How can small businesses owners gain from PPC Marketing

by Guna Nadar - 2/27/2015 3851 Views

A smart way to increase your business profit

Pay Per Click has been acting as a highly effective tool for small business marketing. Many startups across the globe have been investing upon PPC to gain increased market exposure and directing traffic into their online business platforms. PPC ads take businesses to the top of search engine pages and are an advantage for businesses that haven’t yet been able to gain substantial SEO recognition. According to wordstream.com, the top 3 spots for paid ads win about 41% of the clicks from the SERPs. Consequently, in the fourth quarter of 2014, the investment on PPC campaigns by small businesses rose by 12%.

While PPC has been proving effective for several small businesses worldwide, not all have been able to extract out the complete advantages. There are several questions small business marketers need to ask themselves before investing upon a PPC campaign.

Estimating the value of a new customer

The cost of acquiring a new customer would be 6-7 times more than retaining an old one. The return on investment (ROI) is a crucial element for any business, big or small. With PPC, you have a special problem. Investing is PPC can seem to be a helpful process but it is also too easy for people to click on your ads but not make a transaction. The return on your investment is highly dependent on the quality of your ad. Consequently businesses should be focusing more on the worth of each loyal customer with regard to repeat sales. In case you are offering a subscription based service, wherein the product is accessed repeatedly, there is less risk when compared to selling one-time products.

Estimating your profit margin

PPC is more advisable for services and products that have a higher ticket value since the resulting sale will be able to absorb the integrated costs. For small business, the PPC budgets are likely to be on the smaller side ranging between $100 and $10,000. There could always be some exceptions but marketers have found it more challenging to achieve a strong ROI with services and products that cost $100 and less. On the other hand, PPC can also prove to be successful if you have a lower order value or a lower profit margin. In this case, you ought to be looking at less competitive keywords (unique services).

Presence of niche products and service

“People can buy ‘anything’ on the internet”; but you also need to ensure the uniqueness of your product line. It’s true that people would be searching the internet for products that aren’t available in the local market and PPC can be the way to reach out to this audience. However, also take care of the timing and quality of the ad. PPC campaigns in niche keywords will generally provide a higher ROI than the normal mass market keywords. Businesses have been able to make $2 in average revenues for every $1 spent on PPC and Adwords.

Extensiveness of your product line

A wide range of product gives you the advantage of being able to choose from creative choice of keywords. There is a broad scope for long tailed and descriptive keywording that can match with the intuitive search criteria of your audience.

Do you encounter the ‘Deadline Factor”?

Products with a “Deadline Factor” attract customers who are more directed to purchases than browsing. Good examples would be wedding supplies, last minute Christmas gifts, valentine day offers, vacation packages and the like. These are also the purchases that are more emotionally driven and PPC can help bring a steady stream of leads/sales. At the day’s end, it is the profit that counts and not the number of clicks.

A well planned PPC campaign can bring in an exciting stream of pre-qualified leads and sales through your business website. All you need to do is some careful number crunching during the early phases of the campaign. While in SEO, ‘content is king’, for PPC, ‘cash is king’. Poorly designed campaigns on the other hand can blow up your investments and expectations. PPC is considered the second most effective tool (after SEO) with 48% of global marketers relying heavily on it. For small business and startups, SEO is not a possible option, making PPC at the core of their marketing tactics.

Category :

SEO News

Tags :

Small Business, PPC, PPC Marketing

About Guna Nadar

Brief Info about Guna Nadar +

I mostly write technical aspects and not much into creative writing. For the past decade I worked along with top notch SEO & Internet Marketing professionals which naturally lured me into the world of Search Engines. When I am not writing I read from comics to philosophy.Antiques, Fishing, hunting are my passions. Currently I am working on Google Penalty protection and .... more info about the author