In the past, I went into a little detail a few reasons why pay per click advertising can be compared to a business. It is an interesting read since the majority of things that happen in a business will also happen in PPC. Therefore, if advertisers are forgetting to do any of the things mentioned in the Part 1 or Part 2 of the article, then they can make sure they implement it into their future PPC campaigns.
With this in mind, it can be seen that PPC advertising, when used correctly, can also be compared to the stock market. I know this sounds crazy at first, but there are some similarities between PPC and the stock market which you could take note of to improve your future and current campaigns.
 

#1 Stock Market and PPC Constantly Adapts to External Factors

The number one similarity between the stock market and PPC is that both will constantly adapt to factors external to them. If there is a huge car crash that made the news, car insurance shares will increase. If there is a shortage of food, the shares for supermarkets will go up naturally. It is the external factors which usually control what direction the share prices are pushed in: in reaction to what investors are thinking are large risks or low risks.
With this in mind, a PPC campaign should also be adapting, much like the stock market, to external factors. If there is a huge car crash that made the news and you were making a campaign about selling cars, you may want to change the search advert content to mention safety instead of another unique selling point you were planning to mention. Based on what is happening around the time of the PPC campaign going live should, to some extent, affect the ‘angle’ the campaign takes to promote whatever the campaign is advertising.
 
 

#2 The Stock Market and PPC Campaigns Constantly Change

Forgetting external factors which could change the price of shares and the content in a PPC campaign, if everything remained the same, you should not be surprised to know that the share prices will still change – they are forever changing (to what extent is usually due to the external factors).
With this in mind, a PPC campaign should be constantly updated, adapting to the environment it is advertising in. What is the main reason for this? A PPC campaign is never perfect: there is always room for improvement. Therefore, if you have left the same campaign up for a week without changing any part of it, by looking at what adverts worked best and what gained the best conversions with Google Analytics, you can improve your campaign to make a reduction in the cost per conversion improving the overall efficiency of your campaign.
 
 
Ultimately, the stock market will share many similarities with PPC advertising because, at the end of the day, both options are different ways of making money digitally. It is the fast nature of the stock market that makes it comparable to PPC, since a campaign in PPC may work very well one day. However, if something terrible happens in the news, such as a emissions scan with a so called ‘Volkswagen’, then everything can go from great to terrible in the blink of an eye – as a PPC advertiser, you need to react to this fast.