When should you pay for "clicks"?

When to Pay for Clicks

You've probably noticed the sponsored links on various web pages,  such as at the top and right side of a Google search result list. The way this works is: Google (and the others) put your listing on their first page, and each time someone clicks to go to your website, Google charges you a few dollars. In order to be effective, it is imperative that any pay-per-click campaigns are setup and managed properly. Otherwise, you will attract too many clicks from folks that are not good potential customers, paying for needless clicks and rendering your campaign costly and ineffective.

There are three situations where we would recommend paying for clicks:

The first scenario is when you have an immediate need for traffic to your website,  and a relatively small amount of time to take advantage of that. For example, lets say you write a book, you choose a nice unique title for your book,  and then Oprah mentions your book on her show. You will have tens of thousands of people looking for your book online,  and your unique book title has not yet penetrated though the internet. And you have about a week before all the search frenzy stops. This would be a good time to pay for clicks, so that anyone searching for your book title will be found and directed to your website.

The second scenario where paying for clicks can be advantageous is when your internet presence is new, and you want to give your site an initial boost of traffic immediately, until your other internet marketing efforts start showing results.

Finally, the third scenario for effectively paying per click is when you have a high profit value per new customer. For example, if you sell frozen yogurt, and each new customer nets you $10 in profit, and you need lots of them to stay in business, then paying for clicks may not be very cost-effective. However, if you are an attorney, dentist, or plastic surgeon, where the profit per new customer is typically well over $1000, then paying for clicks can be a very cost effective method with a good return on investment.

Executing multiple pay-per-click ad campaigns, starting with a small test sample, and measuring the return on investment for each campaign is the smart and efficient thing to do. Creating various ads, removing those that don't produce, and continuing to run only the ads that are generating leads saves time, money and draws in traffic while you build up your presence using other marketing methods likes social media or traditional marketing.