Pay Per Click – What is it?

Pay-per-click advertising is a common option for paid advertising. This refers to the paid slots you might see in Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and more. It allows almost instantaneous adverts to appear at the top of search engines in relation to your chosen keywords. This can be hugely beneficial for businesses looking to generate revenue more quickly than SEO or used in conjunction with an SEO campaign for short, medium and long-term results.

  1. Google Ads
    Google provides one of the biggest pay-per-click platforms on the web. By combining keywords, adverts and campaigns, it is possible to drive highly targeted traffic to your site. This can be in the form of search ads (shown in search results), shopping ads (shown as product placements in search results), display ads (shown in third-party banners as videos and banner ads), video ads on YouTube, ads within Google Maps and local search ads, along with App advertising within the google Play Store.
  2. LinkedIn
    When trying to gain visitors for services and especially getting in front of key decision-makers, LinkedIn can be a very effective medium. By constructing a very specific target audience and delivering a message in the form of an advert, it is possible to gain solid brand awareness and subsequently more qualified leads through a LinkedIn advertising campaign.
  3. Facebook & Instagram
    In a similar way to LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram allow you to target your advertisements through structured audiences, to ensure the right people see your ads. This can be more effective for local services, brand campaigns, product-specific campaigns and B2C advertising. The choice of the style of ads is also vast, allowing you to utilise video, carousels, lead forms and many more.
  4. Bing
    Similar to Google Ads, Bing advertising follows the pay-per-click model and due to demographics, can be more effective for an older audience. With cheaper click rates and less competition, Bing Ads can be very effective, especially when used in conjunction with Google Ads.

How Does PPC Work?

The typical process for a PPC campaign involves:

  1. Setup Fee – This is required for:
    • Researching keywords: You need the right keywords to be used to ensure your ads get shown by peope searching for your product or service
    • Setting up the campaigns and ad groups: Campaign structure is very important to ensure that you utilise elements such as location, budget, budget strategy, additional links/callouts and scalable structure
    • Building your ads: How good your ad is effects the cost you pay for each click and whether someone clicks on it
    • Adding negative keywords: Negative keywords are used where you don’t want your ad to show. For instance, you may wnat to show for ‘travel agents leicester’, but not ‘travel agents warwick’, therefore you might add ‘warwick’ as a negative keyword in a campaign targeting the Midlands for the term ‘travel agents’
    • Building or modifying landing pages: To get the most out of your budget, the page the visitor is sent to after clicking your ad is very important. Not only does it influence how much you pay for a click, it also massively impacts the likelihood of whether the visitor goes on to generate a lead or conversion
  2. Monthly Management – This is required for:
    • Analysing your account: Competitors come and go, demand for products and services fluctuates, some ads perform better than others, and some times of the day and day of the week have more conversions. This needs analysing regularly to keep your account optimised.
    • Keyword modifications: Some keywords will outperform others, we may need to add more keywords in or take some away. Some may cost too much per click and not be worth including. Keywords need to be assessed regularly in order to make sure your budget is working for you.
    • Budget adjustments: We might need to alter your budget to get more conversions from different ad groups or campaigns. When it is successful, it will be important to increase the budget to maximise sales and not miss out on any opportunities.
    • Ad copy: Continually updating ad copy is important to maximise the chance of visitors clicking on your ad, adding additional sales/offers, highlighting new services and ensuring all the information is kept up to date.

Pay-per-click is also great for combining with SEO. Due to it being relatively instant and fast at generating revenue, it often pays to reap the fast sales, while the medium to long term is covered by your SEO campaign. By doubling up, you also benefit from enhanced keyword exposure generated from your PPC campaign, which can then be used for keyword targeting in your SEO campaigns.

If you’re interested in discussing a PPC campaign, feel free to give me a call on 07935 225 792 or email andy@andrew-rigby.co.uk