Pay-Per-Click (PPC for short) advertising is perhaps the most targeted form of advertising one could ever hope to get anything out of, but this dead-accurate targeting comes at quite the hefty fee. In fact, it’s perhaps just a little bit too expensive for the average advertiser to allocate their marketing budget to, sometimes even just once.
For the most part PPC advertising is made too expensive by the fact that it’s more of an environment in which bidding-wars play out, so it’s not so much about directly getting an advertising service you’re willing to pay for at what would be a market-related price, but rather about how much more you’re willing to pay for an ad which hundreds or even thousands of other advertisers are also willing to pay for.
With that it’s perhaps pertinent to discuss some PPC alternatives which granted will probably never match PPC advertising by way of their targeting and their effectiveness, but they’re effective enough and in some cases just one or two parameters short of being just as targeted.
Google AdWords Alternatives (other PPC networks)
Rightfully so admittedly, when anyone thinks about PPC advertising Google’s AdWords programme comes to mind (delivered through the complementary Google AdSense platform). Unfortunately this is very expensive though and although you do pay for clicks, those clicks can be extremely expensive due to the perceived popularity of your targeted keywords.
Use alternative PPC networks, such as the likes of AdBrite and many of the new and upcoming ones. The reach and sophistication might not be quite as deep, but figure things out after playing around with them a bit and the conversions will eventually come.
Syndicated Blog Network Ads
If you actually looked at the Google AdWords PPC structure you’d realize that what is their rather sizeable ad serving platform network is comprised out of blogs, which would naturally have led to somewhat of a cloning of this model in a much more specific manner. There are some advertising networks which specially serve ads on blogs, which is perhaps as close as you can get to the type of targeting associated with PPC.
In addition to native ads displayed on the networked blogs, there’s also the option of sponsoring blog posts for more of a permanent type of exposure.
Off-Line Ads
Traditional advertising methods have become a lot cheaper in a bid to maintain their competition with the explosion of digital marketing via the internet, which means you can get really good deals with the likes of physical newspaper classifieds and others. A great PPC alternative to explore.
Social Media Advertising
There’s something a little bit off about traffic that comes from social media platforms in that it doesn’t quite seem to convert like traditional PPC in the like of Google AdWords. This form of advertising is much, much cheaper though, so you can try it out over a good period of time without even coming close to breaking your budget. Get it right however and you’ll never look back at PPC advertising again.
