Do you want to drive more traffic to your website? Then you might consider pay-per-click advertising or PPCs. These are the small, yellow-boxed ads on top of a Google search result page. It has been a staple in the digital marketing world for many years. But before you contact a company that offers PPC advertising services, you should first know the pros and cons of this option:
Advantages
Guaranteed traffic and visibility
With PPC advertising, your website can be guaranteed some level of traffic. Compared to a traditional Internet ad where there is no guarantee that your website will get some traffic, you can be assured that you’ll get some visitors with PPC.
PPCs are placed on top of the Google search engine results. Thus, whether your PPCs are clicked or not, your ads will still be seen by Internet users.
Allows you to manage your budget
Moreover, you can manage your advertising budget with PPC. After all, you will only be paying per click. Thus if your website gets 200 visits, you will only be paying for that number. It’s more cost efficient than a traditional ad, which you will have to pay in full regardless of the number of visits you get from it.
Targeting audience by location
Another advantage of PPC is that you can target your audience by location. You can bid for keywords that are organic to your website.
Disadvantages
However, there are also cons of subscribing to PPC services.
No guarantees of purchase
While an Internet user will be visiting your website after clicking your ad, there is no guarantee that the consumer will turn into a buyer. So whether or not the visitor bought from your website, you will still have to pay for their click.
Fraud
“Click fraud” is another disadvantage of PPC. Your competitors can click on your ads over and over again until you have maxed out your budget. There’s also the chance that any one online can accidentally click on your ad without any intention to buy from you, which can put your money to waste.
Expensive
Bidding for keywords can be really expensive, especially if the terms you covet are very broad. Depending on the competition, you may be involved in a bidding war for keywords that are organic to your website so you could end up spending more in the process.
Moreover, embarking on a PPC campaign would entail a significant budget especially with high PPC rates. Even cheaper options like Facebook are sometimes a bit expensive for small start-ups.
So is a PPC campaign appropriate for your website? The answer would really depend on you after you have weighed all pros and cons. If you have a sufficient budget for a campaign, then you might want to consider it. But if you have a limited allocation and you’re new to digital marketing, then you might want to try other options first.