Understanding your marketing strategies and working out what will work best for your business or organisation is a key element for improving growth and seeing success. Having the correct marketing strategy in place can make a huge difference to your company and should be high on your list of priorities if you want to expand your reach or drive sales.
Pay-per-click advertising campaigns, or PPC as it is often known, is currently playing a vital role in the digital market and this trend is likely to continue into the future as search engines take advantage of the global digitalisation taking place.
Before we take a deeper dive into PPC marketing strategy and how it could work for you, here are the basics about what it is, what it does and how it works.
What is Pay-per-click?
Pay-per-click or PPC is a form of digital marketing where a business can post ads online and pay a set fee each time a user clicks on that ad. It is a popular marketing strategy in search engine advertising as businesses and organisations can pay for an ad to be placed into the sponsored links at the top of the first page. Google advertising is a great example of this.
What does PPC achieve?
If done correctly, a PPC campaign can be a cost-effective marketing strategy for businesses. Not only are you driving targeted traffic to your website, but you are improving brand visibility and reach, which can result in higher click through and conversion rates for your products and services.
How does PPC work?
Each time a user types in a keyword that is relevant to your business, your ad will be displayed on the first page of the search engine or come up in the sponsored link section. You pay for each keyword as part of your campaign, so if your keyword is “digital marketing” for example, you will pay a set fee each time the generated ad is clicked on. Popular keywords will be higher in price, so it is important you choose keywords that work for your budget.
PPC and Google Ads
Google ads are the most popular way of PPC advertising thanks to it being the most commonly used search engine across the world and should be included in any PPC marketing strategy to gain you the most impressions and maximum return on your advertising investment.
However, it is not simply as easy as creating a campaign and choosing a keyword, Google has a ranking system where it rewards businesses for the quality and usefulness of their ad for their users. So, choosing the correct format, ad information and size can all play a part in how high your ad score is. The higher your score, the lower your ad costs and the more traffic that will be driven to your website.
How to run an effective PPC Campaign
An effective PPC campaign can prove to be an excellent ROI for businesses but only if you get it right. Defining your business targets and marketing objectives from the outset can give you a better chance of creating a successful campaign.
To get the most out of any campaign means tailoring your PPC campaigns to suit your business and starts with research into your target market and understanding your goals. This insight is what separates an excellent PPC campaign from a poor one. Without this information you are unlikely to see results and end up losing money rather than gaining sales.
Keyword research and setting out your aims should be your first step in building out a successful and effective PPC campaign, you can do this as a standalone marketing strategy or use it as a tool as part of a wider advertising plan. However, this requires time, knowledge, and dedicated marketing assets.
Having a digital marketing company run your campaigns can be of huge benefit, especially for small to midsize businesses and enterprises without any in-house marketing resources to rely on. Agencies like Click Through Digital can create and manage your PPC campaign and larger marketing strategies and using their knowledge and expertise, are more likely to get you the results you want.
Performance and ROI is essential when running a PPC campaign and any campaign should be continually monitored to ensure the best outcome for you and your business, which is where digital marketing agencies excel. They have the assets and resources to be able to devote the time needed to create and manage an effective campaign that is tailored to you.
So, what should an effective PPC campaign include?
- Knowing your business objectives, targets, and budget. From this you can form a ROI and keyword analysis model based on the keywords and search terms most suitable for you and your business.
- Google Ads Account creation with the relative analytics in place such as conversion tracking for eCommerce sites or call and contact us tracking. If you have an account already that isn’t performing, it may be time to get outside help. Here at Click Through Digital we can provide a free audit to identify any issues.
- Campaign creation. How this is done is specific to your business model, it could be multiple campaigns based on your aims and budget and include ad sets, or it could be a specific ad to market a single product. You should also consider location; you may want multiple locations or to drill down to a precise area.
- Creation of ads. How you format and present your ads is crucial and will depend on several factors such as the industry sector and budget. Ads could be search, display, display retargeting, video, shopping, or all of the above. Where necessary for ads outside of just search, you may need to have design and creative input to ensure your ad is visually appealing and provides the relevant content to engage your audience.
- If you have a product or service you want to drive sales towards, the creation of a landing page to push traffic towards is an ideal solution.
- Once your ad campaign is live, it must be continually optimised, monitored, and developed as the Google algorithms learn and score your ads. This can give you a tight control of your budget, ensuring you spend your money correctly and help identify where there may be opportunities for further campaign growth.
Ultimately, a successful PPC marketing strategy should be carried out by a marketing team with the experience and expertise in producing successful PPC campaigns with profitable results.
Here at Click Through Digital we provide successful marketing solutions to boost your business reach and sales growth. Contact us today to find out how to generate results for your business.
