Advertising your website using Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads gives you the chance to pay for the top positions on the search engines, and to appear on relevant partner sites. Marketing with PPC delivers instant traffic and offers a lot of ways to complement already existing SEO strategies by testing different keywords and business approaches, and it actually allows you to develop you overall online marketing strategy with SEO plans supported with facts, not just assumptions.
PPC advertising systems and approaches
There are many systems and approaches you can take, when you decide for a PPC campaign, but let’s have a quick look at the most common ones.
Google AdWords
As mentioned earlier, PPC advertisement delivers instant traffic results by placing your site on the top positions on a search engine. With Google being the giant of the search engines, AdWords remains the most efficient PPC advertising system. not only it places your website in the leading view of users, but it also provides your website with the ability to test different keywords, enhancing your standing SEO strategies.
Widespread competition for top keywords has made PPC even more essential for any online marketing strategy. With Google AdWords you get great results that take up immense screen real estate on various high-volume, money-keywords searches. A game plan that balances the appearances on these search engine pages, in a combination with a high number of low-key keywords, leads to a lower cost and much more efficient PPC campaign.
Managing Bing ads
Yes, the majority of searches happens on Google, and that is exactly why marketing opportunities on Bing often get overlooked. There is a lot of untapped PPC potential within those searches, which means sharp businesses can capture new leads and conversions while the rest of them continue to neglect the high-volume Bing search.
Social media
Social media sites have become a great place to advertise your business, as people tend to spend the majority of their time just scrolling through the endless pages. Next to Twitter and Pinterest, Facebook is an ideal social media website where you can place your ads. You can bid to have your PPC ads seen on the users’ News Feeds sidebar, meaning they are always in sight. These clicks go to your own landing pages, which allows you to track leads and conversions from Facebook.
Another option for marketing on Facebook allows you to advertise directly in the News Feeds of relevant users, encouraging them to Like and visit your page. These ads help you to expand your social reach, making more and more people aware of your brand and present promotions.
Is PPC marketing the right technique for you
By now we have established that PPC marketing offers great opportunities to:
- Expand your customer base; you can actively connect with the people looking for services and products like yours, and provide them with a unique offer relevant to their search query.
- Generate leads at a low-cost;PPC is a very efficient way to bring potential clients to your website, and you can even enjoy the algorithmically generated discount from the search engines in exchange for satisfying their users.
In truth, PPC advertising can work just fine for almost any type of business, whether you are looking to sell services or products, generate new leads, build brand awareness, share any kind of useful information, or even steer in foot traffic, phone calls and emails to your local store or office. The hard part is the execution. If you want to get the most out of your Pay-Per-Click marketing campaign, you have to follow a few of the best practices.
One thing is certain; PPC marketing can be great for all parties involved:
- For the searchers; research indicates that users click od paid search ads much more often than any other familiar form of digital marketing. This shows that people really do not mind being advertised to, when the services and products advertised actually fit the user’s needs. And because practically everybody uses search engines when they are searching for a service or product, the results (ads included) are generally highly relevant to what they are looking for. Additionally, Google has come up with a great formula that ensures PPC ads meet the searcher’s needs.
- For the advertisers; marketers have a unique opportunity to put their message in front of an audience who is specifically and actively looking for their service or product. And because users reveal their intent through the search query, marketers can measure the quality of traffic that results from the clicks on search engines.
- For the search engines; PPC enables search engines to serve the users and marketers at the same time. The users comprise their user-base, while the marketers provide them with their income stream, the search engines want to provide applicable results, while offering a highly targeted, income-driving marketing channel.
A unique advantage of PPC advertisement is that a search engine does not only reward the highest bidder of that ad space, but they reward the ads of the highest quality (ads that are the most popular with searchers). Essentially, the search engine rewards good performance. The better your ads are, the greater your click-rates will be and therefore, the lower your costs.
Greatest benefits of PPC marketing
1. You only pay when an actually interested person clicks
This is one of the reasons Pay-Per-Click is so straightforward; you know exactly where your money is going. It is much different than the traditional way of marketing offline, where you can spend a ton of money, and merely hope your targeted audience actually engages with the ad, but you are never really completely sure.
2. You can set your budget to control the costs
When it comes to PPC, you can set your budget to your own needs, you can literally put a cap on how much you spend daily, and it is flexible, if you want to adjust the amount over time.
3. You can reach your target audience at the right time with an appropriate ad
With PPC there is no problem to target a consumer in a specific place at a particular time. Location targeting and delivery options, right beside the device-specific preferences (such as mobile), can deliver specific messages to your targeted consumers at the right time, when they are at the right place.
