Digital platforms have provided us with many new marketing opportunities. One of the most popular is pay-per-click advertising. We’ve put together this guide to help you understand what it is, how it works and how you can use it to market your business.
What is PPC?
Pay-per-click is an internet marketing model where you pay a fee each time one of your ads gets clicked on. Instead of getting organic visits to your website, you’re paying for visitors.
Many search engines, particularly Google, offer pay-per-click advertising options. Google Ads uses a system where you bid for ad placement. Whenever someone searches for any of the keywords relating to your product or service, your ad can appear in the sponsored links at the top (or bottom) of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
Why use PPC advertising?
PPC is a cost-effective advertising option for any sized business. It suits any budget and is scalable if you’re getting good returns on your investment. It also has these advantages over other forms of advertising:
1. You get free brand exposure.
2. You only pay if your ad is clicked on.
3. Your ad appears when someone is actively looking for your service or product, i.e. there is intent to purchase.
How do you set up a PPC campaign?
It’s worth investing time and effort into setting up your campaign properly from the start. This involves the following:
• Researching popular keywords
• Organising keywords into ad groups
• Setting up quality PPC landing pages on your website
How does your ad get selected?
We’ll look at this from the way Google Ads selects ads for their SERPs. When a user enters a search query, Google searches the pool of advertisers who are targeting that query and selects a set of winners to appear at the top of the SERP. Winners are chosen according to the relevance of their keywords, the quality of their ad campaign and landing page, and the size of their bid.
What is a quality ad campaign?
Google assigns an Ad Rank to every advertiser to determine quality campaigns. It’s a measurement based on your cost-per-click (CPC) Bid and Quality Score. The CPC Bid is the highest amount you’re willing to pay for your ad to be clicked. The Quality Score is a rating determined by the relevance of your ad, the quality of the landing page and your click-through rate.
You can find out more about Google Ads in our article on the topic.
Looking after your PPC campaign
Like all forms of advertising, PPC needs to be monitored to ensure you’re getting the best results. Google Ads, in particular, helps you improve your campaigns over time by analysing what is and isn’t working and making recommendations for improvement. They also make regular changes to how their algorithm works and its important to stay on top of these changes.
Finally, one of the best aspects of PPC advertising is that it is 100% measurable. You can track sales, leads, phone calls, website pages visited – anything that is meaningful to your business. You’re always going to know exactly how well you’re doing, which is great for accountability.
We are a Google Partner and here to help your business grow, so if you need help with your PPC advertising, feel free to get in touch.
