The Beginner's Guide to PPC Marketing

Pay-per-click advertising or PPC Marketing is one of many digital marketing services that businesses and online marketing agencies leverage to expand digital reach, increase brand awareness, and improve lead generation. With PPC ads, you pay for each click that takes a visitor to your website or landing page. This type of paid advertising allows ad managers to easily track performance and manage costs, making it a favourite among new businesses and startups. 

Benefits of PPC Marketing For Small Businesses

Like all digital marketing, PPC strategies aim to get your brand in front of people interested in your offerings. But unlike SEO or traditional marketing, you are getting in front of people actively seeking out products or services like yours via social networks and search engines such as Google, Bing, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin etc. For businesses looking for a quick path to sales and easy cost control, PPC Marketing is a great place to start. 

Reach: When optimized by a specialist, a PPC campaign is capable of reaching a targeted and large audience showing interest in your offerings. While you only pay for the visits from users who click on your ads, you simultaneously increase your brand awareness and recognition by just appearing on relevant searches and websites, resulting in return visitors for your business.

Cost-Control: PPC Marketing offers great cost management options, allowing you to calculate your return on investment upfront based on the estimated cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and the potential leads to be won. Additionally, when you run a paid advertising campaign, you have the option to turn ads on and off whenever you need. So you can make decisions based on how ads perform and how costs are accruing. You can work with a digital marketing specialist for better insight on when to pause your PPC ads.

Measurable: PPC marketing campaigns are highly measurable and easily trackable, so you can view and analyze performance in terms of impressions, clicks, conversions, ad spend, and more. Using relevant ad performance data, you can confidently scale your ads and manage your budget to maximize lead capture without overspending.

Consumer Insights: As you extend your PPC Marketing campaigns and create more ads, you leverage data related to search patterns, consumer interests, locations, age, and gender to build buyer persona profiles that allow you to personalize future ads for even more success. These buyer personas and consumer insights can be used to enhance the results of other digital marketing services such as search engine optimization, social media marketing, and content marketing strategies for improved results.

Faster Results: If you want more leads or sales from your website in the next month or so, no other digital marketing strategies are as quick and effective as PPC advertising. After setting up your PPC campaign, you can usually expect to receive qualified leads or sales within a few days.

What Makes A Good PPC Marketing Campaign 

Many factors contribute to a successful PPC campaign. While it's most effective to work with a paid advertising agency with Google certifications, a complete portfolio of successful campaigns, years of industry experience, and knowledge of your ideal market., you can get started with these steps.

Keyword Research: Targeting the right keywords can make or break your PPC strategy. To choose the right keywords, you need to understand the intent of the users' search. The two most popular types of searches are informational and commercial. When running pay-per-click campaigns, you want to focus on commercial keywords (money-making searches).

Volume: When setting up your PPC marketing campaign, you need to understand the search volumes of your keywords and search phrases. Search Volume is often misunderstood, but it is crucial for effective paid advertising. With the help of an experienced PPC manager who can ensure your PPC ads target the right keywords and users and perform as well as possible. 

Budget: The great thing about PPC marketing is that you can set your budget, but to maximize the output of your ads, you need to understand the cost-per-click (CPC). CPC is determined by the perceived value of a keyword and its quality score. The average CPC is around $2.30 for search ads and $0.60 for display ads. If you want to reduce your CPC, you can do so by improving your quality score. Using the proper formula, a digital marketing agency can help set the appropriate budget for your PPC ads to convert qualified leads into sales and maximize your profit margin.

Quality Score: Quality score is a complex metric to understand. It's best to contact your local digital marketing agency. However, at a high level, the quality score measures the likelihood of someone clicking on your ad, the relevance of the search query in relation to the ad itself, and the relevance of the web page or landing page connected to the ad. Quality scores are excellent for ad managers looking to assess the effectiveness of their ad and penalize those looking to manipulate the system as a low-quality score leads to a high CPC. 

Landing Page Quality: The landing page is where conversions happen. Hence it should be high quality and strategically designed. While it is not built into the ad itself, it is a critical element of a high-converting PPC campaign. From the content to the layout and call to action, each landing page component is strategic. Consider that your content acts in place of a salesperson and should feature all the selling qualities of your service or product offering. 

If you are struggling to increase your leads and sales, Xi Digital can help. From creating effective PPC ads and designing well-converting landing pages to monitoring your campaign success and bringing you more sales. We are an all-encompassing digital marketing agency that can help you grow your business and achieve new levels of success. 

We have had several clients who wanted to start smaller before committing to our full range of digital marketing services to grow their bottom line using just PPC marketing. Check out our case studies here. 

Get in touch with us today to learn more about our PPC marketing service and other digital marketing services.