Everything You Need to Know about Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertisement

Paid media campaigns and digital marketing have been common words even school children are familiar with. But doing budget-friendly and effective digital marketing and paid media campaigns is a skill to be mastered. Pay-per-click (PPC) is one of the most popular digital marketing methods. Paid media campaigns including pay-per-click advertisements help your business reach the right customers.

PPC as the name suggests makes the advertiser pay for each click. The placement of the ad depends on the money spent on the ad and the strength of the keyword. This means, if an advertiser pays more for a PPC, her ad will be ranked better.

Let’s assume someone searches for a keyword on the Google search engine. The advertisements which have paid more for that keyword will get placed on top and the advertiser will have to pay if a searcher clicks on that ad. This is how pay-per-click ads work.

Google Adwords is the common and the most popular platform on which PPCs operate. There are many other platforms and channels available for PPC. But people use google AdWords and PPC interchangeably mistaking that they are the same.

PPC ads are meant to generate leads and improve conversion rates. So the ad should give more importance to what the potential customers are looking for. Self-promotion may not work in PPCs.

Google ads or PPC can have a maximum of 270 characters in total including the title and the description. Using maximum space allotted would be a great practice so that the message can be creatively crafted and conveyed. Make full use of the space for title and description and include as much information as possible.

A call to action (CTA) is a must in a PPC ad. This can be anything that prompts the visitor to make a purchase immediately. One can be creative in writing such CTAs and it would be better to avoid usual phrases like “call now”. The emotional approach in writing copies can be practiced in PPC ads. The ads should be written in a compelling way prompting more conversions.

Incorporating USPs (Unique Selling Propositions) in the copy works magic. The USP can be anything like a unique feature or offers, advantage of the product or service over the competitors, industrial standards or awards, outstanding performance, remarkable promotions or campaigns, etc.

One other way to attract more people to the advertisement is to incorporate figures or numbers in their numerical forms. The figure can be anything like price, count, etc. Make sure that the figure you present is accurate which is having more impact when it comes to conversions.

Headlines or titles can be 30 words long and they play an important role in conversion. Therefore prioritize headlines and include maximum keywords in them.

Moreover, giving assurance to the visitors or potential customers and to allay their objections to a particular ad is much needed. The best ads can be crafted only if you think from the customer’s side. Researching PPCs done by the competing entities will also be helpful to a great extent.

Paid media campaigns are the best options of advertisement for start-ups. Even though the start-ups may want to boost their performance by reaching out to the right customers, they may not wish to do it at a huge cost. So the best way to get maximum ROI from a paid media campaign is to intelligently plan the expenditure. There are certain things to take into consideration before budgeting for PPC.

Identifying what exactly you wish to achieve by the paid media campaigns is the crucial step in budgeting. Setting a clear goal will really help. A massive amount will have to be invested in the ads if you need to get the key leads and conversions at the earliest. If you are planning it long-term, you can start with a low budget and scale up eventually. You can set goals like maximizing ROI, improve revenue, generate leads and promote the brand, etc.

Finding the right keywords is as important as setting clear goals. In fact, setting a goal is complete only when you figure out proper keywords to meet them. Google keyword planner helps a lot in identifying the keywords best suitable for your purpose. Researching competitor ads will give an insight. Besides, Google will assist you to find out the relevant keywords if you simply put your website URL. Google will also tell you how much you will have to spend for each keyword. You can bid accordingly.

Like any other mode of marketing and advertising, the unpredictability of cost is one of the characteristics of PPC ads. Still, there are formulas one can rely on to get an idea of the amount to be spent.

The total budget can be calculated using the formula,

Total budget= traffic required * average CPC.

Required traffic= customers needed/ conversion rate.

The same formulas can be used to find out the highest and the lowest budgets.

Being a powerful tool of advertising that helps pinpoint what works and what not, PPC can help you improve your other digital marketing efforts. For example, with the help of PPC, you can compare the performances of various keywords. Landing pages can be designed by analyzing the trend of traffic to multiple landing pages with different content, images, headlines, layout, calls to action, etc.

The lessons learned while testing keywords, headlines, offers, and calls to action can be used in another mode of digital marketing campaigns. PPCs can help to a great extent to geotarget the customers. If you know people from which part of the world respond more to your advertisement, things become easier for you. This information can be used elsewhere.

PPC and SEO is a powerful combination. Research has proven that this combo has immense potential to improve traffic. Remember, while SEO and organic listing of your webpage on the first page of SERP (search engine result page) is a slow process, PPC gives immediate results. While it may take months or years for your SEO-optimized page to appear on the first page of google search results, PPC ads appear on the first page within no time. Even though people may not click on the ad links, they will notice your ad. It is proven that an organic listing gets more clicks when its PPC appears on the same page.

PPC helps your social media presence get more visibility and traffic. For example, you can direct people to your Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter accounts through PPC ads. If you are running a social media campaign or event, you can make the searchers aware of it with the help of a PPC ad.

So initially it may look like an expensive marketing tool, PPCs are actually multitasking ads that can help your website, social media pages, campaigns, and events get a jump start. The best part is that you can decide the spending to an extent by turning on and off the ads for smart bidding.