A pay-per-click (PPC) campaign is an excellent form of business marketing for an e-commerce operation. Just because you build a website for your business showcasing its products or services does not mean that you will automatically get visitors, and customers. It takes work to drive traffic and then convert visitors into sales.

PPC Basics

A PPC campaign is one whereby the business owner pays a site like Google for click-throughs to their site. You select the keywords that are most often used in searches for your products or services, then pay for the results of gaining traffic. A PPC campaign is results-based, so in essence you will only be charged for its success.

Keywords Are Key

It can be difficult to decide on the best or most popular phrases on your own, but here are a few tips from marketing consultants.

Ensure your keywords are relevant and specific. For instance, broad terms like "laptop computer" or "computer software" are too common. Most savvy internet searchers know they need to narrow down the results by including more specifics such as "buy laptop computer virus protection" or "free anti-virus software".

You can find the most popular words used to find your website by examining the site's statistics. Nearly all hosting sites offer some form of analytics that will reveal search terms and their frequency of usage. Remember that if some of the terms are resulting in a visitor being erroneously directed to your site that these are not the keywords you want to pay for.

You might also want to include keywords that are related to your location, especially if your website's main goal is to draw in local customers. For instance, you could narrow down the above example keywords even further as "London anti-virus software company".

Landing Pages

Another factor in your PPC campaign is the place where their click-through takes them, or the landing page. If someone is specifically seeking an anti-virus software package that they can purchase, for example, they will not want to be routed to your "About Us" page. If you are paying for the keywords "free anti-virus software", then you should direct their click to a page offering a free trial download.

Ensure that the link you are promoting is relevant to the keywords being entered. Customers who are thrown off course in their quest will be frustrated and unlikely to stick around and explore your site further.

Whilst a pay-per-click campaign can be a great business marketing tool to increase sales at your e-commerce website, it can also be a waste of money if you do not carefully consider the components. Most business owners do not have the time to keep up with all of the marketing concerns and it could be highly beneficial to hire a professional to help. After all, the goal is to increase profits, not throw away your marketing budget.