Marketers, can we be genuine with each other for a second? On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you comprehend the world of paid advertising? Are you sure you can launch and maintain a thriving PPC strategy?
Although 55% of small businesses in the U.S. do some state of online advertising, pay-per-click (PPC) is still a vision that eludes many of us. As a marketer, PPC is a talent that you should have in your tool belt — or at least have a fundamental understanding of.
What is PPC?
Pay-per-click, or PPC, is a form of advertising that permits you to pay a fee to maintain your website on the search engine result page (SERP) when someone types in specific keywords or phrases to the search engine. The SERP will show the ads you create to direct visitors to your site, and the cost you pay is based on whether people click your ad.
When done correctly, PPC can earn you quality leads. If you can make a seamless user journey (which you’ll learn how to do later in this piece), it could mean a huge ROI for your PPC efforts.
Pay-per-click advertising is most familiar in search engine results pages, like Google or Bing, but is also utilized on social channels (although CPM is more common).
How does pay-per-click marketing work?
Pay-per-click marketing is like a digital auction house. You bid on keywords relevant to your business. When people explore those keywords, your ad has an opportunity to appear in their search results. If they click on your ad, you pay the bid payment.
It’s a quick method to get to the top of search results, but it’s not only about bidding high. PPC also involves crafting ads that resound. The better your ad aligns with the searcher’s goal, the more likely they are to click, and the higher your profits from the PPC campaign.
While pay-per-click marketing differs from platform to platform, here’s what it typically looks like:
- Express targeting.
- Fix your budget and bidding.
- Build creatives and copy for your ad.
- Establish and measure the campaign’s success.
- Set PPC campaign objectives and plans.
- Pick a campaign type.
Benefits of PPC.
- You can efficiently control and test PPC ads.
- PPC ads allow you to target your ideal clients.
- Algorithm changes have little effect on PPC ads.
- PPC ads help you rank even with low domain ratings.
- Data from PPC ads can improve your SEO technique.
- PPC ads are cost-effective.
- PPC ads produce fast results
Managing a PPC campaign
Keyword research for PPC campaigns
Keywords are the most important element of any PPC campaign, regardless of the platform you are operating. Without the right keywords, your ideal target audience will never come across your ads. That is why it is so necessary to conduct keyword research before initiating an ad campaign.
Your keywords should always be relevant to your line of product, business, or niche. You can find the ideal keywords for your campaigns by utilizing one of the innumerable keyword research tools on the market. There are keyword research tools for all allocations, and whilst the free options show less detail than their paid competitors, they are still worth utilizing if you cannot yet use a paid alternative.
By utilizing keyword research tools, you can find the most relevant keywords for your place of business. The only condition is that you provide a more broad term related to your business or product. With that, the tools then see the top-ranking terms related to your general term, as well as high-ranking competitors.
If you obtain your keyword research right, your PPC campaign will take off. Your target audience will enter search questions, and your ad will be right there when they do.
You should also keep in mind that a keyword’s influence can vary over time, so review your keywords and their performance regularly. If a keyword is commanding you a lot of money, and delivering little reward it is probably worth dropping it completely. If it is thriving but only at certain times of the year, attempt to spot the pattern and use that to your benefit when setting your keyword bids.
Negative keywords
Utilizing your budget effectively is another crucial part of any PPC campaign. Negative keywords can go a long method to helping you manage that. Hiring PPC specialists for SaaS businesses can help guarantee that your campaigns are optimized for maximum return on investment.
By adding negative keywords to your campaign, you can guarantee that your ads are not displaying irrelevant search questions. This enables you to reduce the bounce rate from users who click on your advertisements and immediately disregard them, as they are not relevant to their initial search. It will also assist in giving you more precise analytics results for future campaigns, as you won’t have excess irrelevant traffic delivering impressions and hampering your click-through rate.
It can sometimes be difficult to identify what terms you should list as negative keywords. Specifically when in most cases, the terms listed in your analytics outcomes will be similar to those you desire to rank for. However, you can get around this by comparing other results for those terms or putting yourself in your customer’s shoes. Should a little different variant show when you search a term, it may be perfect to add it to the negative keywords list.
One instance of this is a term such as ‘women’s blue shirt’ which would trigger under the question ‘blue shirt’. However, if you are selling a blue shirt for men, this keyword would be a budget assassin. Therefore, it should be added to the negative keyword checklist.
Negative keywords will continue to grow, so remember to stay on top of your list, and continually update!
Campaigns and ad groups
Creating use of campaigns and ad groups can assist in taking your PPC advertising to the next level.
Campaigns permit you to decide on the kind of PPC advertising you are going to operate. This permits you to better define your plans before starting your advertising. It also guarantees that the algorithm for whichever platform you are operating can help to offer you the best possible results. If you run a campaign that strives to generate conversions, then the algorithm will prioritize, your click-through rate, as opposed to impressions.
