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PPC Demystified – Some stark truths revealed

PPC is indeed the HOLY GRAIL for most Internet marketers. Well, it seems like being so, as 75 out of 100 Internet Marketers seem to take to this route of marketing their website. And why not! Within 48-100 hours of you putting up your ad, people can see it right up there on Google. You don’t spend a lot (This fact can vary depending on situations) and because you get some people clicking on your ads, you are sure of some traffic too.

But the point is – Does good PPC serve any purpose at all for your product or service? Is there a lot of hype surrounding PPC? The more I think of the possible disadvantages of PPC, the more I get disoriented from this.

Here’s why I think people are looking at PPC the wrong way

  • People think that setting up a PPC campaign is a route to being on an autopilot to get traffic to your website – This is utter nonsense, and the only reason I say that is because there are so many variables you have to watch out for. You need to look at the CTR (We will discuss this a bit later); you need to look at the quality of your ad; you also need to look at your web page that is the linked to the ad and so on.

The problem is – When things are not going well for you, you may have to change things around and that takes time.

  • The second issue is correlated to the first – The problem is people don’t even know if their PPC campaign is working well or not. Let us take this example

Your PPC campaign is setup and is receiving about 100 clicks on the advert. Now, you have bid $0.50 per keyword on the campaign, so eventually you would be paying $50 per day for clicks. Mind you – We are talking only about clicks and not sales through your website.

Assume that your ad campaign works at an acceptable CTR of 4%. This means 4 of the 100 visitors actually go to your website. Now, out of the 4, let us assume 2 people buy your product worth $40-$50. Do the mathematics – Your ROI is just $30 for that day.

Is it good?

  • The third problem is – The example we discussed before has a lot of ideal assumptions. For example, the CTR is assumed to be at 4%, which normally doesn’t work that way for campaigns. You have campaigns that work on 2%. In such a scenario, your ROI is, you guessed it right – Negative! Do you want to live with an unprofitable campaign?

By the way, CTR or Click Through Rate is the percentage of visitors who actually click on your website after clicking on your ad.

I have never been an ardent fan of PPC only because of one reason – It drives traffic inorganically to the website. Good CTR, Bad CTR, and even ROI may be the talk of the town, but my point is – If the traffic is inorganic, how can you expect the visitor’s behavior to be normal? In such a scenario, you can have a high bounce rate on the website, lesser time spent and so on.

Some smart people have tried to run through this problem by designing landing pages. To tell you the truth, these landing pages do just about partially better than other websites.

Hello, what is the way out?

Fellow Internet marketers – I am sorry if this offends you, but basing the promotion activities of your website on inorganic means like PPC is inviting disaster for your website. This can work well for you for a short timeframe, but time and again it has been proven – The best websites on the Internet for any niche don’t work inorganically.

Look at organic means of generating traffic. Tag your page well, write good quality content and invite backlinks to your site, blog regularly. These could be excellent methods of generating traffic to your site.

I am sorry, but all else fail! And maybe, even the HOLY GRAIL may need a replacement.

Article author having expertise in Financial Services, Internet Marketing, Healthcare and Legal Affairs

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/ppc-advertising-articles/ppc-demystified-some-stark-truths-revealed-1401385.html

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October 30th, 2009 | Category: PPC Advertising | Comments Off
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