PPC is like buying SEO.  You pay to have your ad at the top of the search rankings.  In my opinion this is the very first place I would start spending advertising money. 

Note - PPC or Pay Per Click is search advertising.  Because google has 70-80% of the search traffic we are going to talk about "Google Adword" which is where you can buy PPC traffic on google.  Bing/Yahoo have a shared platform for purchasing PPC traffic also that is almost identical.  

PPC on the surface is very simple.  The more you dive into it the more you realize how complex it is.  One of the problems with PPC is that there is a lot of 'dumb' money being spent on PPC.  There are many people that enter into this advertising without a good understanding and end up spending money like a drunk sailor and then say "PPC doesn't work".  That is good news for you!  Because PPC absolutely works, and works very well if everything is right.  

1. The first place I would start is with a website called www.Lynda.com  

Several years ago I got a subscription to Lynda and still use it occasionally today.  You can learn through video just about anything you want to learn on Lynda, including PPC.  They offer a free trial, so I would take advantage of that, at the end if you don't think it is worth the money simpy cancel the subscription.  Search for Google Adwords Essential Training.  It is about 3 hours of content in several small videos.  This will give you a very basic understanding of adwords.  This is probably enough information to manage your campaigns but, not enough to set them up.  In my opinion this requires quite a bit more training which is a nice segway to the next step.

2. There are people that specialize in PPC training either books or online trainings.  I have one book that I would suggest, this book is a must if you plan on setting up Adwords yourself. 

Perry Marshall - He has an excellent book that is available on Amazon  - "The Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords"

If you are interested in PPC I would strongly suggest you watch the Lynda video first. 

At that point you can decide to buy Perry Marshall's book and learn to set up your own campaigns or you can hire someone to set up your campaigns.  If you have been in business for a while you have probably gotten phone calls from Google telling you that they would be happy to set up Adwords for you, and they will do it for you for free.  Just an FYI, I have seen some of these campaigns set up by google.  I would never let them set up my campaigns, this is a little bit like the fox guarding the hen house.  

One of the marketing services we offer to help dealers is to set Adwords up.  We do charge a fee to set it up but in the long run I believe the savings far outways the cost of campaign set up poorly.  Keep in mind we require you to watch the Lynda videos.  I want you to have a good understanding of what we are doing, I think it is a big mistake to blindly trust someone with your marketing dollars, that is why I require at least the Lynda videos before we will set up adwords.

If you are interested in having us set up Adwords for you,  feel free to contact me.