PPC is an increasingly popular marketing tactic that businesses are using to lure lucrative search engine traffic to their websites. But what is PPC? And how can you use it to boost your website’s performance, leads, and sales?
If you’re new to the vibrant world of PPC, this blog post will explain exactly what PPC is and how you can get started leveraging this powerful marketing tool.
What Does PPC Stand For in Marketing?
PPC is an abbreviation of “pay-per-click,” which is a marketing strategy where you pay search engines and websites to advertise your website or products.
As you may have already guessed from its name, PPC is an advertising model where you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. This makes PPC significantly more attractive than traditional forms of advertising because with PPC you only pay when you get results. For example, this is the equivalent of putting up a billboard and only paying the advertising company whenever someone who saw your billboard walks into your store.
Another major perk of PPC is free publicity. Because you only pay when someone clicks, this means you’re raising brand awareness with everyone who doesn’t click for free. And while they may not click this time, simply exposing a searcher to your ad makes them statistically more likely to click your ad next time.
How Does PPC Work?
The most popular and effective form of PPC Advertising is paying search engines to display an ad alongside or within the search results (also known as the Search Engine Results Pages, or SERPs).
You’ve likely noticed these kinds of ads in your own search results. If not, simply Google search for a service in your city and notice how the top results are tagged with “Ad.” These are PPC ads.
Are PPC Ads Worth It?
Is PPC advertising in the search results effective? The results speak for themselves. PPC SERP ads garner 1.5 times more clicks than organic results and 74% of brands say that this form of PPC drives a huge amount of traffic to their businesses.
How Pay-Per-Click Ads Work
Unlike traditional forms of advertising, you can’t simply pay more to have your PPC ad displayed above the competition. Instead, you have to compete for advertising spots using an automated bidding system called the Google Ads Auction.
To successfully secure top ad spots in the SERPs, you PPC marketing campaign needs to effectively balance the following actions:
- Bid and secure your target keywords. When people search for these keywords, your ad will be triggered and shown to them. To maintain profitable ROI, you need to conduct careful keyword research to ensure you’re only bidding on keywords that your target audience is searching for.
- Optimize your ad’s quality score. Every time someone searches for one of your keywords, Google will calculate a quality score to determine whether or not your ad should be shown to that specific searcher. To ensure your ads get shown to your ideal audience, you need to keep your quality score high. This is done by matching ad landing pages and ad copy to searcher intent — a data point that needs to be identified during keyword research.
- Craft click-drawing ad copy. Your ad and landing pages need to feature effective calls to action and quickly communicate the unique selling propositions of your service/product.
- Use A/B testing to continuously improve your PPC ads. Successful PPC campaigns are carried across the finish line by constant A/B testing. This involves making minor adjustments to your ads and measuring which variations attract the best click-through-rate.
What Is Pay Per Click Management?
Effectively balancing all of the above steps requires hundreds of hours of research, testing, and execution. Success also depends on the knowledge, training, and experience of the marketing professionals leading your campaign.
Because running a successful PPC campaign requires expertise in keyword research, Ads Auction bidding, A/B testing, and ad copy writing, most companies decide to partner with a PPC management agency.
A pay-per-click account management agency runs your PPC campaigns for you, giving you access to industry experts and a level of PPC effectiveness that would take years to achieve on your own.
Best Pay Per Click Services
If you’re ready to start generating ROI with PPC but lack the internal resources to execute an effective PPC campaign, consider partnering with an expert PPC agency like Megethos.
Here at Megethos, our PPC experts have spent years fine-tuning their capabilities to ensure our managed pay-per-click campaigns are maximally successful. From keyword research to sales copy, our A-team of PPC specialists has the experience and training necessary to deliver superior PPC results.
To get started with PPC, contact Megethos today.
