How To Master Pay-per-click Advertising

While SEO marketing strategies are excellent for long-term results, if you need more immediacy, then pay per click advertising is highly effective. One of the most popular marketing techniques, pay per click (PPC) is highly efficient, as long as you know how to build the foundations of the strategy. At its most basic level, PPC is an advertising tactic where you only pay when someone clicks on your advert. That single click will take them directly to your website where you can start guiding them through your sales funnel. That makes PPC advertising a system of buying visitors to your web pages, and can be adopted via:

• Google AdWords: This is the model that most marketers are likely to make use of. Brands bid on their industry and brand-relevant keywords, and that results in being top of page rankings on SERPs.
• Social PPC: You can use PPC on social media. This allows you to target specific demographics and niche topics that you can improve by making use of social media analytics.
• Display Adverts: This is when an advertisement is shown on a different website and can take any form of content that you prefer, from video or images to audio.
• Re-Targeting: Not every person that visits your website will buy your product. Re-targeting means that you can target those customers that visited your pages but left without a purchase.

Starting out with PPC can be a challenge, but with the right foundations, it is hard to beat in terms of immediacy and impact.

Using Your Keywords

As with the majority of digital marketing practices, your first step should always be to identify your keywords. The stronger your keywordKeywords are the words and phrases that potential customers might search for to find your business. strategy, the more effective your PPC campaign will be. That means learning to think like your customers, so research into your target audience is vital. This research needs to be exhaustive, as the more you know about what your customers need from you, the easier it will be to create a pay per click advertising campaign that lands. Remember to:

• Tailor your landing pages: These need to be directly related to what you are selling in your PPC advert. Making your landing page a generic home page will not be as effective as using product pages or valuable content.
• Use variations: Don’t stick to one word when you are choosing your keywords. Consider researching the industry-relevant synonyms that search engine users might use to find you.
• Use keyword matching: If you make use of broad matching then you will certainly have a wider scope, but you do run the risk of reducing your landing page relevance. Phrase matching can help you to narrow that down, while exact matching will only show results that use the exact keywords that you have selected.

The Impact of PPC

PPC advertising continues to grow in both use and effectiveness. As social networks and search engines continue to fine-tune and make improvements to their advertising features, PPC makes it easier than ever to connect with your target audience. This is due to:

• Mobile PPC: As more people use their devices to make internet searches, mobile is driving the growth of pay per click advertising. That means taking some important steps in making your campaigns optimised for mobile:
  • Make sure that you enable ‘click to call’ buttons on your advert so that mobile users are able to connect more immediately.
  • Ensure that your landing pages are all fully optimised for both mobiles and tablets. Think about speed as much as you do design, and make sure that your pages load extremely quickly.

If you neglect to factor mobile PPC into your pay per click advertising campaign then you are going to lose the effectiveness that this form of marketing is designed for.

• Remarketing and Audience Targeting: Being able to target your specific customers is one of the most impactful components of PPC advertising. Being able to create advertising that appears whenever one of your targeted audience members is online is of incredible value. When this is combined with mobile PPC, it allows for highly impactful remarketing.

Improving the Mileage of PPC

You want your PPC campaign to be as hard-hitting as possible for the longest amount of time. You can do this by:

• Understanding the importance of CTAs that are not overly sales-focused
• Focusing primarily on your keyword targeting
• Sticking to your budget
• Testing and analysing the data of your PPC campaign to get a better idea of what is working and what is lacking impact

Pay per click advertising is one of the most useful tools in the digital marketer’s toolbox. When done right, it can increase CTRs, reach new consumers, and improve sales figures. Make sure that your foundations are in place and that you understand exactly who your target audience is. That way, your PPC campaign will land with maximum effectiveness.