Introducing Google AdWords and Pay Per Click

Pay per click was a revolution in advertising when it was introduced.  The concept of the advertiser only paying for their advert if the consumer looks at the advertised product was amazing!  Prior to this an advertiser would pay up-front for their campaign whether a single consumer cared or not.

The second part of this amazing advertising story is that the adverts are targeted at consumers either searching for information related to the advert or are at a web site related to the advert.  This targeting isn't new (with TV advertising you can advertise during specific programs and times) but Google's model was completely dynamic - the advertiser need not know which consumers are searching or which web sites to target, the system does that automatically.

So, automatic dynamic advert placement and you only pay for the advert when someone is interested in the advert i.e. they click on it! Nice, let's look a little deeper...

Pay Per Click

How much do you pay, per click?  And how many clicks will you get?

Good questions!  Let's start with the first.  You advertising is based on keyword searches.  The more advertisers there are for those keywords, the higher the potential amount you will have to pay for them.  This goes a little further... the nearer the top of the list of advertisers you are, the more you will have to pay!

An example should help, let's say you have a Pizza Recipe book.  You may want the advert for your book to appear to anybody who searches using the phrases:

• recipe pizza
• pizza recipe
• pizza recipes
• make your own pizza
• make my own pizza

I've just done a search for 'pizza recipe' and Google returned 524,000 results and four adverts.  Given that there only appears to be four adverts, it's unlikely that those keywords will be expensive.  In fact, having just gone in to my AdWords account and tested them, I can tell you that as I write those keywords will cost between 10-30 US cents or 6-17 UK pence if you want the top position on the list - its likely that the actual clicks will be one the cheaper side of this estimate.

Let's go with 10c per click then.  So, how many clicks?  Google's estimation is that you can expect between 8-10 clicks per day for the phrase 'pizza recipe' so an estimated maximum cost of $1 per day.

But what if we'd chosen a more popular topic that cost $1.70 per click and an estimated 200 clicks per day, that's $340 per day.  Now, the profit you make from those clicks will determine if that's a reasonable amount to pay, but either way you can set a budget.  Tell Google your budget and it will stop displaying your advert when your budget is reached.  Say, $1 per day for our Pizza example.

So the key concepts are:

• Your advertising campaigns are based on keywords
• Your adverts appear in response to users searching with those keywords or on web sites that who's content is relevant to those keywords (and you can choose either or both of these options)
• You only pay for your advert when someone clicks on it
• The amount you pay depends on how high up in the list of adverts you appear and the popularity of the keywords you are targeting
• You can set budgets for all of your advertising campaigns

This really is just scratching the surface of the Google AdWords advertising platform, you can learn a lot more by visiting the site  It's also worth knowing that there are other companies that offer a similar kind of advertising platform, such a Yahoo! Sponsored Search, Miva and soon Microsoft's MSN.

Once you're advertising has bought visitors to your site, how do you convert them from prospects to customers to valued clients?  ValuedClientSystem.com provides all the eCommerce and Marketing tools you need to sell online and build relationships with your prospects and clients.

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