PPC is one of the fastest & best ways of advertising in the Digital Marketing  world.  
There are still many companies (CXO/Directors), including some of my clients/prospects, who are either not aware of PPC or not using PPC or have never tried it as a Digital Marketing tool; leave aside understanding & using it as a powerful Digital marketing tool.

PPC or SEM  is one of the powerful Digital Marketing tools which can generate a lot of instant traffic to your website & if planned well can generate lot of relevant leads which can easily convert into business. It is also very risky tool if you do not know what you are doing (like a Gun in a hand of a Kid), as it can burn a big hole in your pocket without any significant results to show for.

In this article, we will try to explain, what is PPC? Who should use PPC? How you should do PPC to reap the power of PPC?

What is PPC ?

PPC (Pay Per Click) is a paid advertising  in internet to bring traffic to your website, where advertiser only pays the publisher  when someone clicks on the advertisement.  The examples of PPC  are the ads that appear  on the top  or on right hand side of the search results or the banner ads that you see on top, bottom or on sides of any websites.   There are two types of  PPC - Search engine ads and Display ads.

Who should do PPC?

PPC is an integral part of Digital Marketing strategy. It can give you lot of quick business and in some cases, if you do not know what you are doing, it can burn a hole in your pocket.  So, who should do PPC as main strategy for their Digital Marketing initiatives? Here are few companies/situations where it makes sense to go for PPC:

·         Need Quick wins
·         Need lot of traffic quickly to your website
·         Have decent advertising budget
·         Need to build brand
·         To attract some traffic using keywords that you(your company/website) do not stand a                  chance to compete through SEO.

Why PPC? 

PPC has one unique advantage - instant result. It is one of the Digital Marketing tools which produces the fastest results. When you search any keyword or phrase in a search engine, based on several criteria and algorithm, search engines rank you and accordingly you are placed in the search results. In order to come higher in the search results for certain keywords, you have to optimize your site, which is called SEO, which may take at least few months.  In certain cases, it may also take few years for keywords in high demand.  Contrary to this, in PPC, if you pay (bid highest) you can come on top in few minutes. In other words, PPC is buying your way to higher ranking in the search results.

When  PPC?

If you are a new company & have recently developed the website, it would take lot of time to do SEO & get ranked in the first page of the search result. This is an ideal time for an organization to consider PPC where you can get lot of traffic  from day one.  It also makes sense for start-ups/SME with funding (Angle/1st round), who need to quickly show some good results to qualify for the next round.  PPC can give you those quick wins.  

It can also make sense for large MNC which has lot of marketing budget & wants to build a brand for their existing or new product. Using display ads or remarketing/retargeting, they can reach mass,  economically.

Where should you do PPC?

In other words,  this means, where you should spend your money? Which platform?  There are several platforms like Google Adwords, Bing/Yahoo, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter,…. etc., to name a few. You can also do display ads or banner ads in many websites. One of most important & powerful PPC platforms is Google Adwords.  However, the  other platforms like FaceBook, Linkedin, Yahoo/Bing work in the similar way, just slightly different. Each one has some advantages & disadvantages. If possible, I will cover where you should do PPC in detail, where we can discuss the pros & cons of each platform & which platform you should spend your money & why?

How to do PPC?

PPC process can be divided in to 4 parts:  

1.       Initial R&D & Planning
2.       PPC set up
3.       Management
4.       Continuous improvement

One of the questions I am often asked is, "Should you do the PPC in-house or outsource it? In a nutshell, if you have a dedicated resource who knows what he is doing, then it is OK to do it in-house, else you should outsource. Also, always look at the ROI.  If you are getting significant ROI for the PPC spend, then you can continue in-house, else outsource. One of things I propagate is that if you are doing PPC in-house & if the campaigns are well optimized; then you should challenge a marketing agency to improve the performance further & link the payment to the performance & not the total budget/spent.  If you are a SME or a start up with very limited PPC spend, it is OK to do it in house, but when you are a large organization with multiple products, services, geographies,…..etc. it gets complicated & the ideal way to handle this is to outsource.  Like the proverb goes:  Why buy a cow when you can get milk, whenever you want at an affordable price, without the pain of maintaining a cow.

