Even though 45% of small businesses use paid ads, pay-per-click is still a concept that evades many of us. But if half of small businesses are using it, we just cannot afford to ignore this channel. PPC is an efficient option if you want to reach people who are actively searching for keywords related to your products/services.
If you are a small business owner looking to dive into the world of digital marketing, an individual looking to expand your paid advertising knowledge or even an industry novice trying to explore new areas of marketing, you will want to know what PPC is.
You will need to understand the basics of PPC marketing strategy to boost your results and improve your site performance. This article will tell you everything you need to know about Pay-per-click (PPC) to get started.
What is Pay Per Click marketing?
In a nutshell, pay-per-click is an online marketing model. This form of advertising is most closely associated with Google, though you can see PPC ads on Facebook, Bing, and other places as well. With PPC marketing, the advertiser must pay a fee every time someone clicks on their ad.
Benefits of Pay Per Click marketing
- Track your goals.
Businesses should always have a goal in mind. Your first goal may be attracting potential customers to your site. In this case, the purpose of your ad is to get people to complete forms to sign up for your company’s services.
- Gain swift exposure.
You can speed up your site’s visibility and get your brand out there instantly. Platforms usually approve ads the same day, providing maximum exposure immediately. This could be a text ad, an image ad, or even a video ad. Using many platforms in different formats can increase your brand’s visibility.
- Reach your target audience.
PPC will help you target the specific demographic that you are interested in reaching. In this way, you can quickly and effectively reach your target audience. You can even target individuals based on their behaviors and interests, which includes social media sites like Facebook which can help you get your ad to the group that is likely to convert into a sale.
Pay Per Click marketing tools
A few highly rated PPC tools and software are:
- Google Keyword Planner
- Google Ads Editor
- Bing Ads Editor
- Word Stream AdWords Performance
- Word Stream
- HubSpot
- Ninja Cat
- Optmyzr
- SEMrush
- Spy Fu
- Ad Badger (for Amazon)
- Adzooma
How to do Pay Per Click marketing?
There are advertisers who are interested in showing ads related to a user’s search query. An auction is generated based on keywords that are bid on by them. The ads that win the auction appear on the search engine results page.
To involve in these auctions, advertisers use accounts on platforms like Google Ads to set up their ads and determine where and when they would like those ads to appear. Accounts are split up into campaigns for ease of management and reporting of different locations, product types etc.,
6 tactics to improve your Pay Per Click marketing strategy
- Figure out your PPC budget
- Set your campaign goals
- Find out what type of campaign to run
- Research your keywords
- Bid on your chosen keywords
- Create keyword-focused copy with unique landing pages
How much does Pay Per Click pay?
With PPC, you pay when you get results i.e., when someone clicks your ad. You have got more control over how much each truly engaged consumer costs you.
This plays out through an auction system. Unlike a traditional auction, there is not one product with one winner—you are bidding on how high up and how often your ad could be visible.
Whenever a user searches for a specific keyword, Google looks through its list of advertisers for that word and initiates an auction between them. A Google algorithm then selects ads based on each advertiser’s maximum bid and the quality score of each ad.
The big takeaway from this is that it is not just about how much you bid. The quality of your ad plays a massive part as well. Having said that, if your max bid is not realistic, then your ads are not going to be shown often enough to be worthwhile.
Different keywords have different costs per click, and this should help in your bidding strategy. Tools such as Ubersuggest and Google Ads Keyword Planner could give you an idea for how much your ads are likely to cost, so they should play a role in your keyword research.
How can I earn from Pay Per Click? How much does Pay Per Click cost on Google?
You can attract more customers by showing ads on a platform people use to find information i.e., Google. You can promote offers to a local and worldwide audience. You can reach out to your target audience at the right time with segmentation and personalization.
Google’s online advertising program enables marketers to create online ads to promote their product/services to their target audiences. The Google Ads platform runs on Pay-Per-Click advertising i.e., you must pay every time a visitor clicks an ad.
Assume Google Ads platform as an online marketplace, where businesses pay to have their ads shown at the top of the search results page or get displayed significantly on other websites.
Why are google ads so expensive?
Google Ad is an effective method of online advertising that can be used to increase traffic and conversions considerably. Unfortunately, creating an Ad campaign can be quite expensive.
Increasing competition, high demand, and efficacy all play a crucial role in increasing the cost of using Google AdWords. However, while this service can be expensive, it should not necessarily affect you from taking advantage of it.
AdWords can be an exceptionally beneficial service, and there are a few ways to reduce your costs.
- Find Less Competitive Keywords
With Google’s keyword planner, you can view the average amount of monthly searches for a keyword and what its average CPC is. This can give you a good idea of whether a keyword is worth it for the price.
- Improve Quality Scores
Google utilizes quality scores to make sure that users see ads that are more relevant to their searches. Google AdWords gives a quality score to the keywords that you make use of. Google then applies this score to determine how much to charge you for each click.
Quality scores are determined based on the expected CTR, landing page, and relevancy of your ad to the keyword. So, to improve your quality scores, you need to focus on these areas.
Your ad should be directly related to your keywords and should include keywords in the copy. In addition, your landing page should be informative and should be useful to visitors who click on your ads.
- Implement Negative Keywords
Negative keywords are a great way to reduce clicks that are not likely to generate any revenue. As AdWords uses a PPC model, one of the best ways to reduce your AdWords spending is to minimize the number of clicks from unnecessary sources.
Is SEO better than Google Ads?
SEO requires more creativity than pay-per-click marketing because it is multi-disciplinary. We all know it is better to own rather than renting. When a website seizes a top spot in the SERPs, it gets all that traffic for free. Although there are a lot of opportunities to growth, organic ranking is still King because no other marketing strategy can bring your site as much traffic for so little cost.
It does not require creativity for someone to set their credit card into Google and start bidding on your keywords to increase your CPCs. Businesses built on Google Ads are not secure because they will eventually stop generating traffic and leads once their budget runs out.
Comparing SEO or Google Ads is like comparing apples to oranges. Both help to get your brand on the SERP in front of your potential customers.
SEO drives to get your site higher in the organic rankings so that you rank for customers typing queries relevant to your content. Ads allow you to target keyword phrases and then create an ad that promotes your site for those keywords.
Both channels can help enhance your overall visibility in search, but it is important to remember that trying to determine which is best is like comparing apples to oranges. A strong digital presence requires brands to use both channels and craft a strategy that can employ both together to maximize the online potential of the brand.
Conclusion
Pay Per Click advertising is an incredible way to reach a highly targeted audience quickly. Through platforms such as Google and many more, you can set up paid ads in seconds. Once approved, they could be seen by thousands of people, depending on your budget.
While reaching your target audience is very important in marketing, the most important thing is what you do when you have people’s attention. Therefore, you need to give your paid campaigns the care and attention they need or find a company to do it for you.
When you find the right balance with PPC and have your ads perfectly optimized, it can bring you an excellent ROI and become a vital part of your digital marketing strategy.