5 Things Marketers Need To Know About Cost Per Click Marketing

Advertisers have a vast array of options for marketing their product. One of these is the cost per click  search engine marketing.

What is CPC Marketing?

Cost per Click (CPC) refers to the amount that an advertiser pays for each click on an advertisement run by the online advertising network. Out of the large number of internet users in any given area, your advert is likely to reach them.

These are your visitors, and they can choose to click on your ad, giving attention to your company and the product you offer them.

Basically, as an advertiser, you pay for this sort of action, to have visitors get an interest in your offer.

This makes it a crucial area to look into if you are in the business of online marketing. You need to get it right to ensure that the payment is earned and that it bears fruit.

Some sites like Ad Words usually show one the actual price per click for the keywords you are targeting and the average CPC for the whole campaign you plan on running.

With this information in mind, you need to ensure that you get value for your money and get good market.

What Determines your Cost per Click?

The cost per Click is determined by several factors. These are the things you will need to change accordingly to have a fair cost per click.

Cost per Click Tip #1: Bidding

Cost per click is determined by the amount you bid. It is usually either equal to or less than the bid you place.

The cost per click is usually gotten by getting an average of bids from competitors over some time. It depends highly on the maximum bid, rank and quality scores of you and your competitors.

The bidding occurs in two ways. You can either choose to use the manual cost per click bidding or the enhanced CPC bidding.

With manual cost per click bidding, you have control over the amount spent.  As the one managing the campaign, you decide how much is to be spent on the keywords and when to increase the bid for specific keywords.

For enhanced bidding, you as the campaign manager have less control over the bidding amount. Instead Google Ad Words automatically places bids on the keywords that are likely to lead to online conversions.

Deciding how to bid requires some more knowledge on the two ways so as to choose which will work better for you and your business.

Cost per Click Tip #2: Relevance of Keywords

Keywords play a critical part in search engine marketing. You need to get it right, especially if you are relying on the internet user to land on your page when they type in certain words related to your product or service.

Keywords also matter not only for your campaign but for your cost per click as well. You will therefore need to choose your keywords well.

First, ensure that the keywords are relevant to each other. Relevance of keywords will increase your quality score, thus reducing your cost per click.

Do not have keywords that overlap, to give your ads a better chance of success. You will need to avoid duplicate keywords in the same ads, as they do nothing for your campaign.

If you have two similar keywords, ensure you have a different landing page for each, such that they are different ads.

Keep reviewing your keywords, and looking out for any new ones. To get the best out of keywords, you can try to find new keywords to use while getting rid of those that are priced too high without good results.

This improves your budget, having you utilize the amount well.

Cost per Click Tip #3: Negative Keywords

These are the keywords you have to tell Google Ad words which search pages to leave your ads out of.

When these keywords are keyed in by a searcher, your ad will not appear in their search page. These help you to lower your cost by click.

Your ad will not appear when irrelevant terms are used, which ensures your click through rate is high. You can find the keywords that have no relevance to your ad, though they are similar to it.

For instance you may find that you have keywords that bring in traffic from searchers who are not likely to convert, either because of their demographics, location or for any other reason.

These do not help your campaign. They need to be filtered out to leave you only with those performing very well. This also improves your quality score and leads to higher conversion rates.

Cost per Click Tip #4: Competition

The kind of competition that exists within your niche determines the cost per click. In a highly competitive industry, the cost per click is likely to be higher.

For instance, an advertiser for a cosmetic product may face a lot of competition from other brands also in the line of cosmetics, especially if the products are the same.

When you place a bid, competitors will always try to outbid you. Thus, an increase in the bids for one company may create a ripple effect where every other competitor also raises their bid so as to maintain their rank on the search engine results pager (SERP).

Have a great understanding of your competition, their strategies, and the kind of traffic they attract and what else they are doing.

Keep ahead of them, strategizing and improving where necessary so that you can have a good campaign.

The need for lower cost per click may have you lowering your bids for all keywords. This is after all the logical move to reduce your budget.

Yet such a move may lead to a decrease in your quality score, which may then increase amount paid per lead. Instead, try negative words or finding new words to reduce the cost per click.

Cost per Click Tip #5: The Landing Page

Where your visitors land once they click on your ad is of utmost importance in search engine marketing.

Remember you have paid for each click on your ad, thus it would be rather disappointing if the landing page does not live up to the expectations of the interested viewers.

• First is the time it takes for your page to load. It should have a fast loading time, lack of which may have the visitors losing interest due to waiting for too long.

• Navigation. This should be easy, to give the visitor an easy time.

• Mobile optimization. The page should be optimized for the use of mobile phones to ensure great user experience for those accessing it on smart phones.

• Ease of action. Be it a purchase or sign up, it should be easy to do.

You can change the bids accordingly as a way of decreasing your cost per click.

For instance, by having information on the times, days, areas and devices where you have the best click through and conversion rates, you can have higher bids for these specifications. This will improve success rates of your campaigns.

Conclusion

CPC search engine marketing is an effective form of marketing for your business. With the right steps taken, it will propel it higher up. Do put all these into place for a cost effective and result-oriented campaign.