Should I Try Pay-Per-Click Ads?
Advertising can get expensive! It’s especially stressful determining your advertising budget when you never know exactly how successful any given ad campaign is going to be — what if you end up spending a lot of money running an ad that doesn’t actually bring in any business for you? This is exactly why more and more businesses are going the route of pay-per-click advertising.
Recognizing A Pay-Per-Click Ads
Pay-per-click advertising is exactly what it sounds like: You, as the business, only pay the designated fee for your ad when somebody actually clicks on it and gets directed to your website. These types of ads are usually associated with Google. If you’ve ever noticed that when you Google something, certain results at the top of the page are marked as paid advertisements. Yes, that’s because somebody out there is paying for their website to show up at the top of a Google search result. And they’re being charged only when somebody actually clicks on the ad.
But there are other places where pay-per-click ads show up. You might notice that there are banner ads that appear in the sidebar of social media platforms when you open these pages on internet browsers. These, too, are pay-per-click ads.
So, this means that when your ad shows up on someone’s computer screen and they just keep on scrolling, you don’t get charged. It’s kind of a guaranteed way of knowing your advertising dollars are being spent on people who are going to go to your website. Sounds pretty effective, right? But there are still a few important points you should consider.
What You Should Know About Pay-Per-Click
What should you expect to pay?
Yes, pay-per-click ads are very cost-effective. Some of them can cost as little as a few cents per click, while some of the more expensive ones can go up to about $50 per click. However, you can expect a pay-per-click ad to cost, on average, about $1 or $2 per click.
Compare this with being charged cost per mille, a fancy term for the cost per thousand impressions. In the case of cost-per-mille ads, you’re being charged for every 1,000 people who view your ad, no matter how many times it’s actually clicked. Your ad could show up in somebody’s social media and they just scroll past it without looking at it, reading it, or giving it any bit of attention. (Talk about a waste of money, right?)
What are the downsides of pay-per-click?
There are still a few downsides to pay-per-click ads that you need to consider. First, even if you’re running pay-per-click ads, there’s no guarantee you’re actually going to get those clicks. In this case, you don’t end up spending any money, but you’re not getting any business either. Think of it as a “no risk, no reward” kind of situation.
Who is your audience?
For a pay-per-click ad to be successful, you need to properly target it. This means you choose the audience Google or Facebook will actually show your ad to — that is, the people you think are going to be most interested. You can target your ads based on location, keyword searches, age, gender, interests, and even the type of device they’re using (whether they’re searching on a laptop, smartphone, or tablet). You can even analyze the people your ads seem to be most successful with — so if you select a wide target and go for men and women between the ages of 20 and 50, but you notice that most of your clicks are coming from women between the ages of 25 and 30, then you can retarget your ads with future campaigns.
You may need help.
Google Adwords continue to be the most popular type of pay-per-clicks and these can be a little tricky to put together. With Google Adwords, you have to create short blurbs that will show up with your business name at the top of search results — some of the blurbs can be up to 90 characters, but other blurbs are limited to only 25 characters. It can be more challenging than you expect to convey what’s so great about your business in only 25 characters! Expect putting together a Google Adwords campaign to be a little more time consuming (and creatively challenging) than you might expect.
There’s also the challenge of how much exposure Google is giving your ads. Even though you’re a paid advertiser in theory, Google will still prioritize your ad based on how much money you’re bidding and how good your ad is. It will also look at how relevant your ad is to a person’s search. If your ad isn’t getting a lot of clicks, this could hurt your ads exposure even more — this is referred to as your clickthrough rate (CTR). Google Ads with poor clickthrough rates won’t get as much exposure. Again, there’s no charge to you at this point, but you’re not bringing in business either. For your ad to be successful, it needs to be good. Otherwise, Google will brush it aside for better advertisers it can show at the top of those search results.
Finally, don’t forget that it’s not simply about clicks — you also want conversions. It might sound great that people are going to your website, but if you’re spending a bunch of money driving traffic to your website and not getting any business from it, then it sounds like it’s time to consider a different advertising approach.