Pay-Per-Click Not "Paper Clip"
It can be a mystery to those unfamiliar with it. PPC
(which is search engine jargon for pay-per-click
advertising - not "paper clip" advertising) is one way of
driving traffic to your website. As the name suggests,
you "pay" each time someone "clicks" your ad. With
organic (free, natural) search rankings, you don't pay.
Why would you pay to use PPC when free listings are
available? Actually, there are several reasons.
Instant Traffic for New or Developing
Sites
It takes time for newly developed websites to
garner traffic. Unlike the cliché from the movie Field of
Dreams, if you build it, they won't automatically come.
If your goal is to use organic (free) search rankings to
drive traffic to your site, accomplishing that goal may
take you as long as six months. For this reason, PPC
offers an excellent opportunity for new sites to start
functioning immediately.
All that's needed to start driving traffic with PPC is
a plan, a list of keywords and a credit card. The
second you type in your credit card number and
click "Enter" your ads go live. Likewise, it only takes
one click to stop the campaign. You have total
control.
PPC: Immediate Feedback for Copy
Another important benefit of PPC ads is their
ability to provide immediate feedback on how your
headlines or short copy segments are working. If
you're gearing up for a mail campaign, you could
easily upload the headline of your postcard or flyer to
your PPC account and test its effectiveness. Within
mere hours (sometimes minutes!) you'll be able to
determine how people are responding to the
headline. Pause the campaign, make minor tweaks,
then start it up again and you can quickly see if the
changes improved or decreased your click-through
rate. Once you've gotten the headline to perform
optimally, you can confidently use it on your mailer.
Expand Your Market Reach
In addition, PPC is great for expanding your reach.
Let's say you chose the keyphrase "CPA New York
City" when you optimized your site for organic search.
With PPC, you can easily also target the phrases "CPA
New Jersey," "CPA Manhattan" or any other
nearby town. This is a wonderful way to bring in clients
from other areas without having to create individual
pages optimized for each keyphrase.
Full Control
Depending on who you ask, having full control
over your PPC campaign can be a good thing or a not-
so-good thing. You can set it up and manage it
yourself, but it is not an automated process. To set up
an account, you'll have to maneuver through several
steps. None would be deemed as "difficult," but they
can be time consuming and a little confusing.
Keyword selection, setting spending limits and
parameters, and organization can take your afternoon
if you have little or no experience with PPC.
Understanding what effects each factor will cause
is another area of concern. For instance, setting a
daily limit too low equates to reducing your traffic
count. On the other hand, setting it too high can cause
your monthly bill to rise. However, once you grasp
what each does and the results they deliver you can
set everything the way you want.
You can quickly refine settings until you reach your
PPC goals, but you will want to keep a close eye on
your account for the first 72 hours to be sure you
haven't enabled settings that will cause wild spending
sprees.
You can also separate your keywords into various
campaigns. A good use for this feature is to generate
leads for particular areas of your firm. You may opt to
set up a campaign for business valuation, trusts and
estates, or tax preparation, if you wish to bring in new
clients in those areas.
Keyword Selection
Because CPA firms deal with local clients the
majority of the time, you'll want to limit where the
search engine shows your ads, focusing only on
areas applicable to your firm. Why bother? The reason
is monetary. A CPA located in Phoenix, Arizona, would
not want to waste money on clicks from prospects in
Atlanta, Georgia.
Likewise, if you have a specialty (real estate,
retirement, manufacturing), then you'll want to choose
keyphrases that deal with what you offer. Having leads
click to your site from terms such as "CPA," "certified
public accountant" or "accounting firm" is rarely
productive because of location or niche.
However, before choosing keyphrases, be sure to do
some research. Most importantly, you'll want to select
keyphrases your leads are using. Never guess.
Google, Yahoo! and others who offer PPC advertising
provide keyword selection research. This gives you
detailed information on the specific terms users are
typing into search engines. It does no good to target
keyphrases that your leads are using.
Starting and stopping within times and/or dates
(or spending limits) you define can offer assurance
that your ads will find the clients best suited to your
firm without breaking your marketing budget.
