Generally speaking Search Marketing is the best way to put your brand in front of interested customers looking for what you offer online such as on Google and there is both free and paid search. Paid search aka pay per click is when you pay when someone clicks on a keyword of your choosing. Advertisers benefit by bidding on relevant keywords.
Many savvy businesses use a combination of both pay per click and search engine optimization and typically they will start out buying clicks first, then scaling that out by using search engine optimization.
If search engine optimization is free why start buying clicks?
A successful Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign is like building a house on concrete versus sand. Here is what I mean.
Many businesses want to make as many online sales as possible and most also don’t want to waste time and money.
PPC is like dipping your toe in the pool before diving in. An advertiser can select a small number of very related keywords and they only pay when a potential customer clicks, getting them targeted traffic immediately as opposed to having to wait for more long term online marketing efforts such as Search Engine Optimization or getting social traffic to make a meaningful impact.
Pay Per Click is a great way to find out what works without diving too far into the online marketing pool and ending up with a big bill and little to know buyers. For example you can get your website ranked on Page 1 for desired keywords but having a ranking does not guarantee traffic and sales.
If an advertiser cannot buy and turn a profit on a small number of very related keywords then even more free search engine traffic won’t be worth while. By the way there’s really no such thing as free clicks, to rank highly you have to blog and create lots of content. Certainly worthwhile but only iF you know those keywords you’re trying to rank for will result in sales.
Think of Pay Per Click as the ultimate research tool an advertiser can use to get a small test campaign going which will then guide bigger plans such as display, remarketing, video, banners, and media buys.
