We know that when you are used to using traditional marketing techniques, taking the big step into the digital world can often lead to a lot of confusion. But, the art of marketing, in principle, simply relies on one thing; interaction. Whether it’s a traditional advertisement or digital ad, the principle remains the same. But, setting up a digital ad can be a lot more complicated than a traditional one, such as getting a set of posters printed. This is why so many businesses choose to outsource their digital marketing efforts to agencies who also include pay-per-click management services as part of their offerings. For now, whether you read a little bit about pay-per-click advertising and want to learn more, or already know that you want to use it for your business but don’t know where to start then you have found the right place.
What is Pay-Per-Click?
Pay-per-click (PPC for short) is a model of advertising, whereby marketers pay a fee for each time their ads are clicked on. Put simply, it’s a way of paying for website visitors rather than waiting for them to come organically. A lot goes into creating a strategy and executing a successful PPC campaign from select the right keywords to setting up landing pages that are conversion rate optimised.
The Different Types of PPC Ads
The majority of PPC ads show up in Google, but there is more than just one type of ad.
Display Ads
Display ads can be used to reach consumers that are interested in your business. These ads appear on websites, and instead of being all-text ads, they typically include text and a photo.
Search Ads
Search ads are the most common PPC ads that you see in the search engine results pages. These ads appear at the top and bottom when a user makes a search query.
Remarketing Ads
Remarketing ads are a way of reengaging with consumers who have already expressed an interest in your business. For example, you retarget users who have visited your website but left without buying any of your products.
Ad Extensions
Ad extensions are additional links and information that you can display to enhance your ads. Some ad extensions are manual which you as a business, can control yourself. But, some search engines also generate ad extensions automatically. The biggest advantage of ad extensions is that they help improve the click-through rate because the ads display larger in size.
Keyword Research
Keyword research can be incredibly time-consuming but is the most important task that can make or break your PPC success. PPC campaigns are entirely built around keywords, and the most successful businesses are those that refine their keyword lists on a regular basis. If you only conduct keyword research once when you create your first PPC campaign, then you could be missing out on hundreds of valuable keywords that could help drive traffic to your website.
Negative Keywords
Negative keywords are a way of informing Google what you don’t want your ads to display for. If you add a set of negative keywords to your PPC campaign(s) you simply tell Google not to show your ad(s) for any search terms that contain the negative keywords. For example, if you are an online clothing store and you have set up a campaign that targets the keyword “clothing”, then your ad will show up for a range of broad match keywords like “clothing store” and “clothing shop”.
But, because you only operate online, anyone who clicks on your ad may be left disappointed, and you will have ended up wasting money. To stop this from happening, you need to include the word “shop” to your campaign and ensure you use the correct keyword, which is “online”.
Conclusion
In the world of PPC, you need to be constantly testing your campaigns and reviewing your keyword lists in order to be as successful as possible. Always make sure that you test all different strategies for your account. Of course, there are best practices in place because they are known to work for most businesses, but you will never know until your experiment and test with your own account.
