PPC – Paid Per Click Campaigns

PPC, also called Pay Per Click, is an online advertising format that makes your business run instantly. PPC is great if you want to grow your online presence and find new customers quickly.

How does PPC work?
PPC is most commonly used in Google AdWords and Bing, but it also refers to social advertising like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn (for more information, see our post on what types of PPC are there). With PPC, you create your ad in the correct interface, set a budget, and determine where and when you want it to show.

Should PPC be in my marketing strategy?
Marketing strategies should incorporate a wide variety of tasks and techniques to achieve the best effect, and PPC is a great tool to add to your bow. We are very interested in content and inbound marketing, but this is a strategy that may take some time to develop. If you want to drive traffic to your site quickly or need a brand awareness boost, PPC is the best starting point.

PPC is ideal for businesses looking for a quick profit, to increase traffic and leads. Having statistics at your fingertips allows you to focus on the parts of your business that are driving sales to constantly improve your ROI, while keeping expenses low. Of course, it takes a creative flair for truly targeted ad copy and a keen eye for numbers to truly optimize it to its full potential.

As your SEO, inbound, and other marketing strategies start to attract more leads, you can start reducing your PPC spend accordingly, if you like. If your campaigns are generating important leads or customers, why not continue? As long as you get a return, there is no reason to ditch the channel, unless you want to reinvest that money elsewhere. Time will tell which approach works best for you.

So how do you get the most out of your PPC strategy?

Define your audience
Depending on the type of advertising you choose, you will have different options to create a relevant audience.

In Google or Bing ads, for example, you generally target keywords that people are already searching for, so you already know they are interested in what you offer. You need to research what people are searching for, what terms they use, what your competition is saying, and how large the audience your keywords relate to.

In social ads, you are more proactive than reactive. Instead of waiting for people to search for your content, submit it. So you want to spend some time thinking about your audience parameters. On Facebook, you can target people based on their interests, the pages they already follow, and demographic information, as well as life events they may have posted about, like getting engaged or buying a home.

On LinkedIn, there is a more professional approach, so you will be guided by things like job title, company size, professional affiliations, time in position, education, etc. You can even target people from specific companies.

Defining your audience is key to the success of social media and PPC advertising – you want to spend your budget on the audience that is most likely to convert.

Choose your format
Even within the different social platforms, there are still many different options to be made. Will you use a single image, an image carousel, a video ad? It’s always worth trying different options to see which one has the highest ROAS (which is the return on ad spend).

In Google Ads, you also have several options: text ads, display ads, responsive ads … If you sell something, Google Shopping ads are a great option to put your products front and center when someone is searching for them (or something similar to them).

Control your advertising
You are in full control of your PPC budget, so you only spend what you can afford. Plus, once you’ve set it all up, you can turn it off and on with the touch of a button. PPC is all about controlled advertising, which you can monitor and change as you wish. You can see all the statistics so you can determine what works and what doesn’t, to improve your return on investment.

You can create new ads at any time, so you can start testing different text, different images, and different ad styles to see what resonates best with your audience. Keep track of the changes you’ve made so you can accurately compare your data. Also try different audiences, as you may find something interesting.

Include retargeting

Another area to consider for PPC is the inclusion of redirect audiences; you can do it on all platforms. Basically, a cookie recognizes when someone has visited your website and shows you more advertisements. You’ve probably seen this happen – you were looking at a device on a website and it seems to show up everywhere for the next few days.

Retargeting is a great way to re-engage people who might have previously been interested in something, but got distracted or forgot. It’s a quick reminder that keeps them coming back and hopefully completing the conversion.