If your business is not listed amongst the first 5-10 results on Google, it can be disheartening; enough to make you think of stopping your online marketing efforts. But this is a big mistake. While SEO can help your rankings increase organically, there is also another opportunity – search engine marketing – and within this broad field, there is Pay Per Click – or PPC – advertising.
But what is Pay-Per-Click advertising, and how can it help you build your business online – and beyond? In this guide, we’re going to go through everything you need to know about PPC and explore some of the reasons why it is such an important strategy. Let’s get stuck right away.
What is Pay Per Click?
First, a brief primer. PPC or Pay-Per-Click advertising is an online marketing model that involves the creation of ads, which are then displayed to a target market in search results or social media. If a customer clicks on your ad, you pay a fee. Most advertisers use PPC to complement their organic campaigns, and the most common types of Pay Per Click are Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest ads.
Who is it good for?
PPC marketing can work for almost any business, and in a multitude of ways. For example, it’s a great way for ecommerce businesses to attract more visitors and make more sales online. But it can also be a good way of driving quality traffic to a site that is trying to build a community, create brand awareness, or even make people pick up the phone and call in person.
What makes a good PPC ad?
Regardless of the platform, there are a few key things you need to remember about PPC. First, every time someone clicks on your ad, you pay a fee. So, it’s critical that your landing page is optimised as much as possible so that you aren’t wasting your opportunities. Your ad needs to be relevant and closely related to the products you are selling – targeted to keywords that have a high click-through rate but low cost of click.
You should also look into long tail keywords, not just the most popular and most searched terms in your specific niche. It’s important to understand that long tail keywords make up the vast majority of web traffic, and they are also less competitive – and cost you less money. Finally, this is not a set-and-forget task. Over time you will be able to see the ads that are performing well, and those that aren’t. Make sure you are constantly refining and expanding your PPC campaigns to ensure optimal – and increasingly successful – results.
How do you manage your account?
As we discussed above, your PPC campaigns will not be effective if you do not manage them. You will need to add new keywords relevant to your business, for example, as well as establishing negative keyword groups.
Including negative keywords will help your ads with relevancy, and they are critical to your work because if there are terms that aren’t converting, it’s simply wasting your money. It’s the same principle for trimming the bloat – lose your expensive, underperforming keywords. Finally, use split ad groups to test effectiveness and improve your targeting to highly specific audiences.
Reap the rewards?
With a good Pay Per Click campaign, you can expect a number of excellent benefits. As every digital marketer will tell you, getting to the top of the SERPs organically is a good goal, but it can take a lot of time and resources to get there.
But with a solid and savvy Pay Per Click campaign, you can – potentially – get to those top positions much quicker. PPC also gives you the chance to build a strong presence for your business or start-up, and ensure you get to – and remain in – the valuable real estate offered by the likes of Google at the top of their search listings.
But the real beauty of Pay-Per-Click marketing is that it gives you the chance to improve your results iteratively. Find the keywords that are performing best, and remove the ones that aren’t working. And split test your ad headlines to make sure that they consistently get more attention.
It can even help your SEO – just use the same keywords that are performing well in your campaigns, and they should also work well for your search engine optimization.
PPC can help your business get more qualified traffic, better online leads, and ultimately, more sales and exposure. If you need help getting your next PPC campaign up and running, Click Through Digital can help – why not give us a call?
