PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click and as the name suggests, the advertiser is paid a fee every time one of their adverts is clicked. The more time the ad is clicked, the more money it will cost the advertisers. PPC is incredibly effective when it comes to helping you reach your marketing goals. It will help you drive traffic to your website, help you raise awareness when it comes to your brand and it can also assist you in closing deals/ sales given that your ads are well-written and well-optimised.

Benefits of PPC:

• Cost-effective – you only pay when a user actually reaches your website. You have control over how much you spend
• Targeted – You are able to choose the targeted location, demographics, language, and device, making your targeted area as precise as you like. This way, you are ensuring the ad is being seen by the right people
• Measurable – PPC campaigns can be set up to carefully measure effectiveness. You can determine exactly how much your return on investment is. The impact of PPC can be seen almost immediately whereas SEO tactics can take a while to make a difference.
• Customisable – as you run your campaigns, you can make many small adjustments to improve based on what works best.

Drawbacks of PPC:

• Time investment – you can’t just set up your PPC campaigns and leave them. You need to invest time into optimising and improving to get the best results.
• Skills required – It can take some practise to set up effective campaigns. Many businesses choose to use a specialist agency.
• Costs can quickly add up – if you aren’t monitoring and optimising your campaigns to make sure you get a return on investment, money could be wasted. You will need to allocate a budget for PPC campaigns, unlike SEO tactics where the investment is time and skills.
• Clicks and visits don’t always lead to sales- you will need to convince the user to ‘convert’ once they reach your website. 

How to know if your company should go down the SEO route or the PPC route? Simple, if your goal is to drive traffic to your site in the short term, you might choose to focus on PPC ads. However, if you want to enhance your business’s online presence in the long run, SEO is the answer.