The number one priority of many small businesses? Growth. Expanding your customer base and increasing revenue are among the most important goals for small business owners. Several things are key to success in this area, marketing being of them. Small business approaches to marketing are often different than those of enterprise-level businesses, if only because they have fewer resources. They may use many of the same methods, but where a larger business may spread their budget across many different things, where a small business might concentrate its efforts on a few select advertising methods.
One way that small businesses have found success in growing their brand reach is through PPC advertising. PPC advertising – or pay per click advertising – is defined as “an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher when the ad is clicked.” The ad links you see on Google or Bing search engines? Those are PPC ads. The ads you see on Facebook? Also often PPC advertising. This advertising method is highly focused, so even though a business pays per interaction, they are usually quality leads.
The benefits of PPC advertising for your small business
Here are some important ways that PPC advertising is important for small businesses.
1. More effective
PPC is an efficient way to reach your target audience. Where SEO is an organic and cost-efficient way to increase traffic and brand awareness, it’s also time-consuming and harder to tweak quickly. While you’re likely to find some boost to your business appearing in searches through SEO, PPC is a nearly-guaranteed way to get in front of customers.
2. Drives revenue and increases ROI
When paying per click for an ad, some businesses can see a high cost per click based on how many interactions they get and how common the keywords they’re paying for are. But this can often turn into better ROI than some other methods of advertising. Even if every click ends up costing your business $7, it can still be an effective use of ad dollars if a certain percentage of people are converting into paying customers. For many businesses, PPC pays for itself over time – and then some.
3. Easily customizable
PPC advertising offers great insight into the performance of your advertising campaign. It’s easy to align your Google AdWords PPC campaign into your Google Analytics dashboard. This gives you better insight into how your PPC ads are performing – how much traffic the ads are driving to your landing page and even if those customers are converting based on their click-through to your site. If you find that certain keywords you’re paying for aren’t driving enough traffic or actually turning into leads or sales, you can edit your keyword campaigns easily. PPC gives advertisers the ability to quickly and effectively refine their campaigns.
4. More flexible
The other benefit of PPC advertising is that it’s perfect for short-term campaigns. If you have a Christmas promotion or a new product launch, PPC can easily help audiences find your business through “best holiday sales” or by adding “best” or “new” to your keyword list. This can give your business a boost over a certain period of time or for a specific purpose. It also provides flexibility to allow you to turn a campaign off. This is widely preferred over traditional methods of advertising, like print ads or radio campaigns, that lock you into a certain amount of time that your ads have to run.
Ultimately, small businesses appreciate the high impact and high efficiency of PPC advertising. It’s a direct way to reach consumers who are looking for solutions like yours. It’s also customizable to any budget, so it scales well for businesses looking for direct digital marketing methods.
