Pay Per Click for Local Businesses

Pay per click advertising has grown at a phenomenal pace and is changing the way local businesses connect with their customers. In fact, just this last week there were two separate articles on how Internet advertising has contributed to lower earnings for two major newspaper chains. Most of those dollars are being redirected from newspaper ads to pay per click advertising.

For the most part PPC has been dominated by businesses, both large and small, who were trying to reach an audience on a national or global basis. But the growth of that market is slowing. The search engines like Yahoo and Google are betting their money on the future of local business advertising on the Internet. In fact, they are offering local versions of their pay per click advertising to accommodate individuals who are searching in growing numbers for local businesses.

As a local business what are the benefits of adveritising with pay per click?

• Immediate gratification and potential profit. With Google you can set-up a campaign in less then an hour and your ads will be displayed immediately. With Yahoo you ads must go through an editorial process, which takes 3-5 days. Regardless, this beats the lead time required for newspaper or magazine ads.
• Pay per click gives you an opportunity to inexpensively experiement with your ads and landing pages in order to determine the best mix for the highest return on investment.
• You can geo-target your ads by locale or a specific range, .05-100 miles. Or you can target your ads utilizing locale terms like city names and zip codes in your keyword selection (Evanston Wedding Photographer).
• You have complete control over your marketing budget. You control your advertising expense by defining either your total budget, daily budget or cost per click on specific keywords.
• You have the ability to track and analyze the effectiveness of your advertising. When proper tracking is applied you know exactly which of your advertising expenditures are producing results. No longer is it the old adage, “I know 20% of my advertising is working, I just don’t know which 20%.”

Since local businesses are just beginning to understand the value of PPC the competition is not that fierce. The costs to advertise are a bargain. Other then PR, local PPC may be the most cost effective advertise available to a local business.

If you currently have a web site then get your pay per click going immediately. To experiment it cost only a few dollars. If you do not have a site then now is the time to take advantage of this low cost marketing opportunity.