Say you want to go whale watching in Alaska. You've got your parkas and your sleeping bag that protects you to temperatures of 40 below. You decide to look for a whale watching company on a search engine, such as Google.com

For your search, you type in “Whale Watching in Alaska.” Click here to see the results you would get.

On the right side of the screen, there’s a list of business that offer whale watching trips. How do they get there, you ask? That’s Pay-per-Click Advertising!

How Does it Work?

Each company bids on key phrases – in this instance words like “Whale Watching” and “Alaska.” Whenever someone types both of those phrases in, the search engine (in this case Google) will display the Ad on the right side of the screen.

The trick is, you only pay for the ad each time someone clicks on your business’s link. You Pay-per-Click to your company's website.

That means that often your business’s name will be seen but you pay nothing. Pay-per-Click campaigns are great for building free brand recognition.

However, they’re also great for getting new customers! See how there are several businesses listed from top to bottom? The order is determined by the amount you bid for each phrase (“Whale Watching” and "Alaska”) plus the relevance of words in your ad itself.

Working with an internet marketing company on a Pay-per-Click Campaign helps you bid on cheaper but stronger phrases, ones that attract customers, not just visitors. Getting you ranked high on the list for as little as possible is the job of your internet marketing company.

How do I get the most effective PPC Ad?

Now let's say you owned an Alaskan Whale Watching company. Your Internet marketing company so on found that bidding on the obvious term “Whale Watching” produced lots of clicks but not a lot of people who actually were ready to purchase. Your visitors were curious, information-gathering types.

The Internet marketing company might decide to bid less on the broad, two word term “Whale Watching” and decide to invest more in a highly targeted, less-used, three word phrase like “Alaska Whale Excursion” or “Naturalist-Led Whale Watching.” The latter, for instance, is not only a more specific term but is probably used by people know exactly what they want and are ready to sign up.

To see what happens to the list now,> Click here.

The more specific the phrases you bid on, the fewer your competitors. That’s what a good internet marketing company will do for you – saving you money and getting you higher conversion rates (more purchasing customers to the click).

Bidding a lot isn’t enough; your web company has to understand your business and what phrases will really be used by your customers.

In Conclusion

You’ll find that a lot of people complain that their sites never get seen. But how many have a solid internet marketing strategy and an internet marketing company that can produce results? Without budgeting for marketing your site is just another expense – not an investment.