PPC marketing or advertising is a system of advertising your business in which you are charged a cost whenever a user clicks any of your online ads. It is called pay-per-click because you pay only when a user clicks on your ad, and not before. It is different from SEO marketing that is free and involves having to rely on organic traffic.
Types of PPC marketing
There are different ways to run PPC advertising such as the paid search ads, re-marketing, and display advertising (which basically serves banner ads). Of all these, the most effective and widely used is the paid search ad.
Under paid search ad, your ads appear whenever a user makes a commercial search on a search engine for a product or service. You may have seen the word “Ad” attached to the search results on Google when you are searching for something near you to purchase or a service provider. For example, when you search for “fried chicken for sale near me”, you may see several retailers on the search engine result page (SERP) with the word “Ad” attached to them. When you click on the link, you have automatically clicked on the ad, and the advertiser will have to pay for that click.
How PPC advertising works
The goal of PPC marketing is not to make your ads pop up whenever users make searches for just any product or service. Even if you want this, you cannot just pay more to beat your competition to the game. Instead, popular search engines such as Google utilize what is referred to as the “Ad-Auction.” The ad-auction is an automated system by which the search engine determines how relevant and valid a particular ad is to the particular search made. This is what Google does. So when you create an ad, Google has to ascertain what kind of product or service your ad is affiliated to before it can be featured among the results for a search made concerning that product or service. This brings us to the use of keywords.
The use of keywords in PPC marketing
By definition, the Ad-Auction is a form of bidding system. Business owners wishing to advertise on Google then have to make a bid for the particular words or phrases that should prompt their ads to display. These words or phrases are known as keywords. When these words or phrases are typed into the search engine by a user, Google then carries out an algorithmic calculation to sort out what ads are affiliated to these keywords before the ads can appear. For this reason, your keywords should be such that are affiliated to your business. If you deal in sales of loudspeakers, amplifiers, microphones, pianos, your keyword should be something more like “musical instruments for sale” so that when a user search for “where to buy musical instruments,” your ad pops up.
ROI is top priority
By bidding only for keywords peculiar to your business, you are assured of a good return on investment because users will only click your ad, visit your page and patronize you if your business offers what they are searching for. Remember you are paying for every click; therefore, you do not want users clicking on your ad and then leaving your page because you do not offer what they searched for.
Why PPC marketing is a brilliant strategy in growing your business
PPC marketing yields immediate sales as soon as your ads are up and running. Unlike organic SEO marketing, you do not have to wait several months to get noticed. Your ads appear as soon as a user searches for your product or service within that area. But for it to be as effective as should, PPC advertising must be done strategically. So how do you do this?
Strategies to yield the best of PPC marketing
- Brainstorm for keywords — carry out research on the particular keywords and phrase people use to search for the product or service you provide. There are keyword tools to go about this.
- Group your words to make it commercially relevant: utilizing a keyword like “musical equipment” or “guitars” is too ambiguous. Try using “musical equipment for sale” instead. And target it to a geographical location so that the user has proximity to your business.
- Know your budget — popular demand keywords attract higher cost-per-click. Do not overspend on PPC if you are not sure of getting an impressive ROI.
- Find out what your competition are doing
- Customize your ad for your target audience — your title, description line and display link should be valuable to your target audience
- Add a call-to-action
- Add extensions like a telephone number, site link, review and structured snippet extensions.
- Your landing page should be relevant to your audience. Your ad link should not send them to your homepage but the exact page where the product or service is and can be ordered.
