Introduction To Pay Per Call

Writen by Damon Lightley

If you know the principles of pay-per-click (that's 'click') advertising, you'll know a bit about pay-per-call already. The process runs along the same lines. If you don't know about either though, the next paragraph will give you a quick-ish run-through.

Pay-per-click has been used by search engines for a while now. Run a search, and you'll find that the top listings in most engines comprise of companies and organisations that have used some of their online marketing budget to be there, they're shown as 'sponsored links', 'sponsored results' or something similar. But the idea is that suppliers bid on search terms that could be used to find their businesses. Take a printing company, for instance. Using a search engine marketing company, it might bid on terms such as 'cheap printing' or 'South London printing company'. It bids against others who are also interested in these terms. Usually, the higher the bid in relation to the others, the better it rates in the search engine pecking order. And, in terms of payment, the company pays the going rate every time their link is clicked on. Let's say this printing company bids at 10 pence per click. Everytime a link for the company's website is shown in a search engine – and someone clicks it – the company will pay roughly 10 pence.

So, pay-per-call runs along the same principle as pay-per-click, with the twist that the business pays each time a potential customer calls rather than when he or she links through to the business' site. A search engine user will see an advert that's similar to those that appear on Google and Yahoo! as sponsored links. And clicking on the advert will bring up a separate window that gives a bit of information on the business and specified freephone telephone number.

The great thing about this form of advertising is that you don't need a website to take advantage of it. You may have been in the position where your only real advertising opportunities online were Yellow Pages and other directories. Well, not now. What's more, this form of advertising caters equally well for local businesses as it does for bigger national players. Going back to the example of the printing company, there's always the option of bidding for terms with your town, city or area referenced in it. And so this limits the bidding price (there'll be less competition in your home town). It also means that the advertisements attract people who live nearby (the relevant people).

Unlike pay-per-click, pay-per-call advertising is in the beginning stages. The big players at the moment are Google, Yahoo!, Miva, Overture, Kelkoo and AOL. But, with numerous other providers joining up every week, like the service that came before, it's set to rocket. At the end of the day, if pay-per-call is providing a good return on investment for businesses, it's a winning formula. And, from the early signs, it looks like this will be the case.

Damon Lightley is a director at search engine marketing specialists, SiteVisibility. SiteVisibility helps its clients attract, convert and retain profitable customers through their websites.

For more information, visit Site Visibility