Business View Civil and Municipal | February 2021

9 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL FEBRUARY 2021 SHIFT YOUR EYES OFF GOOGLE FOR PPC SUCCESS Nate Burke, CEO of Diginius , a UK provider of proprietary software for digital marketing and ecommerce solutions, explains how use of other PPC platforms could help you maximise results, and often, yield better results. T he power and prominence of Google is indisputable. It’s the platform that attracts the largest and widest audience, posing great opportunities for businesses to expand their reach and raise their online presence. But the issue is, this is common knowledge. Today, most businesses recognise these opportunities, which is why Google is often the first point of call when it comes to online advertising. This perception is what’s driving up the cost of advertising on the platform. It’s one of the basic rules of PPC; the more advertisers there are bidding for a keyword, the more expensive its cost per click (CPC) will be. Google is a highly competitive PPC platform as is, but this is only set to increase as more and more businesses go through their digital transformation. So, what’s needed to help businesses improve their digital advertising performance is a shift in perception. Google isn’t the only search engine or PPC platform out there, and it certainly isn’t the only place to reach your target audience online. Rather, there is potential to do what you do on Google better and for a lower cost on these other platforms. Microsoft advertising Microsoft should be the first alternative platform to consider if you are looking to target customers via a search engine. Ads created through the PPC platform can appear at the top or to the right of search results on Bing, Yahoo and MSN. While the platform’s market share and search volume don’t quite measure up to the likes of Google, with Bing’s market share at 6.1% and Yahoo!’s at 2.51% , handling a combined total OPENING L INES