Did you know that paid advertising offers an average return of 200%? It means for every dollar you spend, you get $2 in return. It’s no surprise that 8 in 10 digital marketers consider PPC marketing extremely beneficial for their business. However, pay-per-click (PPC) marketing is not just about throwing money at ads and hoping that people will buy from you.
As a small business, you may think that posting pretty pictures on your social media accounts or optimizing your website (SEO) might be all you need. But if nearly 45% of small businesses are using PPC – with amazing results – can you really afford to ignore it?
If this is your first foray into the world of paid advertising, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, we are going to break down exactly what PPC is, how it works, and how it can help boost your business in 2021.
What Is Pay-Per-Click Advertising?
Also known as paid search marketing, PPC advertising allows businesses to advertise within the sponsored listings of a search engine or a partner website by paying each time:
Their ad is displayed (cost per 1,000 impressions)
Their ad is clicked on (pay-per-click)
Their ad generates a phone call (pay-per-call)
It should be noted that even though “paid search” and pay-per-click (PPC) are sometimes used interchangeably, there’s a difference. Paid search marketing is a comprehensive term that can include pretty much every kind of payment model, such as cost-per-action (CPA) and cost-per-mille (CPM or cost per 1,000 impressions).
On the other hand, PPC refers to the pay-per-click or cost-per-click model. It is the most widely-used form of paid search marketing today. When done right, PPC can help your business earn high-quality leads regardless of the industry you’re in.
Paid search ads look like regular search listings, except for the tiny “Ad” label to the left of the website’s address. The right PPC company or consultant can maximize your business performance by launching successful marketing campaigns. They will help you get better and more relevant marketing strategies to drive your online sales.
It’s not enough to just publish an ad; literally anyone can do it. But writing attention-grabbing copy for the ad is not an easy task. An expert PPC company can create a truly artistic strategy to help you achieve the elusive ad campaign success. PPC consultants know how to create effective ad copy that catches the attention of your target customers and relates to their interests. In other words, with the help of a PPC marketing professional, not only will your ad get more exposure, but you will also enjoy a higher rate of conversions.
How PPC Marketing Works
In PPC advertising, the marketer or business owner pays a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. So, you can say that it’s a way to buy visits to your website, as opposed to trying to “earn” those visits via organic marketing.
As we said earlier, search engine marketing is perhaps the most popular type of PPC. It allows you to bid for ad placement amongst Google’s (or any other search engine) sponsored links when someone looks for a keyword that is related to what their business offers.
For example, if you bid on the keyword “Best Bakery in NYC”, your ad might show up in the top 2-3 spots on the Google results page. Every time someone clicks on your ad, and a visitor is sent to your website, you have to pay the search engine (in this case, Google) a small fee.
If your PPC company is worth its salt, the fee will be paltry, because the user’s site visit will be worth more than what you pay for it. So, if you pay $4 for a click, but the click leads to a $150 sale, then you have made a hefty profit.
Which PPC Platform Is Best For My Business?
There are several online platforms where you can choose to spend your ad money, such as Google, Bing, Facebook, and AdRoll. You’ll need to consider your potential ROI on each platform before making the final decision. To help you get a closer understanding, here’s a quick rundown of the most popular PPC marketing ad platforms today.
Google Ads
So many people across the world use Google everyday that “Google” is now officially a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary! This should give you an idea as to why Google Ads is the king of paid marketing. Considering the fact that Google gets more than 3.8 million searches per minute, it seems every business is trying to get on the Google Ads bandwagon.
Bing Ads
Due to the popularity of Google Ads, they can sometimes be a little pricey for small businesses with tight budgets. That’s where Bing Ads come in. Since competition is lower on Bing, you can easily get the traffic you need at an amazingly low cost, which leads to an even better ROI. In fact, the average cost-per-click on Bing Ads can be a whopping 33% lower compared to Google Ads. However, you won’t get access to as large an audience as you will with Google Ads, of course.
Facebook Ads
If you’re looking for a paid advertising platform where you can be super-specific about picking your target audience, Facebook Ads is an excellent option. It allows you to target customers based on location, demographics, interests, and behaviors. With more than a billion active users on Facebook, your business cannot afford to ignore it from your PPC marketing strategy.
AdRoll
AdRoll helps you advertise to people who have already visited your product-based website. For example, say you’re browsing an online shopping website for a pair of black sneakers. Then you get distracted and never complete your purchase, and leave the website.
Then a few hours later when you are scrolling through your Facebook feed, you see a couple of ads for black sneakers from the same website you’d visited earlier! AdRoll makes it easy to retarget those bounced customers on Google as well as social media sites.
How To Create A PPC Campaign
If you’ve never launched a PPC ad before, here are a few steps that will ensure your campaign starts off on the right foot.
Step 1: Define Your Goals
The first thing you need to do is identify your goal. Do you want to get more leads and sales? Do you want to increase brand awareness? Or, do you want to promote an event (like a holiday sale)? Once your goal is clear, you can set up a Google Ads campaign to achieve the same. If you work with a PPC company, this is where they will help you figure out a few things such as:
Who is your target audience?
What will be the theme of your campaign?
What kind of campaign will you run?
How will you measure success?
Step 2: Choose Where To Advertise
Next, you need to determine what kind of paid advertising campaign you’ll run. This will depend on where your target audience is hanging out (online). Now this step requires considerable research and testing. The most obvious option is Google Ads but “social ads” on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn should also be considered.
Step 3: Find the Right Keywords
Every ad group needs a set of keywords to target – this is how search engines will know where and when to display the ad. It’s always best to choose 1 to 5 keywords per ad group. Make sure your keywords are relevant. This means selecting keywords that are very closely associated with the specific theme of your ad group. If there are some keywords that fall outside of one theme, but you want to target them as well, then create a separate ad group for them.
Step 4: Set Up Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a pretty handy tool that provides you invaluable insights into how users are interacting with your site pages, and how your site is performing overall. You can also learn what content is particularly attractive to your site visitors, and use it to create similar content.
Why Do I Need A PPC Company?
There’s a reason PPC marketing agencies exist; managing countless moving parts and constant algorithm updates is incredibly time-consuming. A lot goes into creating a winning PPC ad campaign. You have to research and find the right keywords, then organize those keywords into campaigns and ad groups, then set up landing pages that are properly optimized for conversions.
Also, search engines like Google and Bing reward advertisers who can build intelligently-targeted PPC campaigns by charging them less for ad clicks. If the users find your landing pages and ads super useful or satisfying, Google will charge you less cost per click. This means higher profits for your business.
Keywords have become increasingly competitive in 2020, and it’s only going to become tougher. If your business doesn’t have the domain authority to get in front of your target audience on a social platform or into the top rankings on Google, it will be doubly hard for you. A PPC company with a successful track record will help you rise to the top in a competitive market environment and get in front of potential customers who need you but don’t know you even exist.
Join Hands With The Leader In PPC Marketing
At Next Level Marketing, our PPC team has deep domain expertise and a specialized skill set to create and run PPC campaigns for small and mid-sized businesses. Our paid ad experts are certified in Google Ads, Bing Ads, and other paid advertising platforms. To learn more about our services, call us at 1-844-736-6398. You can also check out our PPC Guarantee to understand our commitment to you.
