Pay per click advertising has become a rising star in the world of digital marketing. Its incubation period as a strategy is long over and many businesses are viewing it less as an optional strategy and more as a necessary component to their digital marketing.
PPC’s shift into one of the primary pillars of digital marketing has produced positive impacts for many businesses that caught the trend early and continue to ride the wave of benefits.
With successful PPC campaigns, businesses are able to grow their customer base and attract new visitors to their websites and physical store locations.
There are still many companies, however, that have yet to leverage this digital marketing tool. They are looking through the windows at the businesses enjoying the PPC party and wondering how they can get in.
It isn’t easy.
rnThe world of PPC and search engine marketing is complex. It is filled with various formats and ad networks, confusing acronyms, and new metrics.
The goal of this discussion is to demystify this complex process and help new businesses join the PPC party.rnWhat Is PPC Digital Marketing?rnLet’s clear up our first confusing acronym: PPC. Paid search marketing is often given this label because Google Ads and other major search ad platforms follow the pay per click model to advertising. This means that advertisers only pay when a search user clicks their ad.
Ultimately, your goal as a PPC advertiser is to create compelling search ads that entice this click. Then, follow up the click with a landing page that nudges the visitor towards completing the desired action, whether it is buying a product, signing up for a newsletter, subscribing to a service, booking an appointment, etc.rnHow Does PPC Digital Marketing Work?rnAgain, paid search engine marketing is fairly complex. Without going into too much detail, we’ll provide a brief overview of how the process works.
Keywords are at the heart of pay per click. Advertisers choose keywords that are relevant to their business and products. Then, they submit a bid amount for each keyword. This is a real dollar amount that an advertiser is willing to pay for a click on that search term.
Some keywords require a higher bid than others because there is more competition.
When a Google user searches for one of these terms, all of the bids enter a real-time auction that takes only a moment to be done. Google instantly compares each bid amount, along with the quality of each ad experience and then decides winners.
This means that Google doesn’t just award ads to the business with the biggest spend. And, it is worth reiterating that an advertiser only pays their bid amount when they actually receive a click.rnBenefits Of PPC Digital MarketingrnWe’ve taken a brief glimpse into the inner workings of pay per click advertising. Now, it is time to explore the many benefits of this digital marketing tool. Why are so many businesses flocking to PPC to grow their business?rnIncreased Website TrafficrnThis is the end result of your PPC efforts: your website gains more site visitors. In itself, this is a very strong benefit. For many businesses, more site visitors means more opportunities to convert those guests into customers, thereby improving sales and revenue.
Pretty good, right?
PPC’s effect on website traffic goes one step further. Ads pull in potential customers that are further in the funnel, which means they are closer to making a purchase than your normal website traffic.rnFlexiblernPPC isn’t just about converting customers into sales. It can be used to support the end goals of most companies. It’s really up to you what you want your ad traffic to do. Brand awareness, remarketing, it can all be achieved through PPC campaigns.
For example, you can structure ad campaigns around downloading a white paper, eBook or other resource, which can develop your thought-leadership and nurture those leads in the beginning and middle of the funnel.
Paid search engine marketing is also flexible in terms of costs. Businesses have complete control over how much marketing budget they want to commit. If you have a tight budget, you can strategize for less competitive, cheaper keywords to target.
As things change, Google Ads and other PPC networks make it easy to increase or scale back your campaign spend.rnAccessiblernSome companies have been creating PPC campaigns for years. You would think that the gap between these users and new advertisers is expansive. However, recent search advertising tools and trends have made PPC much more accessible.
You don’t need extra tools to succeed; everything can be handled right inside your chosen PPC platform’s page. Google Ads, in particular, has a lot of helpful tools and resources to assist beginner advertisers in planning, running and managing their first campaigns.
Plus, when you’re done publishing your PPC campaign, and Google Ads approves it, you’ll start seeing results in moments. There’s no weeks of waiting, which is often the case with organic or local SEO.rnMost Popular PPC PlatformsrnThere’s a number of PPC platforms to choose from. This provides a lot of variety, but also a fair amount of confusion. It can be difficult, especially for a beginner, to decide which PPC service(s) to use.
Google Ads:
+ The largest PPC platform that leverages the massive Google search audience.
- Lots of competition, which makes it difficult to rank for certain keywords.
Facebook Advertisingrn + The largest social media advertising platform that is great for brand awareness.
- Facebook is moving away from business-centric tools
LinkedIn Advertisingrn + A professional network that is perfect for B2B businesses.
- Not so good at advertising eCommerce businesses
Amazon Adsrn + Product-focused advertising that leverages Amazon’s massive user base of shoppersrn - Amazon rewards ads with the highest bid, which creates a pay-to-win scheme
Bing Adsrn + A great alternative to Google, especially in East Asia where Google isn’t usedrn - A much smaller user base compared to Google, especially in the US.
Conclusions
PPC is a vital component of digital marketing. Continuing to ignore its influence means ignoring thousands of potential new customers from discovering your business. Its powerful benefits are well worth the time and money it takes to learn and master this strategy.