By running separate campaigns for different objectives, you guarantee that each of your advertising goals is met, without them reaching the way one another. This helps you to get the best possible outcomes, and can also provide you with clearer metric results to explore when creating future campaigns.
Ad groups can also help in a similar regard. By utilizing ad groups, you can split your advertisements into collectives with similar aims. For instance, if you have an ad designed to advertise blue shorts, and another planned to advertise summer clothing, they may be perfect to use in the same ad group. On the other hand, an ad for winter hats would belong in a separate ad group.
By separating ads into various groups, you generate a more rounded campaign. This then permits you to create excellent ad copy and landing pages, especially for one ad group. By placing this into practice, you should be able to enhance your click-through rate and your quality score (or equivalent).
Another advantage of separating your ad groups is the freedom it delivers in terms of budgeting. Without ad groups, it would be one budget for all ads. This often doesn’t function, as some products are more beneficial than others, as well as certain ads are more useful than others. Therefore, being capable of setting budgets to suit the triumph of certain ads, products, and pages is far more financially rewarding.
Audience segmentation
Another useful method to manage and get the most from your PPC campaigns is to segment by the audience. This can be done by targeting distinctive groups. There are four main methods to segment the audience when targeting PPC advertising. They are:
Device-based targeting
Device-based targeting can be aimed especially at mobile and tablet users, or desktop/laptop users. This kind of targeting allows you to segment audiences based on the kind of device they mostly use. For instance, you could decide to target people who use a mobile device to purchase online. You could also utilize this targeting for specific campaigns and landing pages. This would help to guarantee that any mobile-optimized content is shown to mobile users, and so on.
Location-based targeting
Location-based targeting seeks to target users in a precise geographic location. This permits advertisers to regionalize their advertising campaigns, showing specific ad content to specific areas. This can assist ad performance, as more localized content is more comfortable for users to recognize with. Contrastingly, advertisers can also create nationwide campaigns if they like to convey a more generic message.
Location-based targeting is also perfect for avoiding problems such as language barriers. With location-based targeting, advertisements in English could potentially be shown to non-English speakers living elsewhere in the globe. And although this may appear like an extreme instance, it can be helpful in areas like tech, when modern words are integrated into different languages. On a smaller scale, this can also be helpful when it comes to advertising locally, as you can use idioms familiar to the area to create a sense of inclusivity, without bothering about the ad showing up to people who wouldn’t understand it.
Last but not minor, location-based targeting can also be a great budget saver for smaller businesses. If you only like to advertise to people in a very tiny catchment area, this kind of targeting can be very helpful in helping you avoid budget drainers outside your catchment zone.
Demographic-based targeting
Demographic-based targeting is arguably the most generally used form of the four. This way of audience segmentation lets you target users based on their features, qualities, and socio-economic background.
When operating demographics-based targeting, you will be capable of selecting from multiple parameters to refine the audience you hope to reach. These parameters vary depending on the platform you are operating for your PPC campaign. Facebook (and Instagram which is Facebook-owned) has by far the most extensive selection of demographic parameters to select from.
By operating demographics-based targeting in your PPC campaigns, you can limit your audience to a very specific group or groups of people. Therefore, getting more from your budget due to the relevance of the ads to the users they reach. An instance of this could be only advertising football shirts to men who have indicated an interest in sport and are between the ages of 18-40
Some general parameters used in demographics-based targeting include:
- household income
- parental status
- employment status
- relationship status
- language spoken
- education
- interests
- age
- gender
- ethnicity
- political affinity.
Time-based targeting
Time-based targeting is desired to target users at a certain time of day, or day of the week. It is reasonable when you know the times/days your advertising is at its most useful, as you can set your ads to show during that period. This permits you to get as much value as possible from your ad budget.
Another useful use for time-based targeting is when you are running campaigns across the world. Different time zones can often tell one campaign cannot cover all, as it will offer during the day in one nation, and the night in another. However, by utilizing time-based targeting, you can show your ads at the ideal times in all locations.
PPC tools and software
PPC ads are favorably detailed and nuanced beasts. This indicates they need a lot of monitoring, researching, and tracking. More than any person can do. Thankfully, there are a bunch of PPC tools to manage our business requirements. Here are some of the best PPC software tools on the market:
- Ahrefs
- Google Keyword Planner
- HubSpot
- Adzooma
- Google Ads Editor
- Bing Ads editor
- Google Trends
- Wordstream
- Facebook Ads manager
- Ad Espresso
- Hootsuite
- Serpstat
A few quick causes why these tools are so useful:
- For tracking
- For analysis and reporting
- For multi-platform and general management.
- For scheduling
Conclusion
And there you have it! A complete guide on pay-per-click marketing that will assist you get begun on your PPC journey. Use these recommendations and best practices to choose the right platform and get the most ROI for your business.