To summarize it, every time your ad is clicked, sending a visitor to your website, you pay the search engine a small fee. (That’s why it’s called “pay per click.”) When your PPC campaign is well-designed and running smoothly, that fee will be trivial, because the visit is worth more to your business than what you pay for it.

Ultimately, pay-per-click marketing can be beneficial for everyone:

• Searchers

Searchers click on paid search ads more often than any other form of digital advertising. This means that people really don’t mind being advertised to, provided that the products and services advertised fit the searcher’s needs. And because we use search engines when we’re looking for products and services, the results, including the ads, are generally highly relevant to what we’re looking for.

• Advertisers

Advertisers are offered a unique means of putting their message in front of an audience who is actively and specifically seeking out their product. Because searchers reveal their intent through their search query, advertisers are able to measure the quality of traffic that results from search engine clicks.

• Search Engines

PPC enables search engines to cater to searchers and advertisers simultaneously. The searchers comprise their user-base, while the advertisers provide them with their revenue stream. The engines want to provide relevant results, first and foremost, while offering a highly targeted, revenue-driving advertising channel.

Is Pay-Per-Click Right for You?

The truth is, pay-per-click marketing can work for almost any kind of business, whether you’re looking to sell products through an e-commerce website, generate leads for a service-based or software business, build brand awareness, or even drive foot traffic and phone calls to your local store.

The difficulty is in the execution. In order to get the most out of your pay-per-click marketing campaign, you need to follow a few best practices.