Pay-per-click (PPC) is a digital advertising model that aims to attract qualified traffic to your website through search engines and user-targeted platforms. Like SEO, this marketing initiative involves leveraging search engines to promote your unique products and services to the right people. If you’re considering implementing PPC into your company’s digital marketing arsenal, you probably want more detailed information on how this model works and which situations it’s ideal for first. If that’s the case, then you’ve come to the right place; we’re about to tell you everything you need to know about PPC.
At Snap Agency, we’re passionate about empowering businesses with the support they need to thrive in the world of digital marketing. That’s why we develop leading-edge SEO and PPC strategies designed to drive qualified traffic and leads to your website. So, without further ado, let’s walk through the basics of pay-per-click advertising and how you can leverage this marketing tool to its full potential.
What Is PPC Marketing?
PPC marketing is the utilization of display, text, and video advertising to generate new business opportunities via search engines, as well as other user-targeted platforms. Leading search engines like Google and Bing allow marketers to purchase ads, which appear above and below any non-paid organic search results. With this advertising model, expenses are accrued on a per-click basis, ensuring that you only spend money when a user visits your website by clicking on an ad. This makes PPC one of the most cost-efficient forms of digital advertising, allowing you to spend a set amount of money on ads and accurately assess how they are performing.
However, PPC isn’t as easy as it might seem at first glance. It takes significant time and effort to develop strong PPC campaigns that drive traffic and sales. The problem with many PPC campaigns is that they attract visitors but fail to convert them once they reach the site. This can lead to situations where businesses spend large portions of their marketing budget on ads that generate nothing more than fruitless clicks.
“Setting and forgetting” is another issue that can affect PPC accounts. In many cases, businesses will build an account and launch it, but then ignore it for months on end, missing out on important optimization opportunities. In short, effective PPC marketing demands constant campaign testing and optimization efforts to guarantee that users are clicking into the site and moving further down the conversion funnel instead of bouncing after a few seconds on the first page.
Should I Be Doing PPC Marketing?
It can be challenging to determine whether PPC advertising is worth your marketing dollars. Generally speaking, we recommend looking into PPC when you need to generate high volumes of traffic in a short span of time. When done correctly, PPC is one of the fastest and most effective ways to generate sales and revenue. PPC also works very well for e-commerce companies thanks to Google’s shopping campaigns, which are specifically dedicated to promoting and selling products directly from your website. These efforts generally yield much higher ROI than traditional search campaigns. Put simply, if you’re looking to attract qualified traffic to your site quickly and efficiently through online ads, then PPC will serve you well.
For optimal results, we advise investing in both PPC and SEO. These two digital marketing efforts work wonderfully together because each covers the other’s inherent weaknesses. For example, SEO is an excellent way to drive qualified traffic to your website, but it takes time for these initiatives to deliver results. On the other hand, PPC specialists can select any keyword and get your site on page one in a day. PPC and SEO also provide simple ways to measure return on investment, empowering your team with knowledge of which digital marketing efforts are delivering high returns and which ones need work.
How Is PPC Changing in 2018?
Now that we have a solid understanding of PPC and what it can do for your business, let’s take a minute to discuss how the PPC landscape is shifting. 2017 brought a series of important changes for pay-per-click advertising, including expanded text ads, which gave advertisers significantly more space to promote their services and products. Experts predict that 2018 will be just as impactful on PPC, particularly with the rising popularity of voice search tools and technology. Check out this article for more data-backed PPC predictions for the current year.
Building Your Own PPC Campaigns
Here are a few simple tricks your business can harness to build and refine its PPC marketing campaigns.
Identifying the Right Keywords
Before you can set up an effective PPC campaign, you’ll need to determine which keywords you should put your ad spend toward. A low-budget, entry-level campaign is one of the best ways to experiment with different strategies and find keywords that offer high conversion impact. Once conversions start rolling in off your initial PPC campaign, take note of the keywords with the lowest cost per conversion. This step will ensure that the keywords you focus on generate suitable profits compared to the amount you’re spending.
Aligning Your Landing Pages
As we mentioned above, PPC efforts are pointless if they don’t attract and convert users. That’s why it’s critical to develop a tailored landing page for each PPC ad you run. After all, nothing will send users running faster than ads that lead to irrelevant pages. Poorly picked landing pages can also hurt the quality scores of your search engine ads, directly harming your exposure.
Testing Ad Copy
In order to maximize conversions, you’ll need to perform detailed testing on your ad copy. This step will help ensure that your advertisements resonate with your target audience and drive them to take desired actions. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to assess the effectiveness of ad copy by running multiple ads and looking at which ones deliver the most clicks. You can use this information to revise poorly performing ads and structure future ads around the ones that work best.
Perfect Your PPC Campaigns With Snap Agency
Ready to master PPC advertising and bring more qualified traffic to your website? Then be sure to call or message Snap Agency today. Our digital marketing experts will work with you every step of the way to develop, refine and test PPC campaigns that deliver meaningful business results. We handle everything from ad creative and bid management to keyword research, taking the stress and confusion out of pay-per-click advertising. Also, be sure to drop us a line if you need more insights into PPC marketing and how your team can use this approach to succeed. We’re always here to help.