What is Pay per click advertising?
Most people’s understanding of Pay per click advertising (PPC) is that ppc is a form of digital marketing that gets websites to rank on the first page of a search engine’s results page. Essentially, ppc marketing is a way of buying visits to your site, rather than attempting to earn those visits organically – not that there’s anything wrong with doing this.
Whilst both of these statements are true, there is a little more to PPC management than just that.
What are the different types of PPC marketing?
Firstly, there are several types of advertising that fall under ‘PPC advertising.’ These are;
- Search advertising.
- Display advertising.
- Social media advertising.
- Re-marketing.
- Sequential re-marketing.
- Google Shopping.
You’re probably wondering which one of these is best for you. Depending on your business and industry, some forms of ppc will work better for you than others. For example, if your website doesn’t use e-commerce, google shopping is pretty pointless for you. We recommend using a variety of these methods, creating benchmarks and seeing which yield the best results.
Below are screenshots taken to show examples of PPC marketing (text ads, shopping ads and re-marketing).
What are Keywords?
Keywords are words or phrases that specifically relate to products, brands or service offerings. Search engines use keywords to determine whether your website should rank. This is achieved by analysing how much the content of a website matches the keyword. If it matches, the website will show up in the search engines results.
There are specific words, phrases or questions which are commonly used by people when searching for specific products or services. It’s important to know the right keywords for your business/industry.
It’s equally important to know keywords that you don’t want to show up, as each click will cost you. For example, if you’re selling shampoo, you want to make sure you’re not ranking for dog shampoo, unless of course you stock that. These are called negative keywords, and act as a filter, ensuring that you’re not spending your budget on unwanted clicks. You should update this list regularly.
Once you have decided what type of PPC marketing you want to use and have created your keywords and negatives, it’s time to create your adverts.
What are PPC Adverts?
Once you have established what sort of PPC you will use, you need to create your ads.
There are several types of advert depending on which type of PPC marketing your doing. These are;
- Text only ads
- Re-targeting ads
- Dynamic ads
- Media and text ads (social media)
Text only ads are the most common form of PPC when dealing with search engines. They are easy to create and you can often see your ads when doing a quick search against the keywords your targeting (so you know they are working). Text ads generally drive the most traffic.
Re-targeting ads are ads that show up after you’ve already visited a website. Ever been looking at a new pair of trainers, only to check your facebook feed or watch a video on youtube and suddenly, there’s those trainers again… chances are you just got re-targeted!
Dynamic ads are similar to re-targeting ads, except you may not have visited a specific website to see an ad for their products. Showing an interest in a particular product or service category is all it takes. Dynamic ads, or DCO is dynamically created, pulling in content from your website. This can be great so long as you have a good looking website with strong copy and prominent calls to action.
The importance of your landing pages
In our opinion your landing pages are the most important and sometimes overlooked aspect of good PPC management. Where are you sending this traffic once they have clicked your ad’s?
Consider you just paid an agency to set up PPC marketing. After month one, the agency reports 500 leads were generated from PPC.
Let’s say each click cost you £0.50, that means 500 clicks just cost you £250. From the agency’s point of view, they have done their job. But what did those 500 people do once on your website/landing page? What is the desired action, and how are you tracking it?
Suppose they all came to your website, and left after taking one look at it. Either your PPC campaign isn’t optimised, your sending users to your home page when the ad promised size 32 skinny jeans, or your landing page is outdated, ugly or just not what the advert was offering.
How to optimise your PPC Budget
You’re probably wondering, ‘so how much will this cost me.’ The reality is that the amount you end up spending will depend on your sales goals, how large of a geographic area you’re targeting, the search volume, and the general competitiveness of the industry.
There are several ways to optimise your budget. For example, ensuring your ads are only being shown in areas that you service. If you’re a take away restaurant located in Birmingham, chances are you wont be delivering to London. You might not even deliver to the whole of Birmingham. Being specific is key to get the most bang for your buck.
Other ways of optimising your PPC budget include only showing ads during business hours. This is particularly important if there is a need for customer engagement offline. For example, if your customer journey requires leads to call in order to close a sale or take payment.
We have a ton of experience dealing with large and small PPC budgets, and a record of getting month on month growth. For a free PPC consultation and quote, get in touch with us today.
For more information visit – https://k-numerique.com/ppc-marketing
Great post, very informative & thorough, thank you!
Good stuff! Keep it comming!
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