An alternative to Google Adwords

Google Adwords? What’s that? If you don’t know, it’s PPC or pay per click advertising.

Compare PPC to conventional advertising…

With conventional advertising, you pay the fee of the company who would place your ad. This ad would normally run for a set period of time such as a week or month. An example would be newspaper classified ads. Now no matter how much business you get from that ad, you still pay the fee, even if you get no response at all.

With PPC (Pay Per Click) you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. Therefore, we assume that the person who clicked must have been interested in what you were advertising and would make an ideal prospect in your target market right?

Yes and no is the answer to that one, why?

If your ad is well written and it does attract the prospect you want then all well and good, you have yourself a sale, maybe.

However, get your ad copy wrong and what happens? You attract clicks from people who have no interest in your product or service but you still have to pay because they clicked on your link.

That’s why in PPC advertising it is essential to get your ad just right and in YOUR target market.

Google Adwords is probably the best well known of all the pay per click services on the internet but there are alternatives.

Google, and most other search engines use a system of bidding on keywords and the higher the bids, the better the ad position. This of course encourages advertisers to increase what they will pay for a click and therefore the profits of the search engine.

PPC can easily get out of hand and you must closely monitor your ROI (Return on investment) before it ends up costing you more than you are earning.

Writing effective ads

A recent research shows that users are more likely to click on ads that are tailored, clear and factual:

Describe what users will find when they click on your ad and go to your site.

Be neutral and write as if you were a visitor describing your site.

Avoid using superlatives such as "the best", "cheapest" or "greatest".

Should you offer a product or service within a certain geographical area only, include it in the description.

Target specific URLs

Research indicates that 96% of people prefer a specific page over a more general page, meaning, sending customers to a specific product page is much more likely to result in sales:

Send your customers directly to the URL that is most relevant to your ad.

For example, a provider of consumer electronics products who advertise a Sony DCR-PC350 Camcorder, should target the ads directly to the specific product page.

There is much much more to pay per click advertising, so much so that one could write a book on it (and many have!)

So, an alternative to Google adwords?

Whilst Google adwords ads are displayed on search engine results as are most other PPC services, there is one alternative I have been using for a while now called BidVertiser. What Makes BidVertiser different is that their ads display on web sites relevant to your product or service.

The Bidvertiser service is simple to use…

Advertise across thousands of websites on a pay per click basis

1. Browse their categorized directory of websites
2. Select the appropriate ones for your business
3. Set your desired geographic targeting
4. Set your pay per click bids
5. Your ads are up and running!

But the best bit is, if you are new to Pay Per Click advertising, you can get $20 in free clicks if you use this link  to get started. Then you can experience and experiment with PPC advertising without the worry of losing money!

Tagged as: advertising, google adwords alternative, pay per click, ppc