Every time we hear PPC, the first name that coins in our brain is Google Adwords. Certainly it is a useful entity and has helped many businesses to grow and expand their reach. However, if you are a novice entrepreneur or are just starting out, then Google’s Adwords could take a toll on you. The said platform is effective and equally expensive. You might not want to invest so much in online marketing in the crawling stage of your business. Besides, the world of Adwords has got tough competition and for you to make a mark, a lot of planning shall go right. Note that we are not criticizing Google Adwords, it is utterly useful but mainly for big units. If you do not want to invest in it big time, here are some of its alternatives.

1. Facebook Ads (https://www.facebook.com/business/products/ads)

Facebook is aware about its reach and command and hence provides a perfect platform to you to boost your business. Under the tab of ads, coherent sub-tabs are placed for you to select just the right format for your ad. And there you have it…your ad, in your budget! Talking about the reach of this platform, the clicks received on facebook are lower than other sources but it is definitely cost-efficient.

2. Amazon paid ads (https://services.amazon.com/advertising/overview.htm?id=hm1)

Amazon is expanding its roots at the speed of light worldwide. Apart from being loved as an ecommerce market portal, it is also gaining a lot of appreciation and accolades for its advertisements skills. Potential customers get onto the portal to make their necessary purchases and while browsing they could see ad of the related or similar products, giving you the competitive advantage.

3. Clicksor (http://www.clicksor.com/)

Clicksor is definitely not that a cheap option but yes, it is highly conducive in expanding the reach of a business as it has multi-layered advertising format that can help you to reach to your mass.

4. YouTube ads (https://www.youtube.com/yt/advertise/)

YouTube is the third most visited website in the world. It is one of the most incredible platforms to advertise for any product. Google Adwords work on the basis of pay per click but YouTube works on the basis of pay per view structure. It is one of the booming platforms for running video ads as YouTube provides multiple platforms for letting your video appear.

5. Yahoo! and Bing Ads (https://secure.bingads.microsoft.com/)

Bing Ads works on the model of pay per click on both Yahoo! and Bing. This model offers a vast reach and great market presence. Besides, its service portal is highly appreciated. Not only that, its click through rate is also phenomenal.

So these are some of the useful and cost-effective alternatives to Google Adwords which small scale business models can use to get necessary market recognition in a reasonable budget.

The world of digital marketing is dominated by PPC model and one of the pioneers of the same is Google AdWords. Google AdWords is a program that allows you to create an advertisement that would appear in the relevant search results of Google pages and on its Network Partner Sites. The best part is the advertiser only pays when someone clicks on the ad. Google AdSense is a program that publishes the Google AdWords Ads on individual websites and Google pays the publisher depending upon the clicks received by the ad. They are co-related and function in sheer coordination.

Let us learn about the two in detail

As a businessman, if you will to expand your business through digital marketing, you would definitely think of advertisements. Google AdWords helps you in creating your marketing campaigns advertisement.

Create your account, select the format, fix your budget, and select where you want your advertisement to be published and let Google handle the rest. Depending upon the periphery of your layout, it will publish your advertisement in its relevant search results and network partner websites and you pay only when the ad is clicked. Text, i.e. keywords driven ads appear on the search engine results page while otherwise rich advertisements (the ones having images or videos) appear on the relevant partner network websites- the AdSense Websites that are owned by bloggers or webmasters.
Time and again, Google AdWords have proved their worth. You can follow the clicks received to your ad; you can calculate the conversion rate and also compute the returns on your investment. So basically, you see where the money is going and learn if the investment was worthy.

Google has its own content network sites that it uses to publish the advertisements that are registered with AdWords. Depending upon the nature of the advertisement and target audience selected by the advertiser, Google publishes the ad onto the respective website/s. These advertisements generate revenue for Google on the basis of pay per click or pay per impression (the rate paid onto receiving 1000 views of a particular ad) model.

Create your account with Google AdSense, select the type of ads you want to be published on your website, define the location and let the money flow in. Once you are a part of the circuit, Google would start publishing ads on your website and every time it gets clicked, you receive a share paid by the advertiser.

You might not be able to earn a lot of money in the beginning. You should keep on posting more of relevant content on your websites so that associated ads would be published on your website by Google. The service system of AdSense is highly active and helps its users at each and every stage. Besides, the payment model of AdSense is also very transparent.

So get going, learn and earn through these Google programs.

PPC or Pay Per Click, as the name suggests it is an online advertising feature, where advertisers pay the search engine every time someone clicks on their ad. It is a cost-effective way to get your website noticed by your target audience, while other online marketing strategies gradually help your website reach maximum visibility. PPC campaigns are driven by keywords. It is these keywords that make ads visible on various web pages. A thoughtful process to come up with a bunch of keywords that are related to your business can do wonders.

So, it is clear that for every PPC campaign to be successful, keywords are important. But every time someone makes an online search, which ads show up on top are decided by an auction. Advertisers bid the amount on the keywords they think their potential customers would search online when they are looking to buy something. Every time a searcher types in a keyword, the product’s ad pops up in the search results at the top and the advertisers pay the search engine whenever their ad is clicked. That is why it becomes absolutely vital that the keywords should be closely related to the product or service.

