Pay per click can be a great way to start your Online Marketing campaign. However it is easy to get into a difficult situation if you are new to the system or if you do not keep a close watch on the statistics that will be produced by your pay per click provider.

The idea is straightforward, you instruct you provider, typically a search engine company, to show your advert in one of the non organic sections of the Search Engine Placement listings ie the search results. You tell them to only display the advert when chosen keywords or phrases are typed into the search by the searcher. The beauty of the deal is that there is no payment for that advert until a customer actually clicks on the advert to take them directly to your website. So in theory you are only being charged for customers who are actually interested in your goods or services.

The first issue to be extremely careful about is which keywords or phrases you choose. Too broad a selection of key words may give you hundreds of clicks (and therefore a large pay per click bill) but hardly any sales, as only a small proportion of the searchers using those words and phrases were either interested in your exact product, or ready to buy immediately. The trick therefore is to be as exact as possible with your keywords. If you only supply pens it would be far better to have all the people keying in “pens for sale” see your advert than it would to have the much bigger category of searchers who would type just “pens” or even “stationery for sale”. With “pens” the searcher could be looking just for information on pens, when they were invented, different sorts, reviews etc. They may all click through to your site, costing you money but not with any intention of actually purchasing one! With “Stationery” of course you will get a large number of people searching for the word but only a percentage of them will be looking to purchase a pen. So the advert may be listed often but have a small “click through” rate.

Once you have resolved the keyword facet of the pay per click you really do need to monitor the whole campaign vigilantly. It is important to know how much you are spending and what you are getting for your money. The search engine often asks you to apply a daily limit on the amount you want to spend, this can be deceptive as