Pay Per Click Ads are By Far the Best Advertising Medium Ever

Comparing and contrasting advertising options in these turbulent economic times is essential so that our clients get the best bang for the buck. For most businesses the Internet is by far the best advertising and marketing medium ever invented. Nothing can compete with the Internet as it continues to attract more and more advertising dollars every year. Why? It's the search engines like Google and Yahoo! that direct people to the products, goods or services they want to see because they've typed a specific query into the search box.

When someone types in 'tires for a Ford Focus' they are really looking for tires for a Ford Focus and probably want to buy them. Now consider the way traditional marketing and advertising worked. An ad comes on between entertainment segments of a TV program, football game etc and they tell you about their tires or, a product you really don't care about and couldn't use if you're a male, like tampons. What a waste of money for the tampon maker since 50% of the people that just saw that company ad were of the wrong sex who have no need for tampons!

Same with the tire company. If my car doesn't need tires I don't pay attention to that ad. In fact people are now well trained to tune out ads or fast forward through them using TIVO or other DVR thereby making many TV ads less and less effective every day.

There's a famous line attributed to the Chairman of Proctor and Gamble who said that only half of his company's ads were working but he "didn't know which half!"

That doesn't happen with search advertising aka Pay Per Click or PPC for short. The Google Ad Words advertiser knows exactly which search term brings someone to his web site. And in some cases they can even tell which words 'convert' into business more than others. This is why certain key words have been bid up to $50 per click because they really are that valuable. Words like 'mortgage loan' or 'birth injury lawyer' and others generate big returns for their clients and are worth that much. In the case of 'mortgage loans' the high price bidders may sell the name of the person clicking on the ad after filling out a form, to several other loans companies. Have you ever heard the slogan "when banks compete you win?" Of course, and the reason is that company just sold your name to five different mortgage brokers as a hot lead and have the money to keep advertising. As they say on their web site, "we share it with lenders in our network."

In the case of the term 'birth injury lawyer' one case can bring in a multi-million dollar settlement of which the attorney gets 33%. That fee will pay for a lot of $50 clicks! The Internet also has the potential to level the playing field amongst players. How? By allowing smaller companies to compete against bigger more established firms by giving them an equal presence on line. Smaller companies can look bigger online thereby attracting business only larger firms could attract previously.

There are several primary mediums that compete with the Internet. TV, Radio, Newspaper, Magazines, Yellow Pages, Telemarketing, Direct Mail and Highway Billboards. With the exception of Yellow Pages in the case of all of the other mediums the ads are being foisted upon the consumer. Yellow Pages, like search engines, the consumer is actually looking for the product or service. The rest are bombarding consumers without regard to their interests or wants.

In the case of radio, when the ad comes on people can reach for the button and change the station to one that doesn't have an ad running. In the case of highway billboards, it's a great medium if you're looking for a hotel, McDonalds or an Exxon gas station, but, does it really work for LASIK eye surgery?