What is PPC? How does it affect small business and how do you do PPC? We will help answer these basic questions so you can figure out if this advertising strategy is right for your business and what you have to look forward to.
If you want to get your website to the top of Google you can take the long-route of investing in SEO which is key to bringing in organic traffic. So what is organic traffic and why it is important to bringing in traffic? When users type a search query in a search engine (such as Google or Bing), they are presented with a list of results that includes both the pages ranking on the top positions organically.
Organic search engine results are the most relevant search engine results for that search term as selected by the search engine. Search results that appear organically gain more traffic long-term and are considered as more relevant and trustworthy than the websites that are paying top dollar to be included alongside those organic search results
On the flipside, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is the "quickest" way to beat your competitors to that coveted top spot. It's the "fastest" way to get immediate traffic and withing 24 hours of setting up a PPC campaign you can generate traffic and start making sales. In this article, we shall discuss how to get started with PPC and plan successful ad campaigns that will help your small business to grow.
Google Search PPC ads.
What Is PPC?
PPC, or pay per click, is a method of online advertising in which advertisers pay a price for each time a person clicks on their ad. Google or other platform like Bin gets paid "only" when it sends traffic to an advertiser’s website via someone clicking on an ad they see at the top of the search engine results.
Google continues to be the most popular search engine to buy PPC ad space, followed closely by Facebook. Together, they make up the majority (over 6)%) of digital ad dollars spent in the U.S. by far. However, Amazon is one the come up and solidifies the third spot.
PPC ads like those that show up on the search results page are just one type in many ad types available to small businesses. Some other types include:
Native advertising
Display ads
Social ads
Retargeting and remarketing ads
Local Search ads
YouTube ads
Google Shopping ads
Why Does My Small Business Need PPC?
Pay-per-click advertising can drive sales, leads, traffic, brand awareness and marketing campaign support immediately. Therefore, a small player can rank higher than a more established player at the top of the search engine. So when somebody is searching for a specific product or service your company immediately goes to the top. Further, even though you have to pay to play, a searcher is less likely to click on your ad if they aren't actively looking for a product or service that you provide. If they do click on your ad it's because they are interested in doing business with you.
Therefore, If you’re thinking about using digital ads, you’re in good company: U.S. digital ad spend topped $129 billion in 2019, which is . So as you can see from the graph below the majority of Americans are shopping online and advertisers are using Facebook ads and Google ads to reach them. So you don't want to leave dollars on the table by not investing in advertising because your competition definitely are using digital ads to get ahead.
While COVID’s impact on digital advertising in 2021 is still unclear, ad spending will continue growing each year because with less customers visiting brick and mortar stores these brands will continue to invest in digital advertising. Further, PPC is a perfect compliment to other marketing efforts like SEO. Here are a couple of reasons why PPC and SEO work well together. First, PPC and SEO together are part of a holistically-Search Engine Result Page (SERP) strategy.
In order to maximize your increased visibility on a search engine results page (SERP) you need a holistic-SERP strategy that includes ads. A holistic-SERP strategy also takes into account which content will satisfy a user’s intent (what they are looking for when they type a query into Google). Advertising satisfies search queries down the sales funnel with the intent to purchase by having the questions that your customers need answered for them with highly targeted PPC ads which sent them to an opt-in pages which sends them to a landing page where they have to enter their contact info or they can be directed to your shopping chart.
So keep in mind as we mention at the top of this article that PPC offers instant gratification, while SEO is a long-term strategy but they both go hand-in-hand and you need to have both mechanisms working for you. You wouldn't train to enter a competition such as a marathon to start off fast, leap ahead of the pack (PPC) but not train to actually finish the long, drawn out race last (SEO). You would train to start off the race in first place and prepare to end in first place which is a permanent spot on the first page of the Search Engine Results Page.
Aside from SEO campaign support, consider some of these PPC advertising stats:
Three-fourths of people (75%) say paid search ads make it easier to find the information they are searching for on a website or search engine.
One-third of people (33%) click on a paid search ad because it directly answers their search query. (Search Engine Land, 2019)
49% of people said they click on text ads; 31% on Shopping ads; and 16% on video ads. (Search Engine Land, 2019)
63% of people said they’d click on a Google ad. (Search Engine Land, 2019)
Google Ads results receive 65% of the clicks that started with buying keywords, while organic results only receive 35% (Craig McConnel)
Businesses make an average of $2 in income for every $1 they spend in Google Ads. (Google)
How Do I Do PPC?
Here are five simple steps to consider in a PPC campaign:
1. Focus on the major PPC network providers.Google is the leader in search advertising, though Bing may be more appropriate for certain demographics.
2. Aim for good PPC quality scores.
Google explains what goes into an advertiser’s quality score and why it matters:
Quality Score is an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. Higher quality PPC ads can lead to lower prices and better advertising positions.
3. Audit existing PPC campaigns.
Every business that is advertising can benefit from ongoing audits. This can make accounts perform better and save tons of money.
4. Monitor results.
Watch your PPC campaign performance. Make changes on an ongoing basis and do A/B split testing to to enhance account performance.
5. Research new and emerging strategies.
Things are always changing in PPC. Stay on top of trends, updates and opportunities for enhancements in your PPC campaigns.
Also, here are some of the steps in running a healthy PPC campaign:
PPC: The Bottom Line
In closing PPC is a form of online advertising in which advertisers pay each time a person clicks on a ad. Therefore, companies do pay-per-click advertising to drive sales, leads, traffic, brand awareness and marketing campaign support. PPC management can be a time consuming job that requires the expertise of an agency or consultant to get the best results for your campaign. It is complex and takes time to build an ad campaign that works best for your business but with the right tools in place it can be a huge game changer for your business.
If you’d like to discuss how we can help you increase your targeted PPC traffic, conversions and revenue, contact us for a no-obligation quote. https://www.a16studios.com/contact
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