Pay per click (PPC) advertising is one of the most common marketing methods used in search engine marketing today. According to Marketing Sherpa’s annual survey of marketers, the return on investment for PPC marketing has increased significantly between 2007 and 2008.

Research indicates that approximately 80% of potential customers use the internet to search for local products or services rather than that old standby, the yellow pages.

Not only is PPC a tried and tested technique of directing your share of that traffic flow to your website but, unlike more traditional advertising methods, you pay for the advertising only if a prospective client actually finds your advertisement appealing enough to click on it.

Choosing a search engine

A prudent strategy, especially if you are using PPC advertising for the first time, is to settle on one search engine rather than try to diversify from the beginning. Too many different marketing campaigns, all of which entail different regulations and different funding systems make it difficult to stay focused on your marketing strategy and to monitor the impact the campaign has on your business.

Deciding on the best search engine for your needs, however, involves careful research to determine performance with regard to issues such as costs, traffic delivery and user support.

Support in the form of tracking customer activity is provided by most of the larger search engines. In fact, one of the advantages of PPC marketing is that you are able to track every aspect of your campaign.

Another is that you are not required to commit to a long term advertising campaign. A three week trial period will give you the opportunity to assess whether or not your marketing goals are being met and the flexibility of the advertising method means that you are able to keep tweaking your copy and testing the results until you are completely satisfied.

Choosing keywords

The prospective customers’ experience of the process begins with the keyword search. So your choice of keywords is obviously crucial. By entering keywords relating to your product or service users should then be led to a page containing your advertisement. Presuming that the advert is sufficiently eye-catching and relevant to their search requirements they will click on it and be directed to your landing page.

Always remember that, while the prospective customer is the one who initiates the process you, as the marketer have to motivate him or her to complete the course of action on which they embark.

Motivating follow through

Once a user has clicked on your advertisement and been transferred to your website statistically you have approximately 6 seconds to convince him to stay there. This means that your landing page is as, if not more, important than the advertisements that link to it. Unless your site is ready for it, your traffic will remain transitory and your ROI will be bleak.

If the website does not accurately reflect the advertisement which directed them to it, there will be little or no incentive for visitors to hang about. On the other hand, clear, attractive images, good but short and snappy web copy and enticing ‘call to action’ phrases such as ‘buy now’ or ‘ contact us today’ will go a long way towards persuading your visitors to purchase your product or service.

So PPC advertising is only the first step in carefully planned marketing campaign to lead the customer through the process which starts with a search and ends with a sale.