4. The results are shown very quickly
We are all very aware of the importance of organic traffic for a long-term website marketing, and it is the main objective of all the marketers online. But with a PPC campaign you can have the results in practically overnight.
5. The PPC data helps with the other marketing approaches
This might be the biggest reason to support a PPC campaign; when you are working toward a greater objective, like having your website shown on the very top of SERPs based on the traffic you are steering in, PPC can be a gigantic help. You can find out which keywords and phrases are the ones that bring you so many clicks and you can execute optimum SEO for your business.
There are many great reasons with a PPC campaign, and although it is a lot of hard, consistent work, it all pays off eventually.
Keyword Research for PPC Marketing
Keyword research for PPC can be quite time-consuming, but it is incredibly important. You must be aware of the fact that your entire PPC campaign is built around keywords, and doing the research only once, you will probably miss out on countless of valuable, low-key, long-tail, highly relevant keywords that could be steering traffic your way. So do not miss the opportunities that are provided by systems and tool, such as AdWords Keyword Planner, similar tools.
Efficient Pay-Per-Click keywords and phrases should be:
- Relevant; you probably do not want to be paying for web traffic that has nothing to do with your business, instead you want to locate targeted keywords that can lead to high PPC click rate, a low cost for each click and increased profits. This means that the keywords you bid on should be tightly related to whatever your site is providing.
- Comprehensive; your research should not only include the most popular and highly searched terms in your niche, but it should also expand to the long-tail search. Long-tail keywords are less common, more specific, far less competitive and therefore also less expensive.
- Extensive; Pay-Per-Click is iterative, so it is up to you to constantly refine and extend your campaigns, and build an environment where your keyword list is frequently growing and adapting.
Important tip; your PPC keyword strategy should include a regular discovery of negative keywords. These keywords prevent your ads from showing up for searches that are not relevant to your business and they are very unlikely to convert.
What does a PPC service have to offer
Managing PPC efficiently revolves around several intertwined subjects and every PPC service offers to take care of these points on your behalf to make your experience with PPC ads as positive and pleasant as possible;
- Analyzing Keywords;locating and targeting specific keywords and search queries being entered by possible leads for your company.
- Channel strategy;as mentioned earlier, Google AdWords, Bing Ads, paid social media positioningand affiliate networks are some of the channels to consider for PPC advertising.
- Tracking;tracking search term records veryclosely to learn which keywords and queries are most often used, that lead to your website.
- Keeping an eye on overall ROI and using that as a guideline to dictate the amount paid and scope of ad buys.
- Analyzing the competition; keeping a close eye on strategies and tactics used by competitors is the key, but it can be very time consuming. For instance, making a choice whether to compete directly by bidding on the same queries, or instead of that, targeting queries a competitor is overlooking.
- Negative match; optimizing ads by filtering out searchesthat match a category that makes them very unlikely to convert
Who should hire a PPC service
Many people ask themselves this question, when they are starting an online marketing campaign, because they are not sure whether or not it is worth it.
While some businesses are extremely unwilling to add any additional expenses to their marketing campaign, in many cases hiring PPC experts can pay for itself by enhancing efficiencies. So consider hiring a professional PPC service, if you are fairly or completely new to online marketing, if your company does not have an advertising team, if you own a small business with not enough manpower to effectively oversee PPC or if you are unable to afford the software and database system for the optimum PPC management, which in some cases can get a little expensive.
A dedicated PPC management company has noteworthy expertise in this area, as well as established connections to existing marketing platforms and industry contacts. These are the people that can enable any disadvantaged online business to compete near-equally with much larger operations. Your only job here is to get enough information on such services and pick one that will serve you and your brand best.
Final words on PPC Services
PPC is far from being easy, it takes skill and strategy, knowledge of certain guidelines and rules, great understanding of the marketing platform, and a little bit of creativity and common sense. As much as you would just like to hand everything over to an expert, never look at the progress and just enjoy all the perks and click, that is not how it works; you have to collaborate, because you are the one that really knows your business, a PPC expert is only there to provide you the best marketing experience possible. Just be wary of those PPC services that promise golden results to you, but do not take the time to help you understand how they will truly influence the company’s goals. Do your homework the right way, and find a credible service that has no problem discussing all the angles with you.
That being said, if you are interested in a good PPC service, do not hesitate to contact us. We will provide you with great results at a reasonable rate.
