Cost Per Click (CPC) Advertising Online
The term 'CPC' – or Cost-Per-Click advertising – stands for the cost paid for every click-through on an internet advert. It is a very effective means of internet marketing, because it creates opportunities for customers to avail themselves of your goods and services wherever they may be surfing the Web by offering a percentage of revenue to affiliated partner websites – who themselves provide you with purchase-point click-through. This payment-by-results method means that you do not have to pay affiliates who fail to generate any sales.
Websites which use Cost-Per-Click advertising display the adverts when a relevant keyword query is made matching one on the advertiser's list. These adverts can also be called 'sponsored links' or 'sponsored ads' and usually appear to the right of the normal search results on most search engines, or in other places on a content site.
Although CPC is often used interchangeably with the similar pay-per-click (PPC), the difference arises when one looks at their financial meanings. In short, PPC stands for the actual payment made per click-throughs, while CPC means the initial assessment of per-click costs for business contracts that are not themselves based on click-throughs.
One of the top sources for CPC ads is Google adwords – the basis of many a successful Cost-Per-Click advertising campaign. The advantages stemming from having such campaigns taking place on such a market-dominant search engine as Google are obvious – your business can see its adverts placed on the first page of search results seen by literally millions of people.
CPC Campaigns are cost effective.
To make a CPC campaign as cost effective as possible, it is vital to select the right key phrases for which you will pay a Cost-Per-Click. It is important to consider which keywords will take potential customers to the right landing pages in order to ensure you are directing your resources in the best possible direction, as well as taking action to improve the conversion rates of computer users visiting your site. This action can include optimising the design and navigability of your web pages to make them more search engine-friendly, and to help the landing pages seamlessly blend with the rest of the website.
At Online Media Direct, we will research and analyse the best search terms for your business, using data analysis provided by Google adwords. We can help you mount an effective CPC-based advertising campaign and help you to plot its success through analysing the behaviour of visitors to your website and charting what they do upon reaching your homepage.
We can help refine your campaigns and by doing so help you reach a wider audience – eliminating irrelevant and uneconomical clicks, while striving to discover new keywords to increase your coverage. Many search engines have automated systems in place which spot the best managed Cost-Per-Click advertising campaigns and offer discounts on price to them. We will ensure that your campaign conforms to these engines' best practices.
CPC advertising works particularly effectively in conjunction with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), as it promotes your website in the search results themselves, while also helping to ensure that your ads appear in the same listings – even on the same page!
