You may have come across the term PPC when looking for ways to boost your online marketing efforts.
Pay Per Click (PPC) is a type of internet marketing where people pay a fee each time someone clicks on one of their adverts. You’re essentially paying for more visits to your site.
One way people do this is by paying for advertisement space in search engines results. When you search for something, you’ll typically get a list of sponsored posts at the top which people are more likely to click on because they’re right at the top.
You might scoff at the thought of paying people to come to your website. Why wouldn’t they just come anyway? Even the greatest websites need a little boost so they’re more visible to their target market. Competition is huge.
You may be concerned about the costs. However, the value of someone visiting your website is often greater than the cost it takes to bring them over. If you end up converting, the PPC is just a small expense to make the profit.
So what’s wrong with it?
There’s nothing wrong with PPC, it’s a great tool for businesses. However, what we’d advise against is relying entirely on PPC to hold your website up. There are other marketing methods that can help you get the results you want alongside PPC.
Costs
PPC is an expensive business. Spending a lot of money on that as your only marketing method can mean you’ll run your expenses into the ground quicker than you can benefit from the conversions it’ll bring in.
It can be well worth the investment but there are other cheaper methods to turn your internet marketing expenses into something more manageable. Instead of relying on one method, split your marketing budget between PPC and other methods like SEO for a more well-rounded approach.
It won’t fix your website
Shovelling money into PPC may get you some traffic but what is that traffic doing once they arrive on your website? Are they disappearing within seconds, making your bounce rate high? Are they actually converting and buying from you?
It’s not just about how many people find your website, it’s about how long they stay, whether they get the information they need and whether they buy from you.
Focusing only on getting traffic simply isn’t enough if you’re not seeing that traffic turn into paying customers. If your website is letting you down, PPC could end up being a complete waste of money.
Organic SEO options
While PPC might be helpful in gaining spikes of traffic from adverts, organic SEO can draw high-quality traffic in from more organic sources.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of making your website easier to find and ranked highly within search engine results, without the huge expense of paying for it to be there.
SEO methods can include boosting keywords (terms people search for), getting links from other popular websites, managing social media accounts and writing high-quality content.
Social media management
You can pay for adverts to run on social media which could help but they won’t mean a thing unless your social media account is already well-managed. If you don’t post regularly or interact, all a customer is going to see is a half-awake page that someone pumped a few quid in to get an advert up and running. It doesn’t inspire confidence.
Ideally, you want people to come across your social media profiles, see something new, interesting, fun or helpful and follow you. Hopefully, they’ll also visit your website and become a customer.
Blog content provides an incentive
Blog content can become an invaluable resource for your customers that can help pull in traffic. By creating engaging and helpful content, you’re giving potential customers an incentive to visit your website that they may not have had before.
Once the customer has got free advice or tips from you concerning what they’re interested in whether it’s gardening or financial services, they will be more likely to trust your brand and reward you with their custom.
Like with any business, we’d recommend that you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. If something goes wrong or PPC doesn’t bring the returns you were expecting, you may be left with an empty client list and a big hole in your pocket.
We’d recommend an approach that takes several methods into account so that you’re covering all bases and reaching all the potential customers that you can.
Do you use PPC but are finding it’s not quite getting you where you want? If you’re interested in using organic SEO to boost your online presence, you can grab a free website review from us here.
