PPC or Pay-Per-Click is a key part of the digital marketing mix, where advertisers pay a fee each time their ad is clicked. We’re going to focus on Google Adwords but PPC also applies to paid ads on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, display ads like banners on mobile apps and video ads on YouTube.
Related: AIM High | Why Use AIM for PPC or Google Adverts?
What Is Pay-Per-Click?
PPC paid marketing helps your adverts stand out to search engine users. Displaying them at the top of Google’s search engine results page (SERP). You may also have heard PPC referred to as Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or even Cost Per Click (CPC) advertising. It’s one of the fastest ways of getting seen by customers. Especially when they are searching for the products or services you offer. Essentially, pay-per-click advertising is a way of buying visits to your website. This is so that more prospects complete a valuable action such as purchasing a product. You are only charged when a potential customer actually clicks on your advert.
Google Adwords is the most popular paid search platform network. Here are the three basic types of paid Google Ads:
- Search Network campaigns (Google Adwords)
- These ads show on the Google SERP when someone searches for a product or service that’s similar to yours
- Display Network campaigns
- Usually an image format, these ads appear on websites or mobile apps that your customers visit
- Video campaigns
- Short video ads that appear right before or during YouTube content
Setting up a Google Adwords campaign is a great way to help towards achieving your digital marketing goals. Alongside organic traffic techniques like search engine optimisation. It’s also a fantastic analytical tool, enabling you to measure the impact of your campaigns. It also assesses metrics like how many people see your ads, the percentage of prospects who click on your ads and the number of sales you’ve made as a result.
Some Key Things To Consider Before Starting Your PPC Campaign:
1) Know Your Budget
Once you decide to create a PPC campaign, your budget should be carefully considered. Primarily, the budget will be determined by your marketing objectives and target market audience. As well as the keyword competition and the types of products or services you want to drive awareness of.
2) Understand Your Target Market Audience
If your active audience lives in Birmingham, are between the ages of 35-49 and makes search engine queries relevant to your products or services on weekdays after 6 pm, you should absolutely factor this information into your campaign to maximise your ROI.
3) Get To Know Google Adwords
Google Adwords is a powerful tool that allows you to target your audience based on their demographics and what they are searching for. A combination of multiple factors, including bid amount, keyword relevancy and ad quality decide the winner who will appear at the top of the search results page.
4) Research Impactful Keywords
At the most basic level, if you have adverts with keywords relevant to that search query, Google displays them. Keywords are essential when it comes to PPC marketing success, so ensure that you research the long-tail keywords that your target audience is searching for and use these terms to create your Adwords campaigns.
5) Keep It Relevant And Snappy
Once you hit ‘GO’ on your PPC campaign, your advert will appear at the top or bottom of the SERP if the auction is won, so it’s essential to get the text and formatting right. You Ads will typically contain a headline, description lines, and a URL. This is so it creates compelling ads that deliver the key message in three short, punchy sentences.
6) Make Your Website Mobile, Tablet And PC Friendly
You’ve gone through the rigmarole of doing your keyword research and setting up a Google Adwords campaign. Well done! The last thing you want to happen is for a potential customer to click on your ad, then bounce straight away because the landing page you led them to isn’t formatted for the device they are using. Especially since you will be charged a fee for the ad.
How To Run A Successful Paid Marketing Campaign.
There’s more to winning the auction than having the highest bid. One of the most important factors to consider is your Quality Score. This metric is used by Google to determine the relevance of your advert to the search engine users’ query and is comprised of the following:
- Historical and expected click-through rate (CTR).
- How likely is someone to click your ad when Google presents it for the keyword they type?
- The relevance of the ad keywords to the search query.
- Does the ad make sense when someone searches for a particular keyword?
- Landing page quality and UX
- Does the information on the landing page correspond to what the ad is offering?
It’s also important to avoid wasted budget by specifically targeting your audience. Know what device they typically search on, their location and demographic. Make sure you understand the day and time they are most likely to be searching for keywords relating to your campaign.
Knowledge is power and paid advertising is a fantastic way of gathering essential data to inform your future campaigns. The aim with any PPC campaign is to move your prospects through the sales funnel, accomplishing specific conversions such as signing up to a newsletter or purchasing a product. It’s vital to track conversions to know whether a PPC campaign is doing well and how many conversions can be attributed to paid search rather than other marketing channels. Make sure you are spending the time to assess the strengths and weaknesses of your campaigns. This is so that you get the best results.
Why Is Paid Traffic So Important?
PPC paid marketing gives you the control to target your audience at the right stage in the buying cycle, putting your product or service in front of them at exactly the right moment. AIM Internet can help you integrate your PPC campaign into a wider digital marketing mix, generate more leads for your business and achieve outstanding ROI. Interested in working with us to develop your PPC marketing plan? Contact us today, or visit our PPC page for more information.
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