PPC, (pay per click) is a form of digital marketing. You may have heard of it before or just come across the term and are intrigued with its benefits. Gloss want to give you some insight into the lucrative world of PPC and maybe even give you some pointers on how to use it to your advantage..
What actually is PPC?
Firstly, we need to establish what PPC actually is. PPC stands for Pay Per Click and is a form of digital marketing, specifically search engine advertising that aims to get traffic to a particular page and/or website. It is one of the most common forms of search engine advertising and there is a good reason why, that we’ll delve deeper into later. It is, in a nutshell, companies bidding on ad space and in return, they get featured in high priority locations on search engines such as Google. Of course, this is where the name comes from as the companies then have to (you guessed it) pay-per-click on the advertisement. It can be seen as the easy way to get traffic to your pages as it is essentially buying your visitors instead of working for them, but that isn’t necessarily the case.
If the PPC campaign is done correctly, the fee that is paid to the search engine is almost irrelevant, as the outcome and reward for the company paying the fee will be much higher. So, for example, if a dessert company placed a bid on a keyword of “waffles” their ad may very well show up on the top spot when a user is fancying that sweet treat. Say that company paid £1 for that click, but ended up making a sale worth £9 from the visitor, the fee for the click is trivial. The profit margins could be much more or a little less than that, but you get the gist.
Of course, there is a lot of work that goes into forming a successful PPC campaign. Researching keywords, making sure them keywords are well categorised, finding the latest trends, setting up landing pages that are well optimised for SEO (we have some tips for that here) and more. However, if the work is done correctly, it is definitely worth the time investment.
What are the benefits of PPC?
The benefits of a good PPC campaign are almost limitless, which is why it is so popular. Here are some of the main attractions;
- Provides an instant increase in website/page traffic
- Cost effective if done correctly
- More brand visibility and reach
- High priority search engine placements (no more page two of Google)
- High ROAS (return on ad spend)
- Run multiple campaigns with different keywords
If your campaigns are well optimised and are performing to a high standard, Google will actually lower the price-per-click providing its users are satisfied with your content. As we say, don’t expect all this to happen if you just throw some money at a search engine and expect it to stick; time, patience and some know-how is going to be needed to reap these rewards. People often think that PPC is a one way ticket down easy street, whereas SEO work is the tough choice. In reality, both need a lot of work and the former cannot be done properly without the latter anyway. For people still not convinced of PPC’s success rate, statistics from statista suggest that 20% claim to have PPC as its highest ROI (return on investment) of all the digital marketing strategies.
Should I use PPC?
PPC is a great method of digital marketing for any size of company. Whether you’re a small start-up business or a juggernaut of the relevant industry, PPC should be used and taken advantage of. However, with small businesses, it makes the keyword research even more important as you probably won’t be able to contend with the big shots money wise just yet.
PPC is extremely simple compared to other methods of digital marketing in terms of just getting it set up and going, all marketing experts agree on that. This is because other methods like SEO and social media marketing campaigns are long, drawn out processes. Whilst they are definitely worth the time, it does mean you won’t be seeing results instantly. An organic build of a following and customer base is needed for other methods, especially social media marketing. It is free to get set up on Google Ads and then you can start your PPC campaign pretty much instantaneously and once set up and approved, will be showing on the first page of Google in no time.
Final Tips
The main takeaways from this blog is that firstly, you should definitely consider PPC as a genuine marketing strategy for your company. Secondly, these tips;
- Make sure you research keywords and bid on the relevant ones.
- Create engaging, informative and well SEO optimised landing pages.
- Don’t neglect SEO in place of PPC
Ultimately, PPC is a great form of digital marketing that every company should at least be thinking about taking advantage of. It is a very simple form of marketing and if done properly is actually relatively risk free. Some people get put off by the fact that they have to spend money and we understand that. However, sometimes you have to spend money to make money.
If you’re wanting some pointers on PPC marketing then Gloss are more than happy to give you a helping hand! Fill in the contact form to the right of the page here, and one of our PPC experts will get in touch with you asap, we look forward to speaking with you.
