Pay Per Click (PPC) is a form of online marketing where advertisers pay a fee only when their ad is clicked by an online user. The intention is to buy traffic for a site rather than earning those visits for free. You must have seen an ‘Ad’ icon pre-fixed to the top search results while searching in Google or Bing. These links are search engine advertisements which happen to be one of the most successful implementations of PPC. Pay Per Click allows marketers to bid, on a specific keyword that is related to their business offering, for ad placement in a search engine’s sponsored links. So, when someone searches on that keyword, the search engine software will display those paid ads mostly at the top of the search engine results page (SERP).
For example, if you search for “Digital marketing agencies in Brisbane”, you can see the companies that have bid on the keyword “Digital marketing,” their ad might rank at the top on the Google search engine result pages. So whenever a user will click on any company’s ad and will land on their website, that particular company will pay a fee to the search engine.
PPC Statistics:
- 65% of all clicks on paid ads are made by users who intend to make a purchase.
- It is believed that 75% of respondents say that paid ads make it easier to find the information they are looking for on a search engine.
- 49% of people click on text ads; 16% on video ads, and 31% on shopping ads.
- PPC visitors are 50% more likely to make a purchase than organic search visitors.
- More than 40% of clicks go to the top 3 paid ads in search engine results.
- Google AdWords, Facebook, and mobile are the most popular PPC platforms, and up to 80% of the marketing budget is likely to be allocated to paid ads (search, social, display, remarketing ads) budget.
Why shifting from traditional advertising to PPC Advertising makes sense?
If you have ever published an ad in a newspaper or magazine (traditional advertising), you must have realized that it is too complicated to measure how many people even flipped to that specific page and paid attention to your ad, also there is no way to ascertain if that ad was responsible for any sales at all. Whereas with digital marketing, one can expect accurate results in real-time and also measure the Return Of Investment (ROI) of the marketing efforts.
There are many tools available such as Google Analytics which can record the exact number of people who have viewed your website, how many pages they visited, and which location are they from, in real-time. Also with the Pay Per Click technique, the fee that advertisers pay is irrespective of how many times the ad was displayed on the search engine result page, unlike traditional advertising where one must pay for each advertisement placed in a newspaper or telecast on television.
Paid ad clicks make the visitors aware of the product or service offered though they may not necessarily result in sale conversions. PPC advertising filters irrelevant traffic and ensures that only quality traffic is attracted who are more likely to convert. Most importantly, it provides options to advertisers to target a specific segment based on demographics like location, age, gender, interests, and behaviors.
In a nutshell, Pay Per Click advertising is highly targeted, cost-effective, measurable, and yields good ROI. All one needs to do is to use the right tools, the appropriate resources, and have a focused approach.
PPC Advertising Platforms:
For a successful Pay Per Click advertising campaign, there are several factors involved as follows:
- Keyword research: Finding the right and relevant keywords for your specific product or service, forming a closed ad set, and creating a compelling ad copy.
- Quality Score: Google’s rating for your keywords and landing pages depending upon how relevant they are for a paid ad campaign. One can get more ad clicks at a lesser cost when the quality score is better.
- Optimized Landing Page: It helps to have a well-designed landing page with relevant and compelling content along with a clear call to action.
Below mentioned are the most popular platforms for PPC advertising:
Google Ads – Google Ads or AdWords, is by far the most popular and successful PPC platform. Whenever a user searches for anything, Google selects a set of bidding advertisers from a pool of users who have bid on keywords (A combination of various factors such as relevancy and quality of keywords and ad text is considered for selecting the winning advertisers). Once the winning advertisers are selected, then Google displays their ads on its search results page.
Google is one of the most popular search engines and gets huge traffic. Hence running a PPC Ad campaign through Google Ads is a useful way of diverting traffic on a site via clicks on the displayed ads. Depending upon which keywords and match types the advertisers select, the frequency to display their ads on the search results page is decided.
Bing Ads – Bing Ads is a Pay Per Click platform displaying ads on the Bing and Yahoo networks utilizing search partners including Yahoo and Microsoft Sites. Bing Ads also follow a keyword-based advertising model.
Social Media Paid Campaigns – Social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn have also adopted Pay Per Click as one of their advertising models. To run a Facebook campaign, one needs to set up the below three parts:
- Campaign Objective for each of your ad campaigns.
- Creative for the ad account.
- Schedule, audience, placement, budget, etc. within the ad set..
PPC Keyword Research:
The process of optimizing a site for specific words, which people generally type in the search box of a search engine, is called keyword research. The entire PPC campaign is usually set up around the right keywords. It is usually a time-consuming activity, but it is an essential component of a successful ad campaign. Also, it allows the advertisers to connect with the right audience by keeping their keyword list relevant and refined. The advertisers need to keep revisiting the list to include low cost, relevant and long-tail keywords that might drive more traffic to their site.
The keyword list for a PPC Campaign should be:
- Complete– Your keyword research should be comprehensive and should not be restricted only to the most commonly used terms in your business. Preferably you should also include long-tail keywords that are less common and more specific.
- Relevant– You need to think like a customer and bid on keywords that are more relevant to your business offerings. Targeted keywords mostly lead to a higher CTR (click-through-rate) and cost-effective CPC (cost-per-click).
- Expansive– To continually refine and expand your campaigns, you must continuously grow and improve your keyword list.
The value proposition of PPC Marketing:
Pay Per Click marketing is beneficial for all searchers, advertisers as well as search engines.
- Advertisers – Advertisers can reach out to the target audience using PPC marketing. Marketers can make out a user’s intent based on the searched keyword and can offer the product or service that matches the query.
- Searchers – As per research , 75% of people who click on paid ads say, whatever information or product or service they are looking for, they generally find in search ads. Also, Google has a wonderful process in place which ensures that PPC ads meet the requirement of the searchers.
- Search Engines – The search engines fulfill the requirement of both searchers as well as advertisers through PPC Marketing by providing relevant information through search results to the searchers looking for specific information. At the same time, search engines enable advertisers to reach their target audience.
One of the main advantages of Pay Per Click advertising is that ad platforms don’t just prefer the highest bidders for that ad space, they also reward the highest-quality ads. the cost of a paid ad is lower when the ad is better and CTR is higher.
Managing PPC Campaigns – Monitor Regularly & Keep Adjusting:
PPC ad campaigns need to be monitored frequently until you get the desired results. Make the required changes to optimize your campaigns by adding relevant keywords to expand the reach for your business. You can also improve your site CTR and quality score by splitting your ad groups into multiple smaller groups. This helps to create more targeted ad text. Another important thing that one needs to do is a regular review of the expensive keywords which are not performing well. Just stop using them to cut down the cost. All campaigns, even a well-designed one, should be reviewed and refined weekly. There is no point in spending money on PPC advertising if you can’t identify a useful result of a user visit to your site.
Conclusion:
PPC turns out to be one of the methods to get results rapidly provided your campaign serves the users searching for your business offerings. However, a lot of effort goes into setting up a successful PPC advertising campaign. From exploring and choosing the right keywords to formulating those keywords into organized ad groups and campaigns, to setting up landing pages that are optimized for conversions. Search engines charge less for ad clicks which comes from an ad which is relevant and well targeted.