7 Things to Know Before Starting PPC Advertising

PPC or “Pay per click” advertising, is one of the most popular marketing tools available today. 

Designed to give your company an instant boost in the search engine result pages, PPC involves paying to rank higher for certain keywords and phrases. 

While around 45% of small businesses use paid ads today, PPC is still a concept that most don’t fully understand. 

If you’re planning on bringing PPC into your promotional strategy, make sure you know these crucial things first. 

PPC is Paid Advertising

Pay Per Click is a paid advertising strategy in which the marketer pays money to certain platforms for each “click” they get from a customer. The strategy falls under the umbrella of “search engine marketing”. On Google Ads, you’d pay every time someone clicked on the link to your site in the search engine results pages. 

You might have noticed PPC ads on Google results before, as they’re identified with the “Ad” label, and placed at the top of the search results. The amount you pay for each click depends on various things, including what kind of audience you’re targeting, and how competitive your keywords are. PPC advertising is most common with search engines like Google and Bing. However, you can also create PPC campaigns on social media. 

PPC Can Generate Great Leads

PPC improves your chances of appearing in front of your target audience at the right time. Using PPC, you can reach your audience when they’re searching for specific words related to your brand. You can even maximize your PPC outcomes by targeting keywords that show a specific kind of “intent” from your customers (like the intent to buy). 

Paid advertising automatically brings you to the top of the search results on a search engine, or places you in front of your target customer, without your company having to jump through hoops. Unlike with SEO or organic social media marketing, you don’t have to build domain authority, or spend years enhancing your presence through strategically placed keywords to get reach with PPC. 

PPC Has a Lot of Benefits

The biggest benefit of PPC is that it allows companies to generate instant results online. With most organic advertising strategies, you need to invest a lot of time and effort into generating reach and results. Although SEO and organic marketing drives better outcomes long-term, it can be too slow for businesses that need to attract leads straight away. 

PPC also offers measurable results, making it easier to optimize your campaigns over time. You don’t have to make assumptions about what’s making you the most money, because your PPC accounts will allow you to track the outcomes of each campaign. Paid advertising helps you to rise to the top in a competitive market and grab the attention of customers who didn’t know you before. The results are better brand awareness, improved marketing outcomes, and stronger ROI. 

PPC Gives Companies Control

PPC isn’t just a great shortcut for companies that want to get to the top in their niche. This inbound marketing strategy also gives you more control than many marketing campaigns. You’ll have the option to target the exact kind of customer that you most want to see your ads, on social media, or the search engines. You can make it, so your ads appear based on factors like keywords, location, website, time, device, and even customer demographics. 

With PPC, you’ll also be able to set parameters that control you spend. You can set budgets on a daily basis to ensure you don’t pay more than you can afford and establish parameters for how you’re going to track return on investment. 

You Can Set Specific Goals

PPC campaigns allow you to set goals that demonstrate your ROI in a more measurable way. For instance, you can set goals for brand awareness, which involves tracking how familiar your target audience is with your company. Tracking brand awareness would mean looking at direct traffic, social engagement, and even customer reviews. 

Other goal options include lead generation. Measured through tracking pixels, and UTM parameters, lead generation goals can show you which ads and campaigns your website visitors come from. You can also track conversions. If you want to earn more conversions on a specific sale or offer, you can track things like how many sales happen after a customer clicks on your ads. 

There are Different Kinds of PPC Campaigns

There’s more than one type of PPC campaign. The most common kind of PPC is search ads – the text ads that appear at the top of the search result pages. However, you can also run social media PPC campaigns which display paid advertisements to your target audience. There are also:

• Display ads: Which allow you to place (usually image-based) ads on external websites.
• Remarketing ads: Used to place cookies on customer browsers to engage with people who have visited your website before, giving you another chance at a sale.
• Google shopping ads: Designed to place your products at the top of the Google Shopping results pages. 
• Local service ads: perfect for local companies, these ads showcase your content to people located nearby. 
• Gmail promotions: You can even present your company to people when they’re using their Gmail account. 

Best Practices Can Improve your PPC Results

The most important part of any PPC marketing campaign, is planning. The best ads include a landing page that’s designed to instantly convert your leads into a paying customer, as well as carefully chosen ad copy, and plenty of keyword research. Before you begin any PPC campaign you should know how to:

• Research competitive keywords: The keywords your ads appear for in the search engines need to be tailored to your specific audience. The best keywords will also focus on purchasing intent, to improve your chances of conversions. 
• Use strong headlines: In any kind of PPC, a strong headline will capture your audience’s attention and convince them to click. 
• Write Engaging copy: Learning how to use your ad copy to connect with your audience can be a tough process. You’ll need to get to know your customer, develop a memorable brand voice, and use your keywords effectively. 
• Use Marketing assets: Different kinds of PPC ads have unique benefits to offer. On Facebook, you could use highly focused targeting to pinpoint the perfect audience. If you’re using display ads, you might need to use high-quality brand photography to capture customer attention. 
• Choose your budget: Having the right budget is crucial in PPC campaigns. You’ll need to ensure that you’re spending enough to outshine the competition, but that you’re still getting a good return on your investment. 
• A/B test your campaigns: A/B testing your campaigns will help you to find the best headlines, copy, ad content, creative components, and marketing budget to drive a strong ROI. 

Make the Most of your PPC Campaigns

PPC campaigns can be a powerful tool, particularly when used alongside organic marketing campaigns like SEO. While SEO and organic marketing are influenced heavily by the ever-changing algorithms of the companies that run each platform, PPC campaigns will always give you a consistent way to bring your business into focus. 

Of course, like any marketing campaign, it’s important to go in with the right strategy. Make the most of your PPC campaigns by learning everything there is to know about paid advertising, before you jump in.