What Position Should You Be Happy with on a Pay-Per-Click Service?

You have signed up for a pay-per-click service (such as google Adwords or Overture.com) and you are thrust into a bidding war over certain keywords. 

How concerned should you be about your placement?

You know that anyone who has the bidding power and the bidding money can effectively buy themselves a #1 position, but you should know that may not be the position that earns the best bottom-line profit over the long haul.

In fact, you may be better off to allow your position to drop to second, third, even sixth place.

Pay-per-click is the ultimate concept in advertising cost control. For each keyword or key phrase that relates to your offer, you determine how much you are willing to spend/bid for each click-through your site receives. The higher you bid on any particular keyword/phrase, the higher your listing will appear in the search results.

From a marketing standpoint that works, as searchers who will view your listings will also be more likely to have a valid interest in your business and your offerings. Pay-per-click search results are, at least from the better engines, more specific and more targeted than those from conventional search engines like Google and Yahoo.

You may have recently heard of pay-per-click advertising being referred to as 'fool proof' and 'risk free.'  We have not found that to be the case. 

Before bidding on costly keyword terms,  we advise that you do your research, and know the facts. A leap into the churning waters of pay-per-click can soon have you leaping to recover your advertising budget.

The automatic assumption is that the top of the heap is the best place to be. King of the Hill.  But is that true with PPC advertising?

Think about this. A searcher gets a bullseye hit and finds your PPC ad #1. She checks it out, all is great with the world. BUT, then what does the consumer do? She wants to see if there are others out there offering the same or similar product, and if there may be something cheaper? Who buys on the first click?

If you are down in the 3^rd or 4^th position, the consumer has had a chance to do her shopping and comparing. You are in like Flynn when she finds that your price is in line with the other competitors. She’s not going to click all the way back to the first one if the prices are comparable. What a waste or her precious time.

See the benefit here?

Talk about the Price?

Do we talk about price in our ad? Does it make sense? Will it turn the consumer off?

Do you wish to weed out the curiosity clickers? Do you want only the serious buyer to click on your ad. Only then should you talk about price, or special deals in your ad.

Managing Costs

Which is better? 4 fast sales from a $1 listing, or 4 sales from a .12 listing? You decide. The better you manage your pay-per-click campaign, the more chances you will have to experiment with keywords and ads.

What should you look for? Pay attention to the bid patterns on any page of search results for the keywords you are interested in. Often there is a point in the listings where the bids drop off dramatically, and reasonably good positions are available for a relatively cheap bid. If the drop-off point is still within the top ten, or even on the same page with the top ten listings, that may be the place to stake your claim.

Do your research, determine what you are willing to pay for your advertising campaign, and make more money!