPC click here)
Unlike SEO you can be very specific with your PPC ad, it wouldn’t be very handy to have someone clicking on your ad in America if it is a cleaning service based only in Australia because it would cost you money and nothing would come of it. So with PPC you can set a specific time for your ad to be shown and also set a location. By doing this you can reach your target market pretty much all the time.
Using PPC as opposed to just relying on an organic search can show results more quickly, to appear near the top in an organic search (63% of people don’t look beyond the top results) it can take copious amounts of time and effort but with PPC you can be up the top right away and see an improvement in views potentially really quickly.
Now for the not so good
Organic searches beat PPC a large proportion of the time. A lot of people skip paid ads and go straight to the organic searches those who do click are more often than not women and as age increases so does the likelihood of clicking on paid ads (for more info click).
PPC is NOT easy you need to have a sound strategy, know your target market and have a little bit of creativity. In order to set up a PPC ad you really do need to have someone with the skills showing you how and explaining it to you so you don’t make a big mistake.
AND OF COURSE it charges you for each click, even if nothing comes from the click it could even just have been a mistake by the user but the company will have to pay for each and every click.
In terms of value Im still with SEO over PPC but I now see there is actually some value to it, what do you think?
What situations do you think a PPC would be better over an SEO?
Thanks for reading
Websites with more info:
http://www.newmediacampaigns.com/page/seo-vs-ppc—which-provides-you-the-better-value
http://searchengineland.com/5-incredibly-practical-reasons-ppc-2015-211611
https://www.google.com.au/adwords/benefits/
http://www.burningflameinteractive.com/aj-burning-flame-blog/pros-and-cons-of-pay-per-click-ppc-marketing
Nat's random things 
Great post! PPC marketing can also work through social media, and they are very diverse digital marketing approaches. However, nowadays social media is not only the place to people share their personal thinking but also a market place to do commerce. Therefore, people are skeptical of advertising, including PPC. Marketing efforts are looked upon negatively because, let’s face it, folks know that marketers are trying to sell them something. And people don’t like to be sold or having advertising slammed down their throats when they are trying to surf the web for information or browse status updates on their favorite social networks. So marketers are using PPC advertising as a major marketing strategy, need to be carefully if they don’t want those work against them.
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You’re so right marketers really have to make sure they are keeping a balance between advertising and just visibility, for example Capezio (dance wear company) have quite a large social media presence they post motivational quotes, beautiful pictures and only every now and again advertise. Just having a presence on social media could be more effective than advertising on social media because when it’s not an ad people do tend to pay attention and have a closer look but at the same time every now and again an ad is helpful to just coax people towards the shops and actually purchase something.
Advertising constantly and massively is nearly as useful as shooting yourself in the foot these days 🙂
Thank you for the comment
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I think you brought up some good points about paid per click. I have no idea about what was PPC before. Anyway, I found that PPC is really really helpful for the searchers or customers like me, because I dislike when I searched for a specific product and then unrelated advertisement was come up. Also, it is very convenient and time saving for me to see the product range and price that are displayed in the advertisement box (similar with the example picture you post) from a different retailers rather than have to search manually on the retailers’ website. It is truly happened to me when I searched for a steam-cleaning services in Melbourne, and PPC really help e to find one by popped up companies advertisement in my screen. However, if we talking a different perspective, there might be people who dislike being suggested by the search engine because they are anti-advertisement. And this kins of people will definitely ignore an advertisement especially if it is not interesting enough. Furthermore,I agree with you that paid per click is not always useful for an online retailer, because they may have to pay for every click the consumers made even it is not guarantee that the searchers will buy their products.
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Thanks for reading and thank you for the comment, PPC can be really useful especially when you’re searching and in a hurry, as (when used correctly by companies) the information they provide is typically very relevant and also kind of local to your area.
PPC when not used correctly can be very expensive and have little to no actual positive impact on sales, I know a company who used PPC for ages and wondering why it wasnt working, as it turns out they didn’t set it up properly so lots of irrelevant people (meaning those not searching for their service) saw their ad and clicked but then just left.
🙂 Again thanks for the comment
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Great post! I have to say I completely ignore any paid results that come through my feed, BUT….. (and I never thought about it this way before)
The company must have some faith in their product being good enough that people will at least consider buying it, otherwise they wouldn’t set aside a PPC budget. Thoughts?
I’m going to pay more attention to what comes up and will keep you updated as to my progress 🙂
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Yeah you’re right from the perspective of the company logically they wouldn’t market something that wasn’t going to make them money, personally I dislike PPC because I like to believe products should be able to speak for themselves, but I suppose if the product wasn’t well known but the company believed it would be popular than using PPC would seem like a reasonable thing to do.
Given how they can target their market pretty precisely through different tools, it does mean only those looking for a similar product will see it, even if they dont buy it when they click they could consider it for the future, so although the original click may not bring about a sale, it could prompt one later on.
Thanks for the comment 🙂
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At the very least it will help to generate awareness. And I am sure once you click it it will keep appearing everywhere to reinforce and remind!
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Yep your right, I made the mistake of clicking one of the paid ads when doing my daily online ‘window shopping’ for clothes and just wow, the dress I looked at spent the next 4 days popping up all over my facebook feed… suffice to say I ended up buying it lol
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I guess it does work sometimes 🙂
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