Pay per click: what the click really buys you, and what has to happen next
Advertising where you pay each time somebody clicks. It buys you a visit, and sometimes a first order. Whether it pays depends on what happens after that.
- 106PPC (Pay-Per-Click)
- An online advertising model where advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked, commonly used in search engine advertising.
- Where you'll meet it
- Search and Shopping ads, in Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising
- Price set by
- An auction, run every time somebody searches
- Usually pays back on
- The second order and the ones after it
You pay for the click, and an auction sets the price
Every time somebody searches, Google runs an auction among the advertisers who want that search. Your bid counts. So does how relevant and useful Google thinks your ad and landing page are, which is what Quality Score is trying to tell you.
You often pay less than your bid. Google's actual cost per click page says you pay only what's needed to clear its minimum and beat the advertiser just below you. In a busy category that's still plenty.
The first order often doesn't cover the click
Let's face it: in a competitive category, the first order from a paid click is often thin once you take off the ad cost, the discount and the delivery. Sometimes it's a loss. That's normal. You're buying a customer, and a customer is only worth buying if they come back.
So lifetime value should set what you can afford to bid, not the margin on one order. We've written about what first order ROAS hides and the number to put next to it.
Make every paid click leave something behind
- A landing page that carries on from the ad, not your homepage
- A sign-up offer for the visitors who aren't buying today
- A welcome flow that knows which campaign somebody came from
- A post-purchase flow working on the second order from the day the first one ships
- Existing customers left out of campaigns meant for strangers, so you're not paying to reach people you can already email
PPC pays for the first order. Email earns the second. Whoever runs your ads, that handover deserves as much planning as the bids.
Related terms
FAQs
Should we bid on our own brand name?
Sometimes. If competitors bid on your name, you may need to be there. If nobody else shows up, plenty of those clicks would have come through your free listing anyway. Test it: pause brand campaigns for a few weeks and watch total orders from search, not just the paid column.
What's the difference between PPC and SEO?
PPC rents a place on the results page and stops the day the budget does. SEO earns a place that doesn't charge per click, but it takes months. A growing shop usually needs both, and the searches that convert in your ads make a good shortlist for your SEO.
How does email make paid ads more profitable?
It doesn't make the click any cheaper. It makes the click worth more. Email turns some first-time buyers into repeat customers, and turns visitors who didn't buy into subscribers you can reach again for the price of a send, instead of paying to reach them twice.
Rather we explained it on your own account?
Bring your Klaviyo account to a growth consultation. We'll walk through what this means for your numbers, in plain English, and what we'd fix first.
Half an hour with Theo, our founder.
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