PPC is something that you would have encountered if you’ve ever seen adverts or shopping results in Google and other search engines. It can be great for businesses who are looking to further promote products and services to their target customers.
Read on to find out more about PPC and where to start.
What is PPC?
PPC stands for pay-per-click, a model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Essentially, it’s a way of buying visits to your site, rather than attempting to “earn” those visits organically.
Search engine advertising is the most popular forms of PPC. It allows advertisers to bid for ad placement in a search engine's sponsored links when someone searches on a keyword that is related to their business offering. For example, if we bid on the keyword “PPC Wiltshire,” our ad could show up in the top ad results.
In pay-per-click advertising, businesses running ads are only charged when a user clicks on their ad, hence the name “pay-per-click.” When PPC is being used correctly, the fee is often trivial depending on your market, because the visit should be worth more than what you pay for it. In other words, if we pay £2 for a click, but the click results in a £200 sale, then that’s a great profit and well worth the £2.
Other forms of PPC advertising include display advertising and remarketing.
How does it work?
Once an advertiser has set up their ads and has added relevant keywords that they wish their ads to trigger for, they then go on to set bids for how high up in the ad section of the search results their ad will show for their chosen keywords.
It’s worth noting that on Google and Bing, for ads to appear alongside the results on a search engine, advertisers cannot simply pay more money to ensure their ads feature more prominently or at all. Instead, ads are subject to what is known as the Ad Auction, which is an automated process that Google and other major search engines use to determine the relevance and validity of ads that appear in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
More specifically, who gets to appear on the page (and in what order), is usually based on two common factors. These are the cost-per-click (CPC) bid, in other words, the maximum someone is willing to spend, and Quality Score which is a score that takes into account your click-through rate, relevance, and landing page quality.
Creating winning ads
A lot goes into building a winning PPC campaign; and while several factors determine how successful your ads are, there are some areas you can focus on to help increase your Quality Score and click-through rate:
- Keyword Relevance – you should have PPC keyword lists that include relevant keywords only, plus tight keyword groups, and proper, well-written ad text.
- Landing Page Quality – Creating optimised landing pages with persuasive, relevant content and a clear call-to-action is key.
- Ad Copy - Enticing ad copy is vital as this is what will tempt users to click on your ad and explore your offering further.
- Extensions - Callouts and quick links to relevant information to turn someone into a customer.
Benefits of pay-per-click advertising
Aside from being able to create targeted ads that are hitting the right potential customers, there are some other benefits to pay-per-click that are worth noting:
- You only pay for clicks– a key benefit of PPC is that you only pay for the clicks you receive, which is a lot more cost effective and valuable than paying for impressions. This gives you a much better ROI than some other marketing methods.
- Faster results than SEO– pay-per-click marketing is a good alternative to SEO for those who are looking for a substantial amount of traffic for a predictable amount of money in less time. For continuous results, SEOis well worth looking into as it gives your organic ratings a boost, but PPC is good for those wanting more immediate results.
- Budget control– with PPC you can determine both your daily and monthly budgets, making it much easier to control your spending and stick to budgets.
Pay-per-click doesn’t have to be daunting or stressful. If you would like to further discuss how PPC could help your business, then
get in touch with the experts at AdPilot today.