PPClick
The better known between the two PPCs, pay per click is an online advertising tool geared towards increasing website visitors.

Advertisers are charged an agreed rate for every user click.

Pay per click ads appear next to search results. The ads are matched to results based on your chosen keywords. The ad contains your company or brand name, a short description, and a link that directs interested users to your website.

The good pay per click service providers usually offer advertisers a periodic report that informs you of click through rates (CTR) and keyword trending analyses. All these are based on online activity in relation to your ad. You just have to decide whether or not you’ll take the service’s word for it. Otherwise, you can do your own tracking and analyses.

Note that pay per click ads do not make the sale for you. These ads, if well written and well placed, attract the correct type of people to visit your website. It is all up to your website content and product offerings to make a successful sale.

PPCall
Pay per call shares the same business model with pay per click advertising. The only difference is that instead of paying for clicks, you pay for calls received.

Pay per call is also a web-based advertising technique. While pay per click ads are clickable and designed to direct interested people to your website, pay per call contains a toll-free number that allows interested people to call your company and speak with a company’s representative.

The edge of pay per call over pay per click is that advertisers like you are given more targeting options besides choosing to appear next to niche keyword search results. You can also limit ad appearance to certain category searches and narrow it further to specific geographic areas where you’d like your pay per call ad to appear.

Generally, pay per call ads appear with your company name, your address, a short description (that must be well written), and the toll-free number that redirects to an assigned telephone in your office.

The effectiveness of pay per call advertising may be easily gauged based on the number of received calls. Of course, the pay per call ads have the same goal as pay per click ads: to get the right people to become interested in you.

In this case however, closing a sale depends on an actual person answering the phone call, and not a website. A good marketer will find no problems engaging the caller and eventually, he or she can direct the caller to an actual store or a website. In any case, the interested caller already has initial contact with your brand through another human being. Brand affinity can be achieved at a better rate through human interaction.

Your Marketing Goals
Making the choice between pay per click and pay per call depends on your marketing goals and other campaigns that make up your overall marketing strategy.

The best way to determine the most suitable online marketing tool is to know your target market well and assess your company’s strengths. If you know for a fact that your website is a strong selling tool, then by all means, go for pay per click ads.

On the other hand, if you find your front line employees as your biggest asset, then pay per call could do you a lot of good.