February 11, 2025
Introduction
PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising is a lot more common than you might think, you will often see it and not realise. From search ads at the top of the SERP to Meta ads in your feed, they are a near constant appearance in the digital world. For businesses, utilising paid advertising is key to building on success and getting your brand out there. PPC is often a moving target, and done wrong, you can spend a lot of money with little return, but fear not, we are here to help.
What is PPC Advertising?
Pay Per Click advertising is exactly what is says on the tin. You pay, when someone clicks on your ad. As a business, you bid against others for the keywords of your choosing to appear at the top of the search engine. PPC comes in many shapes and sizes. It also can appear on multiple platforms, from the most common on Google, to Meta ads, LinkedIn ads and much more!
PPC is used for several main benefits. Specifically, it works FAST! Compared to SEO it can take several months to see results, with PPC, it can be a matter of weeks depending on your budget. Getting your ads in front of the right audience at the right time is invaluable. Catching someone who might have gone to your competitor, or is in the process of researching is key to improving your brand awareness and overall conversion rate.
How Does PPC Work?
PPC is at its core, quite simple. Imagine an auction, where you and all of your competitors are intent on buying the same thing- the top spot. Bid strategies and overall budgets per month come into play when determining which business gets the coveted top spot, and which fall further down the pecking order.
Other factors include quality score and ad rank. These metrics are determined by Google and take into account your ad relevance, expected click through rate and landing page quality. Google’s main aim is to give the user the most relevant information to fit their search query. Careful keyword research and ad copy creation allows us to ensure we are in the best place possible to answer the user’s questions and provide meaningful information.
Creating a PPC campaign designed for success takes time, every agency has a different take, here’s Google’s suggestions. Through understanding your business and your aims, we can tick all of the boxes to ensure we start on the right track. These include factors such as: what platform best suits your aims? What are your competitors doing? What is the right target audience? What keywords are your audience searching for? How much budget do you have? All of these factors and much more are taken into consideration when building your campaigns.
Key Components of a PPC Campaign
Keywords: In most cases, the budget for the month is finite. Making sure you’re not accidentally wasting ad spend is a key part of ongoing campaign management. Keyword research is used to see how many searches each keyword has per month, and how much the expected cost is. You can make sure to use keywords that are relevant to your business but also have traffic to amplify your impact while sticking to your budget.
Ad Copy: Getting to the top of the search engine is only part of the battle. If your ad copy is boring and irrelevant, users aren’t going to click on it. The key is to pack in as much relevant info as possible within the character count limits.
Landing Pages: Getting traffic to your website is stage one. The next is getting them to convert. Whatever your desired actions are on your site, whether its form fills or purchases, if your site isn’t optimised for pushing traffic towards your conversions, they simply won’t happen.
Budget & Bidding: PPC is not a cheap form of marketing. Investment is needed to ensure returns are seen. Bidding effectively with your budget is key to keeping your business in the public eye, while minimising your cost per conversion.
Types of PPC Advertising
- Search ads (Google Ads, Microsoft Ads).
- Display ads (Google Display Network, banner ads).
- Social media ads (Meta, Instagram, LinkedIn).
- Shopping ads (Google Shopping).
Common PPC Mistakes to Avoid
Targeting the wrong keywords: The selection of keywords is key to the success of a campaign. Choosing the wrong keywords can result in wasted spend, an increased bounce rate and a disconnect between the keyword and the landing page.
Ignoring negative keywords: These are a big component in ensuring that the ads are shown to the right audience. Match types are great for filtering, but they are not perfect. Particularly for broad terms, making sure you are appearing for the right thing is crucial.
Poorly written ad copy: Engaging the audience quickly is imperative to persuading the user to click through to the website. If your ad isn’t clear and appealing to the user, they could pass your business over for an alternative.
Not optimising landing pages: Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is needed on any website to push traffic down the conversion funnel. If CTAs aren’t clear or tracking isn’t set up correctly, valuable conversions could be lost.
Failing to track conversions: The bread and butter of PPC is data. As much of it as possible is ideal. Tracking provides you and the platform with valuable insights and information on user behaviour. Conversion tracking means you can quantify the results you have seen and utilise ROI bid strategies.
Conclusion
PPC is ideal for businesses who want to promote their offering and online presence more. They can utilise the platform to target their ideal audience at the right time. Though PPC is not a simple setup, it can create large returns for businesses that take the time to review their audience and create the ideal campaign. Take a look at how we can help.
Not sure how to get started? Get in touch with us today to discover how we can help.
