Pay per-click

The fact that PPC traffic is targeted is one of the elements that appeals so much to many small business owners. When you set up a campaign so your ads will only show when specific keywords are entered, you are essentially drawing in people who are already looking for the types of products or services you sell. And while that doesn’t equal guaranteed sales, it will help narrow the field and will give you a better ROI on your marketing investment.

Many small businesses need results yesterday, and while PPC can’t turn back time, it can get results faster than any other type of advertising. You can literally start a campaign in the morning and be seeing increased traffic to your website by the afternoon. You’ll still have to continue the sales message on your website and convert the traffic, but PPC is a great vehicle to get them there. It’s still important to do regular search engine optimization, but SEO can take months to see a spike in traffic, even when you do it right.One the real benefits of PPC for small business is that you can set your ad spend, and your ads will stop showing once you reach that number. You also set the maximum amount you are willing to pay for a click on one of your ads.

For more competitive keywords such as ‘health foods’ the cost-per-click it takes to get on the first page of search results is substantial, but skilled PPC experts are usually able to utilize techniques that will help keep you part of the action if you are in a competitive industry.The fact that you’re able to have such control over your ad spend makes PPC a great equalizer, as ads from small mom & pop type businesses might be shown alongside ads from national chains.

You’re also able to determine where your ads are shown. This means if you have a local business in Atlanta, people from San Francisco aren’t clicking on your ads and costing you money when they have no intention of visiting. Real-time accountability is another benefit of PPC for small business. With PPC, you can track which ads and which keywords are resulting in visits to your websites, which ones are profitable and which ones are duds.