What is Pay Per Click Advertising?
Pay-per-click advertising, or PPC, is when businesses or general advertisers pin their ads in strategic places online. With PPC, advertisers only pay for their ad placement when a user clicks on it. Pay-per-click advertising can be one of the most cost-efficient elements of a marketing strategy because a $2 click can become a $400 sale. It’s an invaluable part of any marketer’s toolkit.
With PPC ads, you determine how much you’d like to pay-per-click (this varies between a few pennies per click to over $40 per click, depending on page traffic).
Think about pay-per-click advertising as buying real estate. You’d probably like to place your business where your customer-base hangs out, right?
If you find a location where lots of people live, work, and play, you’ll be paying a higher price for your space. This is especially true if there is competition for that space.
The same goes for PPC advertising.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising as Virtual Real Estate
Think of PPC advertising like this:
You own a bakery. You move to the world’s bread capital (Germany, arguably) to open a bakery in front of The Museum of Bread Culture. You’re a premier baker, and you know your bread is so next-level that Sara Lee herself is sliding into your DMs.
However, there are three other premier bakers in the area, and they all want the spot in front of The Museum of Bread Culture (because, duh). You know you’re going to do a great job, so you bid higher than the other bakers and spend the money to rent that particular space. You know you’ll make more profit in this location, even though the initial cost is a little more.
On the flip side, if you move to the gluten-free capital of the world (which isn’t real, but give it five years), you’re going to pay a super low price for your space because you’re not in the right area to be slinging your gluten-filled bread.
Your cost to be there might be cheap, but because there’s no traffic, you might not even break-even. Your client-base is on the other side of the world. The demand isn’t there.
This is how pay-per-click advertising works. You want to be where interested potential customers are. And how much you pay will be dependent on the opportunity of the space you’re in.
Not sure if you’re ready to invest? Take our quiz to help decide if you should be saving your coin to place that bid. (It’s painless, but we’ll still hold your hand through it if you ask us to.)
Google Ads
With Google Ads, the highest bidder doesn’t always win. It’s about quality.
Google picks whose ad will be featured in their search results based on the following criteria:
- Relevance
- Keyword Usage
- Quality of Content
Google takes into account the amount a business is willing to pay-per-click (CPC or cost-per-click) and the quality score of a website. A high bid and a well-written, well-designed website is a winning combination that will get your website on Google results pages.
It’s important to remember that this auctioning process is automated, which is why you must pay special attention to your keywords and the quality of your ad.
The success of your ad campaign is dependent on you doing your marketing research. In-depth keyword research is an absolute must. Non-negotiable. To get eyes on your products or services through a PPC ad, you have to make sure that your keywords attract serious attention. Do your homework. Find out what keywords you need to utilize to get your ad where it deserves to be.
Creating a Good Ad
To make sure search engines select your ad to be featured, it needs to contain a few particular things.
- Solid Headline. Not only do you need a headline that catches the attention of an audience, but one that registers with the automated auction for that ad space.
- Description. Write a reasonable explanation (with keywords, always with keywords) that lets your audience know what you’re offering while creating enough SEO value in your
ad that the search engine says, “yep, that’s the one we want to feature!”
- Link. With online marketing, if you aren’t providing your link, you aren’t doing it right. Be sure to throw the link to your website in your ad copy for good measure.
Don’t feel like you have to keep the same ad up forever. Keep in mind where your ad is being placed, and who’ll be seeing your ad. Consider your target audience’s age along with their location, the device they’ll be viewing your ad on, etc.
If things aren’t working, switch it up. Test the water with a few different keywords and budgets to see what gives you the best outcome.
How Will Pay-Per-Click Advertising Benefit My Business?
Pay-per-click advertising is one of the quickest, most efficient ways to get traffic to your website. It’s also one of the most cost-efficient ways to advertise since you only pay when your advertisement is clicked on. There is little waste in a pay-per-click marketing campaign if executed the right way.
Running a good pay-per-click marketing campaign consists of a few things:
- Targeting the right audience by placing your ads in the right spaces.
- The proper utilization of keywords.
- Having an impressive landing page that entices people to do business with you.
- Making sure your on-site content marketing is on-point.
If you have an adequate marketing strategy, PPC marketing only adds a boost.
What is Pay-Per-Click Marketing?
Pay-per-click marketing is a marketing plan that utilizes pay-per-click advertisements to bring customers to a website designed to pique the interest of potential customers.
PPC ads & a good landing page are a marriage that cannot be separated in PPC marketing efforts. Without a proper landing page, your advertisements will end up wasted. Whichever page that ad leads to, make sure that it’s ready to be interacted with.
Creating a Landing Page for PPC Advertising
All signs point to Lauderdale. All roads lead to Rome. Take the next exit to the bread museum. Whatever.
Create a landing page for your PPC advertisement that gets internet users (aka potential customers) to where YOU want them. You have that power. Use it.
You get to choose how you want people to interact. Make it known what you want out of your interaction. Your ad piqued their interest enough to click it (and you’re now going to pay for it), so try your best to make sure that click CONVERTS.
Whether it’s a sale, a bookmark, a shared email address, or a follow on social media, if they are interested enough to click, keep them interested enough to stick around.
It’s all about the interaction & the impact. A good ad (with the proper technicalities…we’re looking at you, keywords) will make your content marketing efforts worth it. Pay-per-click advertisement is worth your time and effort. If you aren’t sure you can do it yourself, let us show you the way.
How Gravity Junction Can Help
Gravity Junction is an Atlanta-based marketing consulting company full of digital marketing gurus.
From web designers to social media marketers to creative content writers, Gravity Junction excels in growing businesses through well-developed marketing strategies. Advertisement (organic and otherwise) is part of Gravity Junction’s well-designed approach to digital marketing.
Traditional marketing takes on a new life at Gravity Junction, the place where brands go Supanova.
To learn more about whether pay-per-click marketing is right for you, take our quiz.
Running a PPC campaign can be a good idea, but its always recommended to study PPC in great depth before launching your ad campaign.