Learn the Basics of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing
Overview Of PPC (Pay-per-click) Advertisement
Online marketing is the most approachable way to improve the proximity accessibility of your business.
There are many different digital marketing strategies available. Your visibility can be increased with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or videos and blogs as these tools effectively promote your products and services on your website and social media pages.
What is PPC meaning? You must have come across ads on search engine results at some point. These sites are using PPC services (Pay-per-click or PPC).
This is one of many online strategies that help you reach the right target audience. Undoubtedly, PPC advertising is attracting business owners thanks to the profitable result it brings. Read on to understand an effective Pay-per-click strategy. What is PPC advertising?
What is PPC advertising?
PPC simply abbreviates “Pay-Per-Click”! PPC advertising is an effective income generator for your business as it is an advertising method where the advertiser pays for every click on their website or app.
Pay-per-click or PPC is the most popular and useful online paid advertising campaign. Business owners approach this advertising method as it not only improves traffic but also gauges users to their websites. Measuring and tracking it is relatively easy, thereby helping boost your rank on search engine results pages. PPC basically means you’ll pay every time a user clicks on your ads.
You can set up a pay-per-click advertising strategy through Google AdWords if you want to target the search space with Google Ads or Google Shopping Ads. Besides search, another option is Display Network Ads. Advertise PPC on Bing is another option besides Google. You can explore several types of PPC advertising:
What Is The Most Popular PPC Advertising Platform?
Google Ads is currently the most popular PPC Ad Network in the world. This is explainable as there are nearly 4 billion Google users worldwide.
Bids are actually placed by advertisers on keywords for clicks that will lead users to their sites. This means they are bidding on keywords, aka the audiences. However, advertisers will only have to pay when someone clicks on their ad.
What Is PPC Ad Visibility?
Visibility is your ad’s presence on specific pages. Each appearance is counted as an impression.
How Do PPC Ads Work?
As an advertiser, you’ll bid for clicks to your website based on keywords and/or your targeted audiences. A bid is an amount you’re willing (or able) to pay per click on your website.
You will enter an auction with other advertisers for each click. The ads visibility is based on their bids and quality score, or relevance score.
You are essentially bidding on certain factors related to targeting and depending on the audience you are up against (other advertisers/competitors).
Various factors will determine the amount you’ll pay, how many times your ad impression in search results, and most importantly, how often your ad is clicked.
What is Quality Score?
Google prioritizes advertisers who are willing to pay more and with better landing pages, where CTR (click-through rate) is checked. Google thoroughly examines these factors to formulate an ad quality ranking, and that is where you’ll receive ads based on the rankings.
All factors of a website Google looks through to form a ranking are known as the “Quality Score”.
How Much Does PPC Advertising Cost?
The price of PPC advertising is primarily based on your industry. If you are a clothing brand owner, you may pay US$1 per click, while owning a real estate company may require you to pay up to US$5 – $7 per click.
Lawyers and insurance companies pay over US$20 per click due to the potentially high ROI (Return on Investment). Some of the top competitive industry bids even exceed US$50 per click.
The Most Popular Types Of PPC Ads Today
PPC ads can be visible in various formats and placements, based on the industry, content, budget, and needs, advertisers have the following options for PPC ad sizes:
#1. Paid search
These are ads impressions on search engine results pages. The advertiser would previously place targeted ads for users to see after searching for a keyword.
#2. Display ads
Display ads are banner ads on websites or social media feeds.
#3. Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing impressions on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
#4. Retargeting / remarketing
These are ads visibility on your screen when you use Google search engines or Google partner sites based on your online behavior after leaving a particular website.
Advantages And Disadvantages Of PPC Advertising
PPC marketing, like other digital marketing strategies, has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Advantage #1: Cost-effective
It saves considerable time and money in comparison to other advertising methods, such as television or print, even though you still bet on a specific amount. Despite the competition, your bid amount will allow you to secure an ad space on a search engine results page targeted to the right audience.
Advantage #2: PPC ads allow you to track your campaign performance
PPC advertising is more measurable than other offline advertising strategies. It’s possible for you to analyze whether your investment is successfully targeted. This is done through tracking your ad’s movement, conducting A/B testing with different bid amounts, ad creative and possibly images, and researching the ads with the highest and lowest traffics.
Advantage #3: Having full control over your PPC campaign
As a business owner, you should be aware of your customers’ online hours and chosen search engines. This helps you plan the time, site, and investment amount for each ad. You can also manually pause campaigns whenever needed.
Disadvantage #1: Risk of extra spending with less conversion
Advertisers can risk investing too much and not converting as expected. The goal of a PPC campaign is for your product or service to reach more targeted audiences as well as converting them, be it a traffic, lead generation form submission, or a direct sale. Lower conversion rates than expected from your current PPC expenses may mean the investment is not worth it. This typically involves strategic planning – working with an experienced PPC strategist to help you get the most out of your marketing budget.
Disadvantage #2: Your Ad Relevance Scores May be Affected
Customers have the option to limit their access to an ad. For instance, users on Google and Facebook may choose to hide ads for a number of reasons. The most common reason is irrelevant advertising. This can affect your ad’s relevance score, in turn reducing the visibility frequency of your ad on platforms.
Getting Started With PPC Advertisement
To ensure your ads’ effectiveness, use the most popular PPC Ad Networks such as:
- Google Ads – The most popular today
- Bing Ads – Bing has millions of users
- Facebook Ads – 2.7 billion active users
- Instagram Ads – Extremely popular with young customers
- LinkedIn Ads – B2B’s Playground
- Taboola / Outbrain – Considerable media presence
- Yahoo Gemini (Verizon Media) – Higher Content Viewed
- Twitter Ads – 330 million active users
- Amazon Ads – 197 million users per month
- AdRoll – Offers sophisticated audience targeting
You will need a website or app to advertise. Once you have a website or app, create various landing pages since this is where your traffic will be sent to. Unleash your creativity with these landing pages by inserting SEO keywords to attract targeted audiences.
Next, sign up with different PPC networks of your preference, enter all your billing information, and start creating your first campaign.
Signing up is a really simple process, as all you need is to enter your payment details, business information, your website, and finally, begin creating your campaign.
The difficult part is running the campaign. At any time, there is a need to test and optimize your ads by constantly checking the campaign’s responses and statistics. Through the shown impressions and clicks, try to figure out existing problems from your ads for improvements over time.
Are PPC Ads Effective?
The only way to really know the effectiveness of your PPC ads is by constantly testing and optimizing them. If you own a large company with an annual budget of millions of dollars, you can use daily PPC campaigns to drive your sales towards your goal revenue.
There are many types of ads (for instance) on Google. To gain maximum attention from customers, use PPC advertising, as naturally gaining attention can be extremely difficult while you’re competing with many other sites.
It is best to explore all various PPC ad networks, test your campaigns, thoroughly research these platforms, and select the ones with the best results for your business. For instance, if you are selling cosmetics to younger customers, Instagram ads will be more suitable than LinkedIn ads. Thus, it is important to do your research before jumping into action.
Conclusion
Before initiating a PPC advertising campaign, be sure to determine your marketing needs, the amount you are willing to pay, and your target market. These are essential factors to ensure your success. If you are new to PPC, an experienced digital marketing agency might be helpful.
