PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising is becoming increasingly popular for businesses looking to promote their products and services online. It is a great way to ensure visibility on Google, particularly if you are struggling to rank organically, or on social media platforms.
With PPC campaigns, advertisers bid on specific keywords that they want their ads to appear for when a user searches for those terms. When a user searches for a keyword, an auction takes place to determine the order in which paid adverts will appear. If a user then clicks on your advert, you will be charged for that click. You won’t be charged if your advert is viewed but then not clicked on though (this will just count as an impression in your metrics).
PPC marketing is an incredibly effective way to drive specific, targeted traffic to your website based on the keywords you are looking to be found for. You can carry out PPC marketing on both Facebook and Google, and both platforms have a whole host of targeting options, ad formats and bidding strategies to help you get the most out of your campaign.
Powerful Benefits of PPC Advertising
One of the biggest advantages of using PPC over other marketing methods is the fact that you can easily track the results of the campaign. With so much data and insights at your fingertips, you can see exactly the best way to utilise your marketing budget for optimal results. Let’s have a look at some of the other benefits of PPC advertising.
- Targeted Advertising
With PPC advertising, you are able to target specific audiences rather than just running a broad campaign. You can choose to target people based on keywords, demographics, their location and more, enabling you to show your ads to people who are more likely to be interested in your products or services. Both Google & Facebook allow for more targeted options (remarketing & retargeting), where you can show ads to people who have already interacted with your business, but haven’t yet converted.
- Immediate Results
With PPC advertising, you can switch campaigns off and on as you please. As soon as the campaigns are live, you will start generating traffic as the ads appear at the very top of the search engine results pages. PPC advertising is perfect for businesses that need quick results and are happy to pay Google for the privilege. They do require ongoing optimisation in order to continue producing results though.
- You Control The Spend
You have complete control over how much you spend when it comes to PPC advertising as you set the budget within either Google or Facebook. Whether you prefer daily or monthly budgets, the choice is entirely up to you. You can also adjust keyword bids to ensure you are getting the most valuable clicks for your budget. PPC advertising is a great way to generate results and reach your marketing goals, all while staying within your allocated budget.
- Increased Brand Awareness
If users don’t click on your adverts, you are not charged for them seeing your advert. This means that you are still getting brand exposure, even if they don’t then go through to view your website. This is a great way for new or lesser-known brands to increase their exposure, particularly within saturated markets. By increasing brand awareness, you are building trust with your audience and will therefore start to drive more engaged traffic to your website.
- Measurable Results
One of the huge benefits of PPC advertising is that you can track the entire customer journey, right from the second they click on your advert. By tracking impressions, clicks and conversions, you can quickly identify which campaigns are working well and generating results, and which either need optimising or pausing. Based on the data within both Facebook and Google, you are able to make educated decisions on how to improve the performance of your PPC campaigns, helping you to achieve your marketing goals.
- Great For Cross-Channel Marketing
PPC advertising goes hand in hand with other marketing channels. For example, SEO is commonly run alongside PPC so that while your organic rankings are slowly building up over time, you have instant visibility on search engine results pages with a PPC campaign. Remarketing is also another marketing channel that can be used to start running PPC advertising as the Cost Per Click is much cheaper, and it is a great channel for brand awareness.
- Wealth Of Marketing Data
There is so much performance data within Google and Facebook, that goes beyond PPC performance. With built-in keyword planner tools you can research the best keywords to include in both your paid and organic marketing campaigns. Impression, click and conversion data can be useful for both PPC and SEO, as it can show you which keywords are trending at that particular moment.
- Competitor Insights
If you want to get the inside scoop on what your competitors are doing, PPC advertising lets you do that! You can use Google’s auction insights tool, allowing you to monitor the impression share competitors have in comparison to you, as well as their position on search engine results pages. With this information at your fingertips, you can adjust your keyword bids to stay competitive and outrank them.
Optimising PPC Campaigns
Creating and managing successful PPC campaigns can be incredibly time-consuming, and complex if you aren’t quite sure about what you need to be doing. If you are struggling with your PPC campaigns, or feel like you are spending a lot of money on either Facebook or Google with very little return, contact our PPC experts today to see how they can help.
