Your Guide to an Effective PPC Campaign
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is an evolving landscape of digital marketing that can get businesses in front of the faces of their target audience quickly. However, navigating the terrain can be a bit tricky if you don’t have the skill set.
This post is your PPC 101 guide that will help you understand the nuances of PPC so you can create an effective campaign.
We’ll discuss:
- What PPC is
- How PPC works
- The PPC basics
- The benefits of a PPC campaign
- And more
So, let’s get to it…
What is PPC?
Pay-per-click ads are created by businesses to promote themselves online and get their target audience to take an action. The ads should be acutely optimized for the intended user or customer so they can show up at the right time and place.
PPC ads offer clickable CTAs (calls-to-action), and when clicked by the user, the business pays a fee. The goal is for those ads to get clicked by the optimal consumer, a consumer who will end up making a purchase, to generate a quality return on their investment (ROI).
How Does PPC Work?
The good news about well-created PPC ads is that you only pay for them when they get clicked. Your user will be taken immediately to your landing page (a page that should be designed around the ad or that meets the promises of the ad). This can make for some incredibly cost-effective marketing that gets immediate results.
However, if the ads created don’t contribute to your sales (or whatever action you want your audience to take), those clicks can add up. That’s why optimizing your ads is vital to your success.
PPC works on several widely used platforms, including:
Since PPC ads can show up in so many places, the reach becomes vast, and you can get your brand in front of your target audience, no matter where they are.
Common types of PPC ads include:
- Paid search ads that show in the results after a user types in a query
- Display ads that show up as banners, images, or text on webpages
- Social media advertising that display ads on social channels, contributing to brand awareness
The Basics of PPC
There are a few aspects of PPC that you should know in order to run a successful campaign.
Use your keywords in your ads
Keywords are an essential part of your SEO strategy and how you rank on the search engines. Using them throughout your PPC ad campaign helps with that, especially for Google Ads that rely heavily on text rather than images.
Bid on your keywords
When you decide the words to use in the ad (the words your users are using in their searches), you tell Google the amount you want to spend on them, essentially, the amount you’ll pay to get the click and the visit to your site.
Google will look at what your competitors are bidding for the same keywords and will typically provide the business spending the most for the click to the user at the top of the results page.
Create a landing page
As mentioned above, your landing page is where the user is taken after your ad is clicked. This is an extremely important part of your campaign.
The ad’s landing page should:
- Resonate with your ad (feel free to make it look different than any of your other pages- but still be on brand)
- Have a distinguishable CTA
- Give the user precisely what they’re expecting based on your ad
- Use your keywords
Your PPC ads should offer the user meaning and persuasiveness with minimal characters. So, you want to make it count. It will usually have a headline, URL, a brief description of your offer, a CTA, and, depending on the kind of PPC ad, some creative elements and imagery.
Ways Your Business Can Benefit From PPC
PPC campaigns can be a highly effective means to generate more customers and sales. The importance of optimizing your ads cannot go understated, however. If your ads get clicked, but sales aren’t produced, you’re throwing money away.
While that will occur occasionally, you want to ensure your ads are created to secure sales by getting in front of the right audience at the right time, in the right place, and giving them what they want.
Benefits of a working PPC strategy include:
- Offers a quick increase in website traffic and an SEO boost
- You can measure data that provides insight into your overall digital marketing campaign
- It works across several platforms for optimal reach
- You can get in front of your target audience and increase your customer base and brand recognition
- You can show up above the number one spot on Google’s first results page
Working with The Great Online for PPC
The PPC benefits are pretty great, and no matter how successful you are, they can add plenty of momentum to your ROI. If PPC isn’t in your wheelhouse and you’d like a professional digital marketing team to help initiate and monitor your PPC ads, we can help with that.
Contact The Great Online and get the attention you deserve from PPC specialists who know how to get results.
