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Change.
Does that word bring a smile or a frown to your face?
Whether you like change or not, you’ve probably heard the truism that change is the only constant. What’s new in the marketing world?
It’s time to learn about the benefits of PPC advertising.
What Is PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Advertising?
Marketers (you) place an ad on a host’s platform to reach their target customers. Each time a viewer (customer) clicks on the ad, you pay the host. Search engines, like Google and Bing, are examples of host platforms that offer PPC advertising.
The PPC advertising model aims to guide potential customers to your website where they’ll complete a call-to-action or call or text you straight from the ad. The action could be subscribing to your newsletter, buying your product, or something else to advance them through your sales funnel.
Search engines are the most popular host platforms for PPC ads because they show your ads to viewers that have entered a search term relevant to your specific product or service and in locations you choose.
How Does PPC Work?
Keywords or key phrases are the axes on which PPC advertising spins. These are the words that you choose in the hopes that they will match the words a potential customer enters in the search engine to see your ads.
Here are the nuts and bolts of how PPC works on search platforms:
- Set up an account and campaign on a platform like Google Ads.
- Choose a campaign type based on your goals such as conversions.
- Setup location targeting and choose your keywords or key phrases.
- Create ads that have an enticing headline, a description, and a URL.
- Organize your ads and keywords into related ad groups.
- Select when and where you want your ads to appear when a user searches with additional location and scheduling settings.
- Potential customers enter search terms thus bringing up the search engine results page (SERP).
- If an ad spot is available on the SERP, an instant auction between potential ad candidates takes place for the keyword.
- Auction winners (you or other marketers) are chosen based on several factors such as the bid amount, the quality and relevance of the ad, time of day, searchers device, and other campaign settings.
- If you win the auction, your ad will appear on the SERP.
- If the searcher clicks on your ad, you pay the host platform per click.
Choosing the right keywords, testing ad copy variations, and monitoring ad performance metrics is critically important to realize the benefits of PPC ads. There are many online tools available to help you select and measure keywords to build a successful PPC ad campaign. However today, especially with Google and Bing Ads, the best data is often discovered within the platform research tools, and as ads start running, as well as within Google Analytics, to discover more insights about the users clicking your ads.
What Are the Benefits of PPC Ads?
The primary benefit of PPC advertising, especially for small businesses, is it gives you access to a big pool of potential customers in your specific targeted locations that are immediately driven to your ads to call you or click through your website.
For example, let’s say you’re a mortgage broker that is accustomed to word-of-mouth referrals to bring in new customers. It’s worked pretty well so far but you’re beginning to experience the limitations of that marketing method and looking for channels to expand into.
Many Millennials and Gen Zs look for products and services online. They make up the bulk of your home buying prospects. When they need a mortgage, they’ll go to a search engine and simply type in the word mortgage or a related variation. Having ads appear on the search engine results page for these types of queries can be well worth trying, as your getting in front of these prospects right as they’re showing interest.
Another critical benefit of PPC ads is the quality of the traffic that it drives to your website. If you’ve chosen your keywords wisely, the traffic directed to your website, landing page or phone number is looking for exactly what you’re offering, in the right area and at the right time.
Can You Afford PPC?
You will find out pretty quickly whether this is an effective marketing method for your business. Tools made available to you through host ad platforms such as Google Ads allow you or an experienced agency to measure cost per click and conversions through your specific PPC advertising campaign.
You can then pinpoint how many actions get completed and how many clicks, sales, calls, or conversions result. And, over time, the costs per conversion can be improved through continual split testing, optimizing of ad copy, keyword targeting, bid adjustments, and other campaign settings.
The real question may be – can you afford not to include PPC advertising in your marketing budget? The use of PPC as a marketing and advertising channel will only continue to grow. Speak to an expert here at HONE Digital Marketing and find out your business may be able to benefit from strategic, results-driven PPC ad management.
HONE Digital Marketing is a digital marketing agency in Lubbock, Texas.