What is pay-per-click marketing? Dive into our guide and learn more about the digital world of PPC and paid-for ads, and how they can help your business.
How Does Pay-Per-Click Work?
Basically, this is a form of online advertising where advertisers are only required to pay each time a user clicks on the advert. They come in a variety of forms, including search ads, shopping ads, discovery ads, display ads, performance max ads, video ads, and app ads Google, which is the biggest provider of pay-per-click marketing inventory, is constantly expanding formats.
How to Implement an Effective Pay-Per-Click Marketing Strategy
PPC is an incredibly effective marketing tool, but it needs to be implemented correctly for advertisers to genuinely benefit from results. Here is a look at some workable PPC marketing strategies that reputable PPC experts will adopt:
1. Determine the Outcome
Know what you want to achieve before even going in so that you can create your marketing strategy around the end game. As with any good campaign, you must outline your goals and objectives – is this a new product you’re introducing, or are you trying to target a new audience? This will assist you in listing the campaign metrics for maximum return on investment.
2. Research Previous Strategies
Technological advancements continue to impact marketing strategies, so it’s important that you do the relevant research on the PPC platforms before starting. If you already have a marketing concept in mind, it’s important that you’re matching it with the perfect platform, or it won’t be as effective. Some points to research will be:
- Keywords – Which words have higher search volumes?
- Platforms – Which campaigns work best with which platforms?
- Competition – What strategies are your competitors using, and to what effect?
3. Budget Carefully for PPC
Using a tool like Google’s Keyword Planner, you can assess the potential number of keywords and get an estimate of what it will cost you per click to feature for key positions. This will help you determine a realistic budget for the marketing campaign.
4. A Strategic Launch and Follow-Up
Your PPC marketing should comprise relevant copy that targets your key brand terms, product or service term groupings, and possibly competitor terms. Campaigns and ad groups should be used to group these by theme. Once the pay-per-click marketing campaign has been launched, you have to keep a close eye on your adverts and their performance, building relevant reports and tweaking where necessary.
5. Enhance the PPC Marketing
After a few weeks, you can gauge the impact of the marketing campaign and whether the objectives are being met. If not, you can use the reports and data gathered to determine what are the best changes to be made for improved outcomes.
What Are the Common PPC Strategy Mistakes?
Novices in the field of pay-per-click marketing will often fall into certain strategy pitfalls that can best be avoided by working with industry professionals. Here are some common errors to look out for:
1. Missing the Target Audience
The ability to effectively target your ideal audience is one of the biggest benefits of PPC marketing, but if you haven’t researched your audience correctly, you’re unlikely to get sufficient or relevant clicks for your business. Make sure you benefit by targeting the right audience.
2. Incorrect Keywords and Unnecessary Copy
In advertising, brevity is key. In PPC advertising, brevity – and the correct keywords – are key. Make sure you’re using a copywriter who understands PPC ads and who is able to seamlessly incorporate your required keywords effectively.
3. Missing the Mark
With PPC marketing, it’s important that you direct potential buyers to the product pages they’re searching for and not just to your homepage. Don’t make the mistake of using your homepage as the landing page, as users could quickly lose interest. You should ideally only target the homepage for generic branding campaigns or as a last resort
4. Launching and Losing Interest
Once the campaign is launched, you need to use the technological tools at your disposal to check the adverts keep on reaching the most profitable target market for you. Platforms such as Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics (GA4) are key tools here. Markets and economic environments change, so it’s important that your digital advertising does too.
What Are the PPC Marketing Platforms?
Now that you have an idea of the dos and don’ts of PPC marketing, here’s a useful overview of the marketing platforms that most companies are using. There are obviously more, with new social media sites constantly providing new advertising opportunities, but these are the biggest ones as it stands.
1. How does PPC marketing work on Google?
The phrase ‘just Google it’ immediately puts into perspective how big this search engine really is. And when it comes to PPC advertising, this is often the first port of call. Google Ads can narrow your target audience through:
- Location targeting: Focused on area-based advertising.
- Device targeting: Preferred device advertising.
- Demographic targeting: Focus on specific demographic criteria.
There are a few PPC advert types you can consider on Google; these include:
Search Adverts
These are the ads that appear when you look for something specific in your Google search bar. Advertisers bid for the best performing spots.
Display Adverts:
These are text and/or image adverts that display across some 2 million websites.
