Do PPC's Actually Work?

chillibreeze writer — Chitra Ramakrishnan

Selling online is big business!

Even during this economic recession, online retailers are doing rather well. Selling your wares through the web is one of those big ideas. You save on building, maintenance and labour costs. True enough. But, that’s not all.

As a lot of people are discovering, selling online is tricky. You need great products, but success depends on credibility, convenience, pricing and the right mix of temptation. Simply put, customers have to believe you enough to enter into a transaction online and find the buying experience satisfactory.

Most successful online vendors today are retailers who have a huge offline presence already. They offer their existing customers the convenience of shopping online and at the same time reach out to those who are out of their geographical purview offline.

There are a lot of run away successes too. Online retailers who do not have an offline presence leverage on quality, reliability and convenience to build credibility. They have a powerful tool in their hands – advertising.

Advertising online

There are many types of online advertising tools – images and animated ads, video ads, pop-up ads, tickers and more.

Both stand-alone online e-tailers and those who have an offline presence benefit greatly from online advertising. The bulk of successful search advertising in terms of Return on investment is still very much with the simple pay-per-click text (PPC) ads.

PPC ads are the small text ads that appear on the right side of your search engine results screen when you do a search on Yahoo, Google or MSN. Most of them will be relevant to the search term that you have typed. All of them have one thing in common - a web site link.

Pay-per-click

Pay-per-click ads exist and survive in a climate of dynamic budgeting and strict performance control. The medium or the place where you go to place your ads is hosted by search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Search has its own terminology and its derivatives and processes, which differ slightly from one search engine to another. PPC runs on a unique auctioning system, which makes billing and budgeting competitive.

Now about the ads themselves, if you take Google there are about roughly 95 characters to tell all and sell – 25 in the headline and 2 lines of text, with 35 characters per line.

At the bottom of each text ad is a web page link and the purpose of the ad it to make the customer click on it. Each click costs money to the one who had put up the advertising. Wrong clicks are not welcome. Good PPC ads drive traffic to the landing page, but the person who pays for those ads will want something better than that. Not just traffic, but people who buy.

You will notice the following things about good pay-per-click ads. They work. They have something else in common.

They are relevant to the search terms used.
They are specific and contain exactly the information a customer might be looking for.
They are better targeted. They appear in places where customers frequent.
They convey a specific value to customer in terms of personal benefit, monetary or otherwise.
At best, they act as a precursor to the web page. In other words, the web site/page is an extension of these ads.

The important thing to remember about PPC advertising is the web page or site through which the product/service is sold. The web page design must be technically free of errors and geared up to provide a smooth user experience from start to finish. Otherwise, PPC ads won’t result in conversions. Conversion is what happens when a customer who reaches the landing page, goes ahead and buys online.

Pay- per-click is at its best when used in retail situations. Experts feel that pay-per- click ads can be used to differentiate and build brand identity online. There are many opinions and views on what will succeed in PPC. Here is something that will definitely not:

Mammoth Never Before Sale
Pencils at prices unheard of before or will hear about again. Rush!

There is a very strong possibility that you might never hear from your customers again once they visit the site and discover that you are not selling pencils for 5 paise.

Check out the top ten advertising firms in India in 2010.

Chillibreeze's disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article.

More on Chillibreeze.com

Other popular articles on Chillibreeze

Jaws! The Muggers of Goa
Anita Desai’s In Custody: Dynamics of Motive and Model
Biotechnology: Technology for the Future!
Malaria in India – History and Diagnosis
How and Why I Became a Technical Writer

Out of 5 “chilies”, our editorial team gave this article...

—About our writer:

Chitra writes for chillibreeze.

>> Read more articles written by Chillibreeze writers:

More resources for Writers on Chillibreeze.com

Chillibreeze offers Indian writers the opportunity to work on customer projects. We are also India’s biggest writer network and a one-stop shop for Indian writers and editors. The writers’ section on Chillibreeze offers freelance writers and editors a variety of tools to advance their careers. Resources for writers include:

Assessment of your writing, editing and proofreading skills

Writing courses

Expert Feedback on your article

An opportunity to promote yourself on our website

Top websites for Indian writers

Tips and resources for Indian freelancers

Book Publishing services

And more………………..

Explore our writers’ section using the links on our left-hand side menu.