But keywords can spread into hundreds of variations. So, it becomes important to carefully select a few keywords that more relevant to your business or product. And when it comes to PPC campaigns, it should be ensured that the keywords follow a theme. The theme could be based on the service, product, searcher intent or audience. This grouping of keywords based on a theme help determine the when and where an ad will be featured. These groupings also affect the how search engines perceive the relation between a keyword, and ad and the page the searcher is going to be directed to.

A clear internal strategy should be created to shortlist keywords. The list should be made after considering the nature of the business, your web pages with the highest traffic and a clear market research. The keywords should be popular among your customers, which will ensure better results. You can always include related keywords of your choice as long as they follow the common theme.

Generally, PPC ads are differentiated from normal ads by putting them in a section named “Sponsored Ads” or “Sponsored Links”. This also makes it easier for the searcher to notice these ads on a webpage that is filled with products and services that are competing with you.

Bidding for keywords and having your ads visible at the top of a search engine page definitely gives the advantage to a business. So, PPC campaigns should also be on every business’s agenda when forming a strong online marketing strategy.

In layman terms, Social Media Marketing is the process of using social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as marketing tools. Social media marketing uses the social aspect of online connectivity to interact with potential customers on a more personalized and effective manner than traditional marketing. The main objective of Social media marketing is to create content that can be shared by users on social media sites for improved brand exposure and customer reach. And to increase the visibility of this content search engine optimization is necessary. We have all heard about SEO, SMO is a strategy to attract future customers to your website.

SMM has become widely popular in the last decade with the rise of social media sites, which also brought a need for SMO. Social media optimization can be successfully utilized by adding social media links to your content and articles, such as sharing buttons or RSS feeds. Another way of utilizing SMO is by doing activities like posting statuses, tweets or blog posts to promote your social media. When you optimize your content for social media it enables more people to connect with you and visiting your website.

Let’s talk about some key points to take care when developing a SMO strategy.

• Always make sure that your SEO aligns with your SMO strategy. This is a great way to maximize your brand exposure. It always better when different elements of your strategy can give a cohesive experience.

• It’s called social media for a reason. Customer interaction is a mainstay of social media marketing and optimization strategy. So, be as social on these sites as possible and interact with your customers and potential customers.

• Regular updates about your brand on your social media posts are important to maintain your brand visibility. And also integrate your social media into your website.

• Just as in SEO, content is very crucial in SMO as well. Your strategy should contain content that is both original and curated. Interesting content is always a crowd puller.

• In the recent years, SMO has been transformed with growing use and popularity of hashtags. Adding hashtags to your posts can increase the reach of your posts, and it can also make it easier for people who don’t follow you to find your content.

• When creating social media posts, it becomes vital to keep a check on the length of every post. For proper optimization they shouldn’t be too lengthy and they should also be posted on specific times to increase their visibility.

A proper SEO and SMO strategy can maximize your reach to your customers and potential customers. So

In the previous few blogs, we read about digital marketing. And under that topic, a certain term ‘search engine optimization’ was mentioned quite a few times. SEO involves creating content that will pop up first in search engine results. But here, we are going to talk about Search Engine Marketing or SEM. Though SEM and SEO are components of digital marketing, both serve a very different purpose.

Search Engine Marketing or SEM focuses on ads which appear alongside the results of a search engine. The product images with prices you see related to what you searched for is the outcome of SEM. A person is said to be in ‘hunt mode’ when he or she is searching for products on the internet. This is a clear-cut sign to the search engine and the advertisers that the person wants information about a product in a commercial or non-commercial manner. When a person is in ‘hunt mode’, he or she can be in the beginning, middle or end stages of the purchasing process. And this makes search engine results one of the best places for targeted traffic, whether the source of the traffic is unpaid search results or paid advertising.

Search engines use complex algorithms in an attempt to give relevant results to searchers based on the keywords used, their device, location, past search behavior and identity. So, a well-thought-out strategy needs to be adopted by businesses and advertisers to take advantage of the so-called ‘hunt mode’ of potential customers to increase their sales. SEM is a non-intrusive way of advertising, which is quite unique from traditional ways of advertising. Search engine traffic originates from elective and audience-driven search behavior.

All marketers can gain by interacting with their potential customers when they are in the process of making a decision. But for your add to pop alongside search results, you will have to win auctions organized by various search engines. Advertisers bid on keywords related to their business and the ads of the highest bidders pop on the top. The more you are willing to pay for every click increases the chances of your ads to be one of the first ads a searcher looks at. But the ad auction takes varied factors into account before an ad appears on a webpage. For example, the two main factors that Google takes into account as part of the auction process are your highest bid and the quality score of your ads.

Search engine marketing’s prominent quality is that it offers marketers the chance to put their ads in front of customers who are ready to make a purchase at that precise moment. No other advertising medium can provide this, which is why search engine marketing is so potent and such an amazing way to develop your business.