Pay Per Click Marketing – How does it work?

20 December 2010 StephanieE Marketing

When you search for things on the internet, do you ever wonder how those “Sponsored Ads” appear alongside the regular search results? Those ads are in fact paid advertisements. Companies pay for ads that show up based on the words people type in, or based on the content people are looking at. Companies use pay per click advertising as a way to draw people to their Web site. Here is a very general overview of how it works:

  1. You choose the keywords you want people to find your ads with.
  2. You write ads that match up with the keywords.
  3. You pay only when people click on your ads.

Of course, there is quite a lot more to it than this, but this is the general idea. There are many different pay per click marketing programs available. Google’s program is called “Google AdWords”.

The good thing about pay per click marketing is that you get to choose how people find you, and you only pay when somebody clicks on your ad. However, if you do try pay per click marketing, be sure to be specific enough in your efforts that you don’t get meaningless clicks, yet not too specific that you don’t get any clicks at all. The key is to find a good balance between those two.

To learn more about Google AdWords pay per click marketing programs, visit this link:
http://www.google.com/adwords/smallbusinesscenter.

Comments (2) -

  • jpsystems
    Every time you click on a Google Ad, you are spending someone's hard earned dollars.  So please don't click if you aren't ready to buy.

    As a regular Google Adwords customer, we have learned over the years that there is no such thing as being too specific when developing keywords for our Google adwords campaigns. When developing an ad campaign, one must think of all the possible meanings of a keyword. Not only that but you must think of all the possible reasons that people will search for these keywords.   When we sell printed sales receipts, we must tell Google Adwords that we are NOT talking about movie box office receipts.  So your negative keywords (keywords which are not applicable) are one of the the most important thing to develop.  

    It generally takes us a month to fine tune an ad. For instance, we sell printed gift certificates.  Unfortunately many people who do keyword searches for gift certificates are looking for free offers.  They do not want to buy printed items for their business.  So some campaigns can be very expensive or even impossible to run, as too many people will click with out thinking and waste your money.  If you sell to business owners, don't even run your ads on a Sunday.  Just a few good clicks a day is better than 2000 bad ones.  Adwords has many tools to predict the number of clicks you should get.  Theyt have a lot of data and people are predictable in numbers.  So you will know ahead of time what keywords will bring you traffic.  The challenge is why are they bringing you traffic and will they buy?  
    12 January 2011 -
  • stephanie
    I agree it is wise to be very specific and selective about keywords. It is easy to spend a lot of money fast, unless you spend the time to research, test, and refine.
    12 January 2011 -
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