As a business, one of your first priorities is to create effective marketing campaigns, although these can be a little intimidating if you’ve never set one up before. One of the most popular models of marketing is PPC or pay-per-click. In this Beginner’s Guide to PPC Advertising, we show you all there is to know about getting PPC to work for you and your business.
What is PPC?
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) describes a marketing model whereby businesses pay a selected fee every time someone clicks on their ads. Pay-Per-Click campaigns allow a business to essentially buy impressions, website visitors, calls and clicks through their advertising campaigns.
As a business, you want customers to visit your website and buy your products/services. PPC advertising helps by allowing you to bid on certain Google searches to place your ad at the top. There are different types of PPC advertising: Search and Display Advertising.
What is Search Advertising?
Search Advertising is one of the most popular forms of PPC. This is where an advert is shown to someone actively searching for an item through a search engine. The advertiser will bid on a particular search for their advert to show higher up in the search results. Their goal is to be placed at the top of the Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engine results in relevant searches to achieve the most publicity from their ad. A higher placed ad gives the business a better likelihood of getting a sale.
What is Display Advertising?
Display advertising campaigns place adverts on websites and apps through banners, images and videos with the intention to target users more generally. This is also used to conduct Remarketing, whereby display ads appear in front of users who have already been on your businesses’ page, or adverts that are similar to those they’ve already searched.
Why should I use PPC in my business?
There are many different benefits of using a PPC campaign: increasing sales, building brand awareness, and effective action.
Here are some more advantages of PPC:
- Audience: effective keywords that match your target audiences puts your ads in front of the right people at the right time.
- Control: you can control your own budget and set your advertising bids according to your revenue.
- Results: Google and other website analytics tools allow you to see how well your PPC campaigns are performing. You can see which keywords, ad types and channels are successful and direct your ads more effectively.
So, how do I start a PPC Search campaign?
1. Decide your business’ marketing goals
Firstly, you’ll need to begin by determining your businesses’ needs and goals. Do you want to increase traffic to your website, make more sales or increase actions on your website? Deciding on these basic goals will help you shape the rest of your PPC marketing journey.
2. Think about where to advertise your ads
Now, you need to decide where you would like your ads to be advertised. For Search Advertising, Google Ads is a great way to begin – by creating an account you can see all of your PPC information in one place.
To maximise your reach, creating a Google Shopping ad for your business is an important step. All you need to do is create a Google Shopping account here, and link your Google ads account.
3. Choose your keywords
Next, choose which keywords you want to bid on. For example, if you own a small pet grooming business you might want to bid on the keywords “pet grooming near me”, or “dog grooming”. These keywords are just the basis of your research. As a business, you should be constantly searching for keywords that maximise your potential and reach your own personal goals.
Getting started with your keyword research and list doesn’t have to be difficult. Sit down and write the main categories that your business fits into. Then, write any terms or phrases that could fall under those categories. A good keyword list includes selecting specific keywords to target specific audiences, and selecting general keywords to reach a wide range of people. You should be researching and compiling a list of keywords that are relevant to your audience, expansive and exhaustive.
Remember, always keep in mind your specific marketing goals, if you want to reach as many people as possible, then use as many broad keywords as you can. Although, you might find it difficult to reach actual customers and complete conversions when adding general keywords because your ad could appear on searches that aren’t always relevant or related to your business.
Keep reading The Beginner’s Guide to PPC Advertising for more tips!
4. Decide your bids
After this, you should be setting your bids on the keywords you have chosen depending on your budget. Setting your bids is also completely dependent on which marketing goal your business is working towards. For Search and Display advertising, these are the best bidding strategies to use:
If you are focusing on the number of clicks to your website, then using cost-per-click (CPC) bidding is your best option. This means you’ll only pay when someone clicks on your ad and is directed to your website.
If your business is focusing on increasing the number of conversions you get, then cost per action (CPA) bidding is the one to choose. Here, you pay for each click, but Google Ads will automatically set your bids for you to get as many conversions as possible.
If you are looking for more control over your conversions, you can use Enhanced CPC to lower costs, but increase the number of conversions.
5. Write your advert
Now, you need to write your PPC advert, with links to pages on your website, and lots of information. Whether you are writing text ads or designing image ads here are some things to consider:
- Keep your marketing goals in mind: when writing your ads, you should always be thinking about and basing your decisions on what your marketing goal is for your business, and phrase your ads in a way that directly accomplishes this.
- Use keywords in your URLs: the URL displayed on an ad and the URL that the click takes you to can be different. To maximise your reach, make sure to use some of your chosen keywords in your displayed URL. This usually looks better than a generic URL and improves the advertiser’s likelihood of appearing higher in search results.
- Focus on what you can give to the user: in your ad, you should showcase what your business can give to any potential users that may click on your ad. Highlight any benefits that your product offers and how you can make their life easier.
- Make sure your ad is relevant: your ad must appeal to the right audience at the right time. You need to ensure your ad is relevant to your product or service, to your website landing page and most importantly, to the searcher’s intent.
6. Manage your campaign
Once you’ve created a PPC campaign, you’ll need to managing them so that they stay relevant and effective for your business. You should always be analysing the performance of your campaigns and consider adjustments like these:
- Organise ad groups: splitting up your ad groups will help you to target more specific audiences and tailor your ads.
- Add negative keywords: adding keywords that are not relevant to your business can help you to refine your audience.
7. Track your campaign
Now, the fun part!
Seeing how your campaign is performing helps your business and your marketing goals. Analytics tools allow you to track what your adverts are doing, and how they influence your visitors’ actions on your website.
Some best practices to keep your adverts successful:
- Website page quality: the quality and optimisation of the pages a user lands on once they click on your ads are crucial to their experience. Creating fully optimised, responsive and content-rich pages will ensure your website is continuously successful.
- Website speed: when users have a slow experience trying to access your website, they’re much less likely to find what they are looking for or purchase from you. Google suggests that more than half of visits are abandoned if a mobile page takes over 3 seconds to load.
- Quality Score: this is a diagnostic tool to measure how well your ad quality compares to other advertisers. They analyse your expected CTR, ad relevance and landing page experience to calculate your Quality Score. Advertisers with higher quality scores will get more ad clicks at lower costs.
- Keyword relevance: making sure your keywords are always relevant and updated will guarantee your website has the most potential traffic.
Summary – The Beginner’s Guide to PPC Advertising
PPC enables new businesses to reach clients across the globe. Whilst this enhances the number of opportunities for businesses, the level of competition between businesses is also increased.
Therefore, businesses are now increasingly competitive and it is important to have a digital marketing strategy to maximise the benefits of a campaign. Several goals can be achieved with effective PPC campaigns which allow businesses to reach a large target audience. Through effective use of PPC, you can ensure that your company is reaching your advertising potential.
In conclusion, PPC can be confusing, and a lot of work, but if done well it can help your business to grow exponentially. If you’re struggling with any aspect of PPC in your business, contact us for help. As an expert Digital Marketing Agency, we know the ins and outs of PPC and can help you at any stage of your campaign journey.
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