Pay Per Click Marketing and Its Benefits for Your Business

You may have thought you had already got to grips with every aspect of good SEO practice for your business, but if you haven’t yet ventured into Pay Per Click marketing, then you haven’t explored every avenue. In order to choose whether PPC is suited for your business model (which it very likely is), you need to first understand what it is and how it can help.

Below is a guide for your introduction to PPC marketing and its advantages.

What is Pay Per Click Marketing?

You’ll already be aware that any advertising for your business is a good thing. Pay Per Click marketing is a form of digital marketing achieved and processed through the internet. You – as an advertiser – will pay a fee for each time one of your advertisements is clicked by a consumer. You’re basically buying a visit to your site, which, when you consider the end goal, isn’t a negative because it’s taken a potential customer to your website. This is instead of the traditional route of organic trafficOrganic search traffic (sometimes called natural or unpaid search) is the traffic that's driven to a website because of unpaid placement on a search engine results page., where consumers reach your website through a natural query on a search engine and choose your business to click from the results page.

The best and most popular form of PPC marketing is through search engines such as Google. This means an advertisement for your business will be displayed in prime position following a relevant keywordKeywords are the words and phrases that potential customers might search for to find your business. search. As an advertiser, you will bid and pay for the space to place the sponsored link of your business at the top of a results page.

How Can It Help Your Business?

As you can see, this is a very useful marketing tool to get your business noticed. Consumers will also see that you have taken the time to pay for a sponsored link. This implies that you care about being noticed – which, of course, every business does, but investing money in it can be seen as a good sign to a consumer rather than your business being on the third page of Google’s results due to lack of marketing expertise.

Consumers don’t mind being overly advertised to – in fact, when searching a query online, they more often than not will want a relevant, sponsored link to come up easily and straight away, rather than them being forced to trawl through possibly irrelevant results. Sponsored advertising is a good result in their eyes.

Ultimately, the fee you pay for these advertisements is nothing in comparison to the end goal: new business and therefore a profit. You can consequently consider Pay Per Click marketing as a small investment opportunity. The fee you pay for the advertisement may only end up being 3% of your overall profit received from the business you gained from the sponsored advertising in the first place.

Pay Per Click is also beneficial because it’s good for everyone: your business, the consumer, and the search engine itself.

Tips for Creating a Good PPC Campaign

A successful Pay Per Click marketing campaign will be the result of relevant research, hard work, and time. Creating the best campaign for your business won’t be an instant, quick process. You need to consider the following:

• Choose the right bid strategy: A Pay Per Click marketing campaign isn’t the same for every business, and you need to tailor yours for you. It’s important to decide what you want to get out of your sponsored advertisement. Do you want to drive more traffic to your website? Do you want to boost your brand? Create more sales? Naturally, all of the above would be optimum, but by clearly outlining all your goals, you will make the process more easily understood.
• Ensure your ads are placed at the right time: If your business has a product tailored for the 9-5 worker, there is no point putting your advertisements live at 9 am in the morning. You need to ensure the timing of the ads are tailored to your target audience and when they are most likely to be actively searching online. Of course, there is also the option to have your PPC active 24/7. This will naturally cost a little more, but when you’re first starting out with this marketing tool, a 24/7 schedule is advised. Once you get more to grips with the schedule of your consumers, you can set your ads to display only during optimum hours.
• Circulate your ads: If you’ve decided to use Pay Per Click marketing, the chances are that you will have more than one ad that you wish to display. Ensure that all ads are getting enough screen time and being rotated regularly. A rotation schedule can easily be tailored depending on feedback – for example, if a particular ad has been getting more clicks than others, you can rotate so that the ad is displayed more often.
• Don’t neglect location: Google is the master of location-based advertisements and GPS location. You need to ensure that you’re targeting the right location for your business. If you have one store in one particular area, then your ads need to target consumers based in this location, and therefore searching Google from this location. If your business is online or worldwide based, then you need to enable your ads to be displayed regardless of location. The latter is a little more tricky based on feedback and search behaviours, but it’s still all do-able with enough research.
• You can target a certain device: The popularity of using the internet and shopping online using our smartphones is growing. More and more people will search the web on their smartphone than they would on their desktop computer. With this in mind, you can target your Pay Per Click marketing to accommodate a smartphone device – meaning you can make sure the display capabilities are correctly designed for smartphones. When creating your ads, you have the option for which device you would like to choose, and there is also an option for “Create Mobile Ads Only.” You can even incorporate a ‘call’ button into the advertisement, easily accomplished by a consumer through their smartphone.