There is an online marketing technology that I am pretty biased to, and not because I have some of vested interest, but because it’s my favorite way to market online.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Simply put, this is a way to generate a predictable amount of traffic to your site of extremely targeted and qualified traffic.

If you are selling computer desks, you can pay for ads in which people are looking for “computer desks” on Google come to your site.  I can’t think of a more qualified visitor/prospect than someone who opened up Google, typed in a search term, and decided to click on your ad.

The other great benefit of PPC is that you only pay for visitors who click on your ad.  Unlike other advertising mediums in which you pay for a certain amount of impressions (regardless of whether they are interested in your service or not).

But I think my favorite part is that it’s completely trackable.  For all of the campaigns I do, I know exactly how good of a response they are getting and what’s working and what’s not.

In fact, I would make the argument (as have many smart marketers) that PPC should be the first stop in building a campaign.  It gives you an extremely low-cost opportunity at testing out your copy and message before paying significant sums for direct mail, newspaper, and magazines.

For the budget-conscious company, there is an added benefit - there is no minimum.  You can try it for a month, pay $1 a day and if you don’t like the results after a month, you’re out just $30.  In fact, that’s how we start a lot of our campaigns - extremely low priced and then we really increase the effective ones.

I’ve seen many a company who relied on natural search results for all of their business before a sudden change eliminated all forms of leads coming in.  By having a PPC strategy, you can smooth out the ebbs and flows of natural search traffic to get a predictable stream of traffic to your website.

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