The first place that many people go to search for information about a product, service or brand is an online search. Probably Google.
From the convenience of our computers or mobile phones, we have access to all the information we will need. If a business wants customers to find them online, they must optimise their presence on these search engines so customers find them before their competitors.
There are two ways to do this, SEO and Pay per click ads.
This blog explores how Pay-per-click advertising works and gives recommendations on how a business can optimise their strategy.
What is Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising?
Pay-per-click advertising is a form of digital marketing, originally developed as a method of creating revenue for search engines. Along with organic (non-paid) search results, paid ads make up a second list of results.
Ads appear alongside the organic (non-paid) results albania cell phone database on a search engine results page (SERP), companies paying to their links displayed in this sponsored section.
You can think of it like buying visits to your site instead of earning those visits organically through search engine optimisation (SEO). As the name suggests, businesses running the PPC ads are only charged when a user clicks on their ad.
There numerous PPC ads, the most common being search engine advertising, as explained above. Google ads are by far the most popular, Bing coming in a distant second. Google ads are the main subject of this article.
Other types of PPC advertising include display advertising (banner ads) and remarketing where people see an ad because they previously interacted with your company. With display ads, the owner of a webpage allows businesses to advertise on their website.
Also referred to as contextual advertising, keywords in the content of the webpage trigger what ads visitors are shown.
Businesses running ads are in an ongoing competition for popular keywords — ads are subjected to an ‘Ad Auction’. Based on competition, advertisers bid on certain keywords for ad placement and the search engine uses algorithmic calculations to determine which ads are displayed and in what order.
As well as the cost-per-click bid (the highest amount an advertiser is willing to spend), the other factor that determines the ad rank is the Quality Score assigned by Google. This will be discussed further later.
“As PPC suggests, advertisers also have to pay for every click they receive via that sponsored link.” (Kritzinger & Weideman, 2013)
The Benefits of PPC
Because businesses are only charged when a potential customer clicks on their ad, it is a pretty effective form of advertising. Imagine how many people would drive past a billboard and see it, but never act. Results can be more objectively measured.
Businesses also benefit by reaching potential customers at a price that fits the budget they set for the campaign.
There are far fewer PPC advertisements on a search result page than the organic results, so businesses better chance of being seen by internet searchers. It is also extremely hard to rank in the first few results organically — usually, it is a large investment in SEO over a period, that most businesses do not have the expertise to do themselves.
It is much easier to set up a Google ad and rank — if you have the budget for it. Users of PPC ads choose the geographic areas they want their ads to be shown in, so it is a powerful way to focus your advertising to locations you are trying to target.
There are three beneficiaries with PPC ads. First, the website or search engine displaying the ads get paid for the advertising space, the advertiser who attracts customers and the customer who is provided with relevant results for their search query. Keywords ensure the ad should be just as relevant as the organic results.
“Google makes 99% of its profit through the PPC model of Internet advertising.” (Kapoor, Dwivedi, & Piercy, 2016)
Creating a PPC Campaign
First, create logically organized Ad Groups. An ad group has one or more ads sharing similar target audiences — it organises ads by theme. Next, research, select and organise closely related keywords into these Ad Groups. Then, ads are created for these ad groups. Each Ad Group should consist of a minimum of two ad variations.
A campaign has one or more ad groups. Ad groups should be as specific as possible, to ensure they are relevant to customers
Campaigns need a start and finish date. Before getting started, work out your daily budget, based on the campaign length. Sometimes it can spill over budget slightly, so allow for around a 10% contingency — tell Google your budget is 10% less than it is, just in case.
Each keyword has an average cost per click depending on the competition, so based on your overall budget, calculate how much you to spend on your chosen keywor