To summarize, here are some advantages of PPC:

1.       Fastest way to generate business
2.       Scalable
3.       Measurable
4.       Easy to outsource & monitor the progress
5.       Excellent analytic/ reporting

It is easy to set up a PPC account & start advertising & start getting some traffic to your site, however it is difficult to optimize the campaigns & get the ROI from PPC. If you are not able to achieve the ROI from you PPC budget,  please call us  or write to us. Vaidya Consulting can help.  Click here to contact us.

Digital Marketing also popularly known as Internet Marketing or On-line Marketing is one of the fastest growing marketing  which is  also the most effective & economical.  Compared to the conventional marketing the internet marketing is quite inexpensive & also has  the best ROI; hence this should be must use marketing stream for SME/SMBs. 

Digital Marketing consists of the following : 

* Website Design & Development

Website is a digital face of the organization on the net which is accessible to everyone globally.  In this Internet marketing age a website design & development plays a very important role in the brand building and business development.  Every organization should have a good website which generates some decent business for the organization.

A basic website should have pages like Home, About us, Products/services offered and Contact us, this type of websites are also called brochureware.  Gone are the days when website just provided the info on your products & services. In today’s competitive environment website is a low cost business generating tool. In order to achieve this your website should contain pages  like online demo, videos, blog, downloads, case studies, news,….etc.  One also need to do SEM/SEO/PPC/SMM  to generate traffic to your website in order to convert this traffic into leads & eventually into business.  
To read more click here - Website Design & Development

* SEM – Search Engine Marketing

According to Wikipedia Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) through optimization and advertising. SEM may use search engine optimization (SEO) or use pay per click (PPC) methods. Some people use the term SEM  exclusively for pay per click advertising (PPC). Let us look at both these techniques in detail.

* SEO – Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization, is the process by which you can bring your website or page appear   higher in the first page or closer to the first page for the search results in various search engines.  SEO is the natural or organic way of optimizing the Website/pages. The techniques involved are on page & off page optimization which involves Keyword analysis, rewriting the website content & code, back link generation to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages. There are two types of techniques for the optimization White hat & black hat techniques.  One should make sure   that black hat techniques are not used (especially when SEO work is outsourced to a vendor) else your website can be blacklisted in some of the search engines.

* PPC – Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click is an one form of Online advertizing where the advertisers would pay the publisher or website owner or Search Engine Companies for inclusion of their ad which will drive traffic to their website/Landing pages. The good part of PPC is you only pay when someone clicks your ad. In order to have a successful PPC campaign one need to have a detailed strategy which includes the budget, proper keyword selection, managing the bidding process, competitive analysis & careful monitoring & continuously modifying several parameters. Well panned & executed PPC campaign is one of the quickest ways of getting the results (leads) with a minimum budget.  

* SMM - Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing is a process of marketing your product/service or brand using social media sites.   There are hundreds of Social Media sites where individuals can interact with each other and share info, news, photo, video, comment on all these media  or your products or services whether they like it or not & why? These comments on your products or services can be very valuable to the organization.

Considering the popularity & benefits (also the low costs) of the Social Media the corporate world also has joined the bandwagon and have started marketing their Products & Services  on Social Media  sites. Most popular Social Media sites are Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter & Youtube to name a few.  Social Media Marketing is one of the fastest growing & low cost marketing tool.

* Blog

A blog is a short form of web log. It is a information site on the net which includes all kind of information or updates (called Post/s) from mostly one individual in the reverse chronological order, where the most recent post appears first. The Blog originally started as Personal Online diaries, but with its success SMEs & Corporates have started  using  it for marketing their products & services, brand building, publishing whitepapers and more recently all kind of media like images, photos, infographics, podcasts  & videos along with the written contents. Blogs gained the moment because of its simplicity & low cost. Effective use of blog can get lot of traffic to your website & can also serve as a excellent tool to communicate & interact with your target audience.

* Youtube

YouTube is one of the most popular video-sharing website, on which users can upload, view and share videos.  After Google, Youtube has become second largest search engine. Youtube started as home made video sharing, talent showcasing site, however over period of time it has become one of the most powerful Internet marketing tool. Statistic shows that it will not only increase  your website’s chances of Google first page appearance but also increases some of the marketing results like  clicking rate & purchasing rate. Youtube marketing is embraced by MSMB/SME as well as MNCs because of its global reach at zero cost.