Better Pay-per-click Marketing

Posted by Staff Writer on Monday, June 29, 2009 at 12:34pm.

For web entrepreneurs in Africa, pay-per-click (PPC) marketing is still the most effective way to advertise products worldwide, especially to consumers in the US and Europe.

The most recent polls show that more than 77% of American adults use internet retail sites - and figures for Europe are similar. Websites have far surpassed traditional print advertisements, and are far more affordable than radio or TV ads.

Pay-per-click marketing is also the fastest-growing way to reach upscale, technologically savvy African consumers.

However, according to internet marketing guru Greg Sterling, some types of pay-per-click marketing are more effective than other methods. One of the fastest-growing trends is targeting consumers in only specific regions to offer goods or services.

“San Francisco has a vibrant East African community,” says Ayanna Nuh, owner of a tour company in Tanzania. “We targeted that area first, marketing our group tours and charter flights departing from San Francisco, to residents with friends and family in East Africa.” The effort was so successful that the firm recently expanded its pay-per-click efforts into Minneapolis - another US city with many East African immigrants.

Unlike traditional advertising, pay-per-click is more affordable because the entrepreneur pays only for the number of people who actually visit his or her website - not for the thousands of people who see the ad but ignore it. Prices are extremely low - often as little as 10 cents (US) for each person who clicks on the ad. Even more importantly, the business owner pays only when an interested customer actually clicks on the link to their site.

African entrepreneurs can set up a pay-per-click marketing account and have live ads on the internet in just minutes. Popular providers include Yahoo and SuperPages.com but the premiere PPC site is still Google. Many internet entrepreneurs note that they earn 90% or more of their profit with Google ads. It is not unusual for entrepreneurs to see an increase of 20% in sales almost overnight with a well-designed PPC program.

Using pay-per-click marketing allows the busy entrepreneur to select keywords that potential customers are using to search for information - such as “Somali travel”, “Africa travel” or “trip to Africa”. Advertisers bid on keywords. The top 7 to 10 bidder’s ads are displayed on the first page of search results, while lower bidders may be on subsequent pages. While results vary, many advertisers aim to appear somewhere on the first page of results.

PPC advertising is highly effective because the customers are already interested in the topic and motivated to buy. With newspapers or magazines every reader is exposed to the ad - even if they have no interest in African travel. With PPC ads, only highly motivated customers who are active searching for that topic see it. Even when a viewer reads the ad, the business owner pays nothing. The entrepreneur pays only for those customers who click on the ad and visit the company’s website for more information.

Using local PPC marketing allows tour operator Nuh to advertise only in those cities where they currently have group tours departing. “There was no point in us advertising in Winnipeg, Canada, because our tour departure points are hundreds of miles away.” Nuh says. “Advertising this way is much more effective for us. It allowed us to reap ten-fold the amount of money that we invested in marketing.”

Internet marketing - especially pay-per-click marketing - is ideal for small to mid-sized companies because it is easy, simple to set up and inexpensive. In addition, the returns on investment can be great. It allows the smallest company in Africa to compete with the largest international conglomerates and even surpass their goals. That makes it easy to understand the popularity of pay-per-click marketing.