Pay-per-click or PPC advertisement is one of the most powerful forms of online marketing. It is essential for businesses in this digital-first world. If you are new to the world of digital advertisements and are baffled by the jargon, worry not! You’ll learn all about PPC in a few simple steps with this easy-to-understand guide!
Let’s get started.
What is PPC?
Pay-per-click advertising is a comprehensive digital marketing strategy for search engines that makes your business appear prominently on search engine results pages, social media platforms, and other online platforms. Simply put, PPC makes your product visible to your target audience through well-researched ads on online platforms. The name Pay-Per-Click refers to the payment model that this advertising strategy uses, i.e., advertisers pay for each click.
Types Of PPC
A Few of the many types of PPC advertising are explained below:
Search Engine
Simply, this means advertisement on search engines. Google Ads is the most prominent platform in search engine pay-per-click advertising. Several PPC search engine subtypes include Google Search, Google Display, and Google Shopping Ads.
Social Media
Social media promotion is another great way to gain the attention of potential customers. You can run PPC ads on social media platforms like Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook to target your audience.
Remarketing
Remarketing or retargeting PPC campaigns target visitors who engaged with your website in the past but did not complete the desired action, such as completing a purchase. With PPC, you can remind these potential customers and prompt them to complete the desired action.
What are Google Ads?
Google Ads is a type of Search Engine PPC. It is one of the most effective forms of pay-per-click advertising. As the name suggests, this platform was introduced by Google, and it allows advertisers to promote their business on Google search engine results pages. Every single time a search is generated, Google redirects the visitor to the website of the advertiser who won the click auction. Now the question is, on what basis are the winners selected? They are chosen based on the number of features, like the size of the keyword bids, relevance, and the quality of keywords and ad campaigns.
As several factors account for the success of your Google Ads advertising campaign, one can enjoy a lot more benefits by following the below-mentioned tips:
- Bid on relevant keywords.
- Focus on the quality of the landing page.
- Work on the improvement of your Quality Score.
Why Should Businesses Choose PPC?
Pay-per-click advertising is a cost-effective and efficient way to attract traffic to a website. Advertisers can select high-value keywords, target audiences, and measure the real-time results of their advertisement campaigns. To summarize, the benefits of running a PPC campaign are as follows:
- PPC is cost-effective: PPC advertisement campaigns charge by click; you only pay for the number of people who click on the advertisement.
- PPC allows micro-targeting: With PPC, advertisers can choose the geographic location, age, socio-economic class, gender, and other demographic factors to make the ad more effective. Simply put, your ad is shown to people most likely to purchase your product.
- PPC is customizable: PPC allows advertisers to choose the keywords, the budget, the type of ad, the ad duration, the platform on which the ad will be displayed, etc. It even allows advertisers to make changes to the campaign while it’s running based on real-time data.
- PPC ads can be any type: These could be seen on many websites (of any niche), search engines (Google, YouTube), and social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and many more.
How Does PPC Advertising Work?
PPC advertising differs for every platform, but typically, it has the following steps:
- Select the type of campaign based on your interest
- Enhance your targeting and settings (locations, audiences, schedules, locations, etc.)
- Decide your bidding methodology and the budget
- Place your destination URL
- Shape your ad
If you are confused, worry not! Most beginners will be perplexed by the terminology mentioned above. Here is a simplified explanation with the help of an example:
Imagine you are running a nail salon in Birmingham and decide to use PPC marketing to promote your business. You choose Google Ads, one of the most popular platforms for PPC. Here is how you can run an ad via PPC:
- You choose your keyword. Suppose you have just started offering the newest plexigel manicure services and want to promote this manicure style. You can choose the keyword plexigel manicure in Birmingham to bring in traffic and sales.
- You bid on this keyword and select the maximum amount you are willing to pay per click for this keyword. Remember, if other nail salons in your area are also bidding on this keyword, the price per click would be higher. Low-competition keywords have a lower per-click rate.
- A potential customer, let’s call them Leah, searches for a plexiglass manicure in Birmingham on Google. Your ad will appear in her search results because you have placed a bid on the keyword she is searching for. Your ad will be placed at the top of the search results, making it hard to miss.
- Leah will see your ad, along with other search results given by Google. This is an impression.
- If Leah likes your ad and ends up clicking on the ad to engage with it, this is a click-through.
- The click-through triggers an automatic auction process; if you win the auction, the potential customer, i.e., Leah, is redirected to your website.
- Since Leah clicked on your ad and you won the auction, this counts as a click, and you will be charged for it. You will be charged just enough that the amount is slightly higher than the bid of the advertiser immediately below yours. Let’s say your maximum budget was £2.0, and the budget of the advertiser immediately after you was £1.5, and you only had to pay £1.55 to outbid your competitor. So, your pay-per-click would be £1.55.
- The record of each click and its cost is recorded in Google Analytics. At the end of the day, you can see the number of clicks, the cost of each click, the number of impressions, the percentage of conversion, and other performance metrics that will help you finetune your ad copy and PPC ad.
How to Gain Maximum Benefits from PPC?
To ensure that you are getting maximum benefit from PPC campaigns, you need to follow these tips:
- Don’t invest more in PPC than the revenue you are getting from it.
- Optimize your PPC campaigns.
- Try a variety of ads, strategies, and scenarios until you find the best output.
- Keep an eye on your competitor’s PPC models.
10 Incredible PPC Statistics
If you are still doubtful about investing in PPC advertising, go through the following astonishing statistics:
- 107% of the in-store or offline visits are the outcome of PPC marketing done by local businesses whose target is their local audience
- 87% of the industries go for social advertising, 88% on Facebook, 15% on LinkedIn, and 15% on Twitter, respectively.
- 80% of the brand awareness is the result of pay-per-click advertising.
- 75% of users clicking on ads state that ads aid in making the information easy.
- Google ads pay-per-click are clicked willingly by 63% of internet users.
- Every second, about 40,000 searches are made through Google.
- In 2017, 7 million advertisers spent $10 billion in PPC altogether.
- More than 2 million websites are covered by Google Display Network.
Conclusion for What Is Pay-Per-Click Advertising? A Beginner’s Guide to PPC Advertisement
Pay-per-click advertising is a type of digital marketing that allows businesses to get more sales through online ads on search engines, social media, and other online platforms. It provides a wide range of benefits for companies, targeting the right audience at the right time and giving fast results. So, if you are interested in the growth of your business without networking, cold calling, or other types of “push” advertising, go and invest in a pay-per-click advertising campaign right now.
What Is Pay-Per-Click Advertising – FAQS
Is PPC marketing worth it?
Yes, because Pay-Per-Click promotion helps you reach customers to buy your products, driving leads and generating sales.
What is the main difference between SEO and PPC?
Both SEO and PPC capture traffic for your website by related keywords. SEO works on free that is on organic traffic, whereas PPC focuses on paid views, more precisely, clicks.
Which PPC platforms are best to use?
Choosing the correct platform is the very first footstep in starting PPC campaigns. The two main platforms are Google and Microsoft. Choosing any one of them or investing in both is your choice.
