Pay-per-click online

Gideon Galloway, managing director of Funnel.co.za, says: "Pay per click (PPC) advertising is a relatively new form of promotion in South Africa that allows companies to bid for top placement in the search engines for specific keywords or phrases.

"Rather than paying a set fee, the advertiser only pays when someone actually clicks on the sponsored link and goes to their site. This form of advertising can be applied to a company of any size, no matter what it sells.

"We believe that Pay-per-Click advertising is the number one solution for affordable website traffic."

There are a number of benefits to pay-per-click advertising. The first one is that an advertiser only pays for visitors. Unlike banner advertising where an advertiser has to pay each time someone sees his or her ad, pay-per-click engines only charge when someone actually clicks on the listing.

Secondly, pay-per-click engines provide highly targeted cheap visitors. A new advertiser, for instance, can activate their account with Funnel with just R5 and can then choose a maximum cost-per-click from R0.35.

Budgets can start as low as 35 cents and can go up to whatever limit an advertiser is comfortable spending: "A great deal of searches on the Internet are done through search engines which serve to direct targeted consumers who are looking for a specific product or service, right to the advertisers virtual, or brick and mortar doorstep.

"Using the power of search engines can allow advertisers to use the Internet to deliver a potential customer who is actively looking for specific products or services and build long-term brand awareness at thesame time."

Vital to the success of a PPC campaign is that it be monitored regularly, since positions can change every day. Equally important, is that one tracks and analyses the effectiveness of individual keyword phrases used in your campaign, on an ongoing basis.

In addition, viewing click-through rates and studying visitor habits can lend valuable insight into their motivations and habits, and help to further refine a PPC advertising campaign.