PPC : Why use PPC and what advantages ?

   So why bother with PPC? There are lots of ways to bring people to your Web
site, after all. Here are a number of reasons why PPC might be the way to go:
- You’re reaching people when they’re looking for you. The search
engines are hugely popular, with more than half a billion searches every
day (perhaps much more)! These are great prospects for your business.
- It’s fast. While most marketing methods can take a long time to get
  started, you can get a PPC campaign rolling very quickly, literally within
  an hour or so.
- It’s a numbers game. It’s easy to measure success; count how much you

PPC : Can make money with PPC?

The answer to the above question depends on what you mean. If you mean
can one make money with PPC?, then the answer is, “Absolutely!” One can, if
one happens to have the right product, the right Web site, the right ad, and
the knowledge you find in this book.
If you mean can I make money with PPC?, the answer is a definite “Maybe!” I
don’t know what you’re selling, what your Web site looks like, and whether
you can put together the right ad, so I don’t know for sure. But some people
definitely are making money with PPC; perhaps you can, too.
I’ve worked with companies doing well with PPC, and with those doing badly.

PPC : Why advertising doesn’t work ?

Remember also that most advertising doesn’t make money. “I know half the
money I spend on advertising is wasted,” said Chicago department store

owner John Wanamaker more than 100 years ago, “but I can never find out
which half.”

There’s an adage in the advertising — wait, no, not in the advertising business,
because the adage is not exactly good for the business — that goes,
“most advertising doesn’t work.” I don’t remember who said it . . . oh, wait, it
was me.

PPC : Why use PPC if you’re losing money?

   As bizarre as it may seem, many PPC advertisers are losing money on their
ads. How can that be possible? The following are real quotes from real companies
using PPC, explaining why they use PPC despite the fact that the PPC
campaigns are losing money:

- “I know we’re losing money on PPC, but I’m under pressure to provide
   leads.”
- “Well, we’re not really sure if we’re making money on PPC or not.” (They
   weren’t.)
- “We experimented with PPC last Christmas . . . sure, we lost money, but

PPC : The power of search advertising

PPC ads on search engines are likely to be much more effective than banner
ads. Why?


- People are searching for something when they see your ad. Banner
  ads are often placed onto what may be termed content sites, as opposed
  to search sites. On content sites, people are looking at information,
  rather than for information. In most cases, banner ads lead people away
  from the task at hand; PPC ads are designed to help people with the task
  at hand — looking for information.

PPC pulls the banner down

   By the end of 2000, when the Internet bubble burst, banner advertising had
acquired a really bad reputation. Billions of dollars had been spent on banner
advertising, and most of it was wasted. Click-through rates — the proportion
of ads that are clicked upon — for banner ads were very low, and many
advertisers, perhaps most, spent more on the ads than they made on any
sales derived from them.
Banner ads had several problems:

- They were expensive. Although CPMs were typically $35–$50, because
   only one ad impression in 200 resulted in a click, that often translated

PPC, 1-2-3

   To make quite sure I’m explaining the concept of PPC adequately, let me just
take you through the process of how PPC works, step by step:
1. The advertiser joins a search engine’s PPC program and “loads” the
   account with some money — say, $50 (though some companies’ PPC
   budgets are in the hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars a
   month).
2. The advertiser creates a small text ad (in some cases, PPC can include
    images, but I describe the most common form here).
3. The advertiser specifies with which keywords the ad should be associated.