Are Pay-Per-Click [PPC] Campaigns Worth it?
Source: Christine Churchill of KeyRelevance (temporary;
article will be replaced soon)
So you’ve decided to give pay-per-click search engine
marketing a try? That’s a good move, because PPC is one
of the most affordable advertising options available to
small businesses. But like most advertising, you need
a good strategy to get your money’s worth. I find that
too many people running their first PPC campaign make
mistakes that can quickly turn expensive.
In this article I’ll offer some basic advice about bidding
and keyword selection to help you run a smart PPC campaign.
The most important thing to know before starting your
PPC campaign is how much you can afford to bid for a keyword.
High traffic keywords on Overture and Google – the leading
PPC providers - can cost $5.00 per click for a top ranking.
Can you afford that?
Consider this: the typical e-commerce site converts about
2% of its visitors. That means you need to bring 50 visitors
to your site before you make a sale. At $5.00 per click,
you’ll spend $250 dollars to generate one sale. Ouch!
Also keep in mind that you usually want one of the top
3 listings for a keyword. These are the listings distributed
to most of the PPC engine’s partner sites. For example,
a #3 ranking on Overture will place your listing on Yahoo,
MSN and Alta Vista. A #7 listing won’t appear on any of
these search engines.
So you’re caught in a catch-22: you want a high PPC ranking
to get traffic, but the top rankings for popular words
are too expensive.
The solution is to cast your net broadly, targeting a
large number of less popular keywords. These words are
usually less expensive and, taken as a group, can give
you a considerable volume of traffic.
For example, suppose you run a ski resort. The keyword
“ski vacation” currently receives over 60,000 searches
per month. That’s great, but it costs $5.01 per click
for the top ranking. Instead of competing head-to-head
for that keyword, you would be better off choosing “ski
trip” (4,771 monthly searches at $0.57 per click for the
top spot) and “ski lodge” (4,244 monthly searches at $0.55
per click for the top spot).
By targeting a number of these less popular keywords,
we get nearly the same traffic as if we had targeted “ski
vacation,” but at a fraction of the cost.
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