Want to know a bit about PPC? Not sure where to start? We’ve got you covered.
Advertising online, via search engines or on other sites, is often charged by how many people click on an ad. Commonly referred to as PPC, Pay-Per-Click advertising is a great way to get started with online marketing.
Let’s take a look at what exactly PPC is and how it can fit into the marketing of any business looking to reach new customers.
An Introduction to PPC
Pay-Per-Click advertising is a way of marketing online in which advertisers pay only when people click on their ads. It’s useful for paying an exact amount for every visit to your site, so you can work out how much to invest. It’s like buying traffic, as opposed to the usual methods of marketing which involve that small element of guesswork.
Advertising on search engines is the most widely used form of PPC. This lets advertisers show a link to their site above the regular search results so that anyone searching for their chosen keywords will be shown an advert. If someone were to type in “ppc birmingham”, for example, they would be shown our ad at the top of the Google search results.
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If someone were to click on this advert, they would be sent to our site, and we would pay a small cost.
When PPC is done right, the cost you have to pay is nothing compared to the profit you make on a sale. So if you’re paying $2 per click, but you end up selling a $500 product from that, then you’re going to make a solid profit on it.
Putting together a PPC campaign can take a lot of work to be successful. It begins with keyword and competitor research, organising that data into different categories, and then creating dedicated landing pages for visitors to land on after clicking an ad. Google will actually charge advertisers less when their campaigns are set out in the best way for users. If you want to get the most out of your money when using PPC, you’ll want to do it well.
Google AdWords Explained
The most popular platform for PPC advertising is none other than Google AdWords. The AdWords platform gives businesses the ability to show their ads on their search results as well as on any website in their network. These positions above the search results can be bid on so that only the highest paying and highest quality adverts are shown to searchers. So some adverts may even be shown above higher paying advertisers if they have better adverts and landing pages.
Google decides which adverts they show by looking at the Ad Rank of each advert. They work this out by multiplying together the Cost Per Click Bid and the Quality Score. The CPC Bid is simply how much an advertiser is willing to spend. Quality Score is a rating out of 10 given by Google, which is based on how relevant your ad is, click-through rate, and the quality of your landing page. This formula lets only determined advertisers reach their potential customers. Lazy or stingy advertisers need not apply.
Being the overwhelming leader in their industry, Google gets millions of visitors a day, and will of course get the most views for your adverts. Depending on which keywords and match types you target, you could be reaching thousands, or even millions of people. There are a lot of factors affecting how well your PPC campaign will do, but you can ensure you do well by focusing on these basics:
- Make sure your keywords are relevant to your business. Think about what people would search for if they wanted to find you.
- Create custom landing pages with content dedicated to your advert. This ensures that anyone clicking on your advert will be sent to exactly the page they’re looking for.
- Check the quality score given to your ads by Google. If this needs improving, make sure your keywords and landing pages are relevant to the adverts you show. Remember, higher quality scores lead to more people clicking on your ads for lower fees.
Keyword Research for PPC
Keywords are the building blocks of any PPC campaign, they determine when you advert is shown to searchers. You will need to look into which keywords are most relevant to your brand and which are going to be worth targeting. Creating a list of keywords is a vital part of any AdWords campaign, and this will need to be continually updated to focus on those that are best suited to your business.
To get the best results from your keyword list, it should be:
- Relevant to your brand and website. You want to only pay for the keywords that are going to send the right people to your site. Think about what your company does and who will be looking for you.
- Broad enough to target the majority of searchers. Most searches come from people searching for specific things, so you will need to target the long-tail as well as the broader terms. These keywords will be less competitive, and so less expensive too.
Managing Your PPC Campaigns
In order to be an effective and worthy investment, your PPC campaign will need to be managed regularly to stay up to date with user trends. Looking at the analytics of your current campaigns will show you how well each is doing and where you may need to make adjustments. Here are a few ways you can optimise your campaign to be even more successful:
- Reach a wider audience by adding more keywords that are relevant to your business
- Eliminate the low-intent and uninterested visitors by adding negative keywords to your campaign
- Optimise your landing pages to align with the expectations of visitors. This means customising the content and call-to-actions to fit in with what people are searching for to find your site.