As a small business owner you have probably contemplated PPC advertising for your business or even been approached by an agency who mislead everyone claiming they ‘specialise’ in ppc advertising for small businesses.
But does PPC advertising for small businesses actually work?
In all honesty, I wouldn’t want to answer yes or no without well constructed PPC strategy and a concrete game plan. There are several factors that will determine the success of your PPC advertising campaign, such as:
- Your businesses industry
- Your marketing budget
- The average price of your products / services
- Competition
What is PPC Advertising?
PPC is an advertising term used to describe pay per click advertising. In a nutshell, it’s a sponsored listing that appears in the search engines for certain keywords and phrases in the location that you select when setting up your PPC campaign. For example, if you were a roofer in small town you could create a PPC campaign that would enable your business listing to appear above all your competitors (even including the ones who are on the first page already).
How to set up a PPC campaign?
There are tonnes of great resources to use when learning how to set up PPC advertising for small businesses. Google provide excellent information on their Google Adwords page where you can learn a little more about PPC advertising and the way it works. It’s completely free to set up and will take no time at all to launch your first ad.
PLEASE don’t just rush into setting up an advert straight away!
One of the biggest misconceptions about PPC advertising is that anyone can just create an ad and get more business. I’ve seen it all before and sometimes it works, but most of the time it doesn’t. You need to consider the points mentioned above and vow to yourself that you will spend at least 3 hours a week tweaking and testing your adverts to ensure you get the most out of your online advertising budget. TIP: Once you find an advert that seems to work. Try tweaking and running multiple variations of the successful advert to make sure it becomes even more successful. Your quality score and keywords are the main determinant for ensuring your ad appears to the exact people you want it to.
What are the advantages of PPC advertising for small businesses?
- Get directly in front of potential customers
- Only pay once someone actually clicks your advert
- You can target an exact location (e.g. “roofers in Kent”)
- Can quickly increase leads and sales (if done correctly)
- Easily track the return on investment
What are the disadvantages of PPC advertising for small businesses?
- Not learning the basics of PPC advertising can end very badly (and expensively)
- Using the wrong keywords
- Ad budget is too small
- The price of your product or service is too low
- Not tweaking and changing your ad every now and again
In conclusion, PPC advertising for small businesses takes time, investment and patience. I’ve seen too many small business owners throw hundreds of pounds into PPC advertising and they haven’t even set up a business website to direct the people towards. It takes time for campaigns to become profitable but once you have found the perfect campaign that seems to convert leads into customers quickly, you’ll see the return on investment skyrocket! If you still aren’t sure about setting up PPC advertising (or can’t be bothered to try and do it yourself) then you will need to speak to an advertising company who specialise in small business PPC advertising. Luckily we have a great team who have helped over 250+ small business owners get online in the most affordable way possible. Click here to get in touch for a free consultation.
