Pay Per Click - PPC: The Pros and Cons

It’s always handy to know the advantages and disadvantages of your chosen advertising medium - especially when the MD asks why you’ve done it that way. With that in mind here are 5 cons closely followed by 5 pros. Yes the title is “The Pros and Cons” but we like to finish on a positive:

Con - Requires some technical knowledge

Despite all of the search engines declaring PPC as simple as sliced bread, it does require some technical knowledge to ensure the tracking is functional, landing pages are optimised etc etc.

Con - Requires constant monitoring

To ensure value for money campaigns require almost constant monitoring. Competitors change their bid values daily, search volumes change daily, and businesses change daily. Your campaigns needs to reflect the needs of your business - often on a daily or weekly basis.

Con - There are no guarantees

Pay Per Click does not guarantee you sales. It does guarantee to give you traffic but that assumes there are sufficient searches to give you that traffic - which is not guaranteed!

Con - Increasing competition means increasing budget

As you can imagine when you start to bid on a keyword/phrase that is popular most people will simple increase the value of their bid to gain the top positions. This leads to increasing costs.

Con - Belief PPC is a pancea for all ills..

Scraping the barrel but we had to have a fifth one! Still there is the belief out there that PPC will deliver all the promises that search engine optimisation failed to - high rankings and lots of traffic. Pay per click should be one part of your internet strategy, SEO should be another.

Pro - You only pay for what you get

Pay per click is exactly that - you pay when someone clicks on your ad.

Pro - You only spend what you can afford

Pay Per Click is cheap to setup and your expense is limited to the daily budgets you set. Campaigns can be paused and resumed, allowing you time to evaluate your results.

Pro - Accurate targeting

Unlike other forms of advertings, such as newspapers and magazines, PPC is targetted by its nature. A search for hotels in Manchester returns relevant Hotel sites because that is what they are looking for. Averts can also be targetted by countries, cities, time slots and languages.

Pro - Fast set up and immediate results

It is widely known that SEO takes a while to generate decent rankings. Pay Per Click is immediate to set up and can start delivering within days. For this reason many people temporarily increase their PPC budgets until the natural listings start to provide traffic.

Pro - Accurate Trackability

As you would expect you can track keywords/phrases to determine which are the most cost effective and which contribute most to your objectives. Accurate tracking is vital to get the most from your Pay Per Click campaign.

Whilst we have manipulated the pros and cons to give us and equal list, there are far more pros than cons. PPC is another route to market and a value tool for driving qualified traffic.