As marketing budgets continue to shrink, every penny spent must impact your bottom line in a positive way. Paid advertising or pay-per-click is a tried and tested Internet marketing technique that has reached great heights in its advancement. Your business can reap good profits by only spending very little to gain new customers online. Read a whitepaper to to find out what Paid Advertising is all about, how you can use it and what returns on investment you can expect to see.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) - An Overview: Whether or not, you have tried it, all of us have seen paid advertising. When you type in a search term on Google, Yahoo! Or any other search engine, you get a listing of the results on the main central space of your screen; which is the organic or natural search result. On the right hand and also sometimes, on the very top of the page before the organic listing, you see Sponsored links or pay-per-click results. Advertisers have paid for their online ad and link to their website or landing page to show up for the keywords you searched. The good thing is, even though their ads and links appear, they only pay the search engine, content site, ad network or blog if you actually click on their ad / link. Hence, the term, "pay-per-click" or PPC.

Measure ROI: What better way to track return on investment than to be able to monitor what you spend and what you get in return. A strategic, well managed PPC campaign that uses the best keywords can bring in good volumes of targeted traffic. The process starts with really getting to know your customers and what they are looking for; in other words, keyword research.

Keyword Research: Several free and member-only paid tools are available online for doing this research. The reason you can’t do without it is because strangely enough, the keywords you would like to promote about your business aren’t always the ones your customers will use to search. For example, you may be selling "swaddling blankets", your customers may only search "baby blankets".

The most searched keywords are often the most expensive (we are usually talking in cents here, so don't think this costs mega bucks!). Advertisers bid on keywords they want to use for their campaigns, which determines how much every click on your ad will cost you if you want to bid on the same keywords. An experienced and trained Internet marketing professional like your WSI Consultant knows the value of low-hanging fruit or what are also called "long-tail keywords". In the example above, a good long-tail keyword to reach your target audience would be something like "blankets for swaddling your baby".

Accomplishing Advertising Goals: Even though PPC is an inexpensive and 100% measurable method of advertising, one should never spend without knowing what the goals of a campaign are. From the start you must identify and work to accomplish those goals – your goals could be to sell a product or service (selling), receive an email or phone call (lead generation), acquire members or subscribers to a newsletter or online feed (lead nurturing), increase customer loyalty through points, air miles and points (brand recognition and enhancement). At every stage of running a PPC campaign, you can test the results to tweak and refine your ad copy, landing page or conversion mechanism and call to action until you achieve the set goals.

Download the WSI whitepaper – "Don't Leave Your Money on the Table: Your Guide to Paid Search".

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