The Beginner’s Guide to PPC
02/03/2021
Heard of pay-per-click (PPC) but not sure what it is? Well, great news for small business owners, it’s an effective way for a business of any size to get quick online exposure.
A word of warning, PPC must be used carefully as it is although it is an easy way to gain exposure, it’s also easy to overspend your budget. Therefore, to achieve a worthwhile ROAS (return on ad spend) you need to put in the leg work to ensure your campaign is effective.
Well, we spoke with the team over at Audience and asked them for the full run down. With the help of this guide, you will know what PPC is, why to use it, how it works, and how to optimise your campaign.
What is PPC?
It's a type of online advertising where the creator of the ad pays a fee when somebody clicks on their link.
These types of ads are most commonly displayed at the top of search engine pages.
Wondering why you’d pay for this when you can appear on a search engine results page for free organically?
Well, when you set up a PPC campaign (depending on the user’s search and the words used to define your campaign) your website or PPC ‘ad’ link will appear on the first line on the search results page. It will also display, a small ‘ad’ – symbol by the link so users know that the placement has been paid for.
Without using PPC, you must rely on the unpaid SEO strategy to appear high up on a search engine results page. This can be a long and time-consuming process, but it is also an effective online marketing strategy.
Whether to use PPC or SEO depends on your objectives, timescales, and budget.
Want to know more about SEO, we’ve got a guide on that, check it out here.
Why Use PPC?
1) It works quickly
It is estimated that PPC advertising produces an 80% increase in brand awareness.
This type of paid advertising is a fantastic way to get your brand in front of new audiences.
Again, depending on your business objectives, PPC is fast and efficient, but it is a financial investment. With SEO, although it is free, it could be argued that it takes too long and could lead to lost opportunities.
2) Refined audience
PPC allows for highly targeted audiences. When setting up, you can select certain demographics which will determine who your ad will be displayed to.
As with any paid advertising, the more targeted your approach, the more effective it will be – the joy of personalised ads!
3) Easy campaign management
With some online marketing campaigns, it can be difficult to measure its effectiveness. Fortunately, PPC provides very clear data (assuming it’s set up properly).
To track your campaign, we’d recommend using Google Analytics. If you launch a social PPC campaign, Facebook Ads Manager provides a clear table with customisable data with fields such as reach, impressions, and amount spent for you to analyse the ad’s (hopeful) success.
How Does It Work?
There are many ways across the internet to deploy a PPC campaign, but in this beginner’s guide – let's look at the main way, that’s through Google Ads.
1) Go to google ads
You’ll need to log onto your google account, if you don’t have one, don’t worry you can sign up for one for free here.
So, go to Google Ads and press ‘Get Started’. Then you can start filling in your PPC form with your campaign details and you’ll also fill your business details in here too.
2) Complete campaign set up
You will need to need to complete information on your business, audience, ad content, budget, and billing info.
Once you agree to Google’s T&Cs, you’re ready to press ‘submit’ and get your PPC campaign live!
How to Optimise a Campaign?
Exciting, your campaign is live – but how can you ensure it’s performing at its best?
Well, spending time researching your target audience is crucial. Once you’ve decided on the correct audience, you’ll be saving time and money.
Not only should you know your audience but decide what you think they will be searching for. This will help determine what keywords you should use in your campaign.
Ideally, you want to be achieving the highest clicks with the lowest spend – to do this, you’ll need to home in on the keyword/term selection (use Google Keyword Planner to help with this) and the ad copy/content.
Our key tips on optimising your campaign are:
- Focus on small ad groups, this will keep your campaigns concise
- Perform a keyword search to find and exclude words. You don’t want people who aren’t interested in seeing your ad
- The call to action (CTA) is crucial, be clear in driving an action to get conversions
Make sure you keep an eye on your campaign and make adjustments as they’re needed. PPC campaigns require maintenance and ongoing tweaks to be optimised, so don’t forget about them or your budget might run wild!
And that’s it, your beginner’s guide to PPC. If you're still feeling a little unsure, the team at Audience are PPC experts. Drop a note through to hello@getaudience.co.uk.
PPC can be a great way to get exposure for your business but remember to put in the leg work when researching the audience and keywords to ensure your campaign is targeted correctly.
Don’t forget about your campaign – it needs continual monitoring and optimising.
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