Shopping Adverts:
These ads drive purchases by tapping into product feeds and displaying an image and price in top search shopping results along with other competitor advertisers offering the same products. These are triggered by product searches that are only relevant to e-commerce businesses and aim to drive online sales.
Discovery Adverts:
High-intent, a responsive ad format that focuses on mobile placements.
Video Adverts:
On YouTube, you’ll come across adverts in video format. These can be skippable or non-skippable.
App Adverts:
These ads can help businesses promote their app so that users can download and engage with them.
Performance Max:
These ads use a combination of search, shopping, responsive display, discovery, video, and app creative to drive specific lower funnel business goals.
Other fantastic tools are available to users with a Google Ads account, such as Keyword Planner, which allows you to discover new keywords and see a variety of statistics about them.
2. How Does PPC Marketing Work on Amazon?
This is a prime PPC marketing platform that focuses solely on display and video adverts pushing engagement on the Amazon platform itself. Similar to Google Ads, it gives advertisers useful insights such as performance measurement.
3. How Does PPC Marketing Work on Facebook?
As a dominant social media platform, this is a valuable PPC marketing site with a strong emphasis on targeted audience marketing. The format of this social media site allows for specific demographic and interest targeting using video, image or text ads.
4. How Does PPC Marketing Work on Microsoft Bing?
The Microsoft-owned search engine essentially has many of the same features as Google Ads. Because it is not as popular as Google, you’re likely to rank higher on Bing Ads, although the advertising format is limited to text. However, you are able to import a Google AdWords campaign directly onto the Bing Ads platform, making it a great complementary advertising platform to broaden your audience reach.
5. How Does PPC Marketing Work on Twitter?
In terms of brevity and quality content, Twitter is a valuable marketing platform. Through targeted, impactful text and imagery, you are able to target audiences through either automated or maximum bidding.
- Automated bidding: This is where Twitter’s algorithms optimize your bids depending on your budget and objectives.
- Maximum bidding: You can set the maximum bid amount you’re willing to pay.
- Twitter also offers a number of campaign types for all budget types:
- Conversion campaigns: You only pay if someone clicks.
- Follower campaigns: You pay for each follower you pick up.
- Tweet engagement campaigns: You pay for every engagement.
- App install campaigns: You pay for every app installed and opened.
- Promoted video view campaigns: You pay for video views, generally 50% of the video.
- Awareness campaigns: You pay for the campaign and function.
6. How Does PPC Marketing Work on Linkedin?
If you want to reach an audience based on their job title, the company or industry they work in or their job seniority, LinkedIn is a good platform for PPC marketing. LinkedIn advertising formats include:
- Sponsored content: Promote a variety of content on feeds.
- Sponsored messaging: Send messages directly to the target audience.
- Text ads: These appear on the right-hand side and just feature a small image with text
- Dynamic ads: These ads also mainly appear on the right-hand side and can encourage users to follow a specific person or business (follower ad) or can feature a specific product, driving them directly to your website (spotlight ad).
7. How Does PPC Marketing Work on Youtube?
In terms of video advertising, YouTube remains the dominant platform with content across various interest groups and forms part of Google Ads advertising. As with Facebook, PPC marketing is much more targeted toward specific demographics. And, in terms of cost, you pay when someone views your advert, either before or between the content they are consuming, these are known as bumper (non-skippable) or in-stream ads. Some ad formats can encourage users to engage with longer video content, and these are known as in-feed ads.
What Are the Benefits of PPC Marketing?
If you’re still not convinced of the power of PPC marketing, here is a look at how pay-per-click can directly benefit your business.
- PPC can be measured: The beauty of online technology is you can always trace it. When it comes to marketing, this means you’re able to see, almost in real time, the impact your strategy is having.
- Jump ahead: If you’re new to the game, then you can gain some ground quickly with PPC marketing.
- Flexibility: There are so many digital advertising platforms you can choose from, campaign formats you can decide on, and audiences you can target. This offers more flexibility for your campaign objectives and budgets.
- Adjustable: Because you can track the marketing campaigns, you can determine what is working and what isn’t. You can then use this information to adjust and improve your campaigns.
- Complementary: This form of digital marketing can tie in well with other marketing formats, allowing for further reach.
Rather side-step the inadvertent PPC marketing landmines by partnering with an experienced provider who can customise a targeted marketing strategy for your particular company.
This way, you’re sure to benefit from every cent spent on your pay-per-click marketing investment.