Raffle Pay-Per-Click Advertising Basics

PPC costs money (PPC = PAY per click advertising) and you can, of course, spend as much as you want. To get the most out of your PPC campaign, and ultimatly sell more raffle tickets, you’ve got to set it up right, monitor the effectiveness of the ads and adjust when necessary.

PPC can be an extremely effective way to reach literally millions of web surfers very quickly. In just a few minutes you can create a simple three line ad, link it to your organizations site, or stand alone raffle website, and display it across the internet. Very powerful - if you do it right. However, it is not a “set it and forget it” solution, at least if you want to get the biggest bang for your buck. So what is it and how do you do it?

When you use most search engines like Google or Yahoo you see ads, or “sponsored links” at the top and down the side. This is what they look like in Google search circled in red. Anyone can make a paid ad like these for anything (as long as it’s legal - like anything raffle related check with your legal counsel to make sure you can sell tickets online) and have them appear along with search results for specific keywords. In the above example I did a search for “cheap car parts” and all the ads have something to do with “cheap car parts.” Now, when you click on one of those links you’ll be taken to that persons website.

The OTHER thing that happens behind the scenes is that person who made the ad is charged “for the click.” Every time someone clicks on one of these ads the person who wrote the ad is charged. How much? It depends…maybe twenty cents…maybe five dollars. Not to worry though, you have complete control on how much you spend per click and how much you spend per day. It’s a biding process for ad placement and the more in demand a keyword or key phrase is (ie. “cheap car parts) to more expensive the click. You also have the option to display ads in a specific geographic area which is very useful if by law you can only sell tickets in your own state or if you want to direct your ticket sales at your local population. More on this later.

These ad’s also appear on some websites (like this one) further increasing the reach of your ads. In creating an Adwords Ad Campaign you have the ability to get your ads in front of the people searching for a specific word or phrase basically in an instant. How does this help you sell raffle tickets? Check out the next post.