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PPC (pay per click) advertising is a marketer’s best friend, because it’s inherently results-driven and allows them to keep a close eye on what they’re spending and what results they’re obtaining as a result of it.
But even though setting up a PPC campaign is as simple as choosing a few keywords, setting a budget and creating an ad, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be a success. You first need to know what success looks like, which is where this article comes in.
What is a PPC Campaign?
A PPC campaign is the culmination of research and planning around your market, user base, and keyword data. Using data gathered from said research, you bid on select keywords related to the chosen topic. This will place your adverts in front of people and pay a flat fee every time someone clicks on them. For example, an accountancy firm might bid to run their ads to people who are searching for terms like “tax returns online”.
It’s a popular form of advertising because you only pay when someone clicks on the ad (as opposed to paying every time it’s displayed), and you can also track what people do once they arrive on your website.
How Does PPC Advertising Work?
Here is a simplified, basic rundown of how PPC advertising works:
Keyword Research
Pay-per-click advertising begins with finding the right keywords. These are the phrases people type into search engines to find what they are looking for. If you are a plumber in Tacoma, you might want to be seen in the results for searches such as:
- plumber tacoma wa
- tacoma plumber
- emergency plumber tacoma
- plumber tacoma washington
To get keyword suggestions, sign up for a free ad account with Google and create a campaign. You can then explore all the keyword possibilities available. Remember to stay focused on keywords that are directly related to your business.
Create Your Ad
The next step is to write your advertisement. PPC ads need to be short and to the point. You need to figure out what’s important to your potential prospects and hit those buttons hard.
Some platforms (such as Google and Bing) allow you to include ad extensions. These are additional lines that provide more information, such as:
- Call buttons
- Links to parts of your website
- Location information
- Additional text
Be sure to make the most of these as they help you stand out from the crowd. You can also limit the geographic area where your ads are shown. For example, you can narrow it down by country, city, or even zip code.
Select Your Cost Per Click
With pay-per-click advertising, you can set a ceiling on how much you want to pay for one click to your websites. This is important because otherwise, costs quickly spiral out of control.
For some legal or insurance-related terms, costs can run into hundreds of dollars per click. That’s expensive! In most industries, the costs are lower—but still not cheap. So work out how much one click is worth to you and set your maximum bid.
You can also choose your maximum spend per day or put a limit on the whole campaign.
Enter the Ad Auction
Once you’ve set up everything, your ad will be submitted to the ‘ad auctions’ for your chosen keywords. Each time someone searches, a new ad auction takes place. How high you appear in the search results depends on several factors, typically including:
- Your maximum cost per click
- The relevance of your ad
- The quality and relevance of your landing page
- The ad history of your account
Together, these factors add up to create a Quality Score for your ad, usually on a scale of 1 to 10. The higher your score, the less you will typically pay per click.
If you are successful, your ads will start appearing when people search for your chosen keywords.
Managing Your Ads
When running PPC campaigns, it’s essential to manage your campaigns carefully. Monitor the results to see which keywords get you clicks and which need further work.
You may need to increase your bids or work on improving other aspects of your campaign. PPC campaigns are never ‘set and forget.’ You need to manage them carefully to get the best results.
At the end of the month, you will be charged for the ad costs incurred.
Components of a Successful Pay-Per-Click Marketing Campaign
This ability to understand exactly what people are doing after they click on your ad is what will allow you to create a successful campaign. The holy grail for PPC campaigns is to run ads that generate a positive return on investment (ROI).
Here’s an example:
- You’re spending 50 cents per click
- One in ten of those people is buying a product that nets you $10 of profit, you’re effectively doubling your money by spending $5 to bring in $10.
If you’re able to set up a pay per click campaign that delivers a positive ROI like this, you can scale it up and add new targeting options. Although simplified, this is the foundational idea behind a successful PPC campaign.
Bear in mind that you’ll also need to monitor your PPC campaigns, as it’s likely that their performance will change over time. It’s also a good idea to carry out A/B testing on your most popular ads to see whether you can further improve their performance.
PPC A/B Testing
A/B tests are also known as split tests and multivariate tests, and they’re an essential part of running a successful pay per click campaign. The idea is to carry out a scientific test by changing a single element, such as the text you use for the ad’s headline, to see whether it improves performance. You’ll simply run the ad and then make the highest performer your new default.
Google Tools to Help With PPC Campaigns
Brace yourself, because Google is about to become your best friend. It has a whole heap of tools that are designed to help you to develop a business website, and we’re going to go through a few of them here.
Google Analytics
First up is Google Analytics, which is a must-have for anyone running an online business. It allows you to gather data on what people are doing on your website and where they’re coming from. The idea is that Google Analytics will provide you with all of the information you need to streamline your marketing and to focus your efforts where they’re making a difference.
Google Adwords
Then there’s Google AdWords, a self-service pay-per-click advertising platform that will allow you to pay to put ads in front of people who are searching for your keywords. It’s a great way of bringing in immediate traffic, and if you’re strategic about the keywords that you target, you can also reach out to people who have demonstrated their intent to make a purchase.
One thing to bear in mind with Google AdWords is that while it does allow you to use their default settings when you create a campaign, it’s usually not worth taking them up on that. Sure, it can save you a little time, but you’ll sacrifice relevance and customizability and you might as well just take your ad money and set it on fire. At best, the defaults are only really useful for gathering initial data that you then build upon.
Google Shopping
Google Shopping can also be super useful to tap into, because it’s essentially a search engine that’s dedicated to online stores. The downside is that you’re going to have to pay if you want to compete against the established players like Amazon, but it shouldn’t be discounted entirely and can be a worthwhile addition to your approach to online marketing.
Google Keyword Planner
Google also offers a Keyword Planner, which is worth checking out when you need a little inspiration for keywords to target with your SEO and PPC strategies. KeywordTool.io does a pretty good job of things, too.
The goal should be to figure out what performs and what doesn’t and to take away the ones that aren’t delivering the goods while increasing your spend on those that do.
Pros and Cons of PPC Campaigns
As with any form of digital marketing, there are both good and bad sides of running PPC ads. These can also shift, depending on what vertical your business is in and how much money you’re able to sink into the effort.
Pros of PPC Campaigns
- Rapid results: you can receive clicks within an hour of starting your campaign
- High profile: PPC puts you right at the top of the search results, above all the free listings
- Total control: you have complete control over how your ad looks, where it is shown, and how much you wish to pay
- Quality leads: PPC is bottom-of-the-funnel marketing that brings you prospects who are ready to buy
Cons of PPC Campaigns
- High costs: for competitive keywords, the cost-per-click can quickly spiral out of control
- Management overhead: PPC campaigns need careful management on an ongoing basis
- Possible fraud: despite protections built into most PPC systems, competitors may try clicking your ads to drain your ad budget
- Complexity: there are many variables in PPC campaigns, requiring expertise to get the best outcomes
Let CJAM Help You Take the Next Step
There’s plenty more to running pay-per-click campaigns, but it all comes back to the core ideas of tracking what people are doing when they click on your ad and testing as much as you can. But you don’t have to do it alone! We can help you find the right PPC agency for your business. Get in touch with us today to find out how we can help you out!
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