Pay Per Click (PPC)
PPC is a digital marketing path that businesses have been using to drive search engine traffic and conversions. Maybe you're looking for ways to get your first traffic and sales for a new business, or you're thinking about expanding your brand's online presence. PPC can be a wonderful way to market your business as well as reach new customers, but it can be difficult to understand at first for those who are new to the channel. In this guide, we will explain what PPC is, how it works, how you can use it to drive success for your business, and how different platforms work.
What is PPC?
Pay-per-click (PPC) is a form of online marketing in which advertisers pay a fee every time one of their advertisements is clicked. Simple terms, PPC in digital marketing is the strategy in which you only pay for advertising when your ad is clicked on. It is essentially a method of 'buying' visits to your website in addition to driving organic website traffic.
Search engine advertising, which also allows advertisers to pay for ad placement in a search engine's sponsored links, is one of the most popular types of PPC. Whenever anyone searches for a keyword related to their business offering, this works. What we do best, Google Shopping, is an example of how PPC advertising can be used to increase both visibility and profitability.
Benefits of PPC Advertising
Receive Immediate Results
Unlike free content or organic search strategies, PPC advertising produces results almost immediately. You'll instantly reach huge numbers of people, the majority of whom are interested in your services or products. On a daily basis, roughly one-third of online customers use the internet to search for local businesses. That's a large amount of potential traffic, especially if your link appears noticeably at the top of relevant internet search results.
Contribute to Increased Website Traffic
PPC advertising not only produces quick results, but it also rapidly increases traffic to your site as a whole. Paid ads do not directly affect your ranking, but they do increase the total number of clicks to your website. This increase in user activity on your site (caused by your paid ads) could really contribute to higher organic rankings over time.
Grow Even after Algorithm Changes
Everyone and their friend is competing for the prestigious position zero on Google. You create the ideal content and use the most effective SEO strategies, then keep an eye out for any Google algorithm updates that may affect your chances of ranking highly. If an algorithm is changed significantly, your ranking may suffer. PPC is less risky. You pay for clicks and have them appear in Google's search results.
Get a High Return on Your Investment
Most brands do not buy PPC ads only to improve their reputation or to outperform their competitors. They purchase the ads in order to encourage their potential customers to convert into actual customers. In 2020, up to 74% of brands reported that PPC was a significant revenue source as well as a significant portion of their sales. PPC ads are a guaranteed way for many brands to jumpstart some conversions and they might do the same for you.
Improve Brand Recognition
We've already discussed the importance of brand recognition in terms of overall revenue success. Don't forget that you don't just want people to recognise your brand online. The more frequently you appear in their search results alongside competitors they already know, the more likely it is that people will walk into your physical locations as well as make offline purchases. PPC can ensure that your brand name appears in the right places, resulting in a more consistent, present online reputation that drives sales on our website and also in physical stores.
Real-Time Customer Targeting
The advertisements do not appear at the best possible time. Using PPC advertising tools, you can, however, schedule your campaigns to be delivered at specific times, locations, and demographics. Yes, you can track the outcomes of content marketing and SEO strategies as well. However, it is not always possible to make changes to a blog post, web page copy, as well as link scheme in a matter of minutes. These strategies take time to develop, but a PPC campaign could be modified almost instantly.
PPC Platforms
A pay-per-click (PPC) platform is a type of digital advertising platform that charges advertisers each time a user clicks on their ad. PPC ads appear in web search results as well as on various websites and apps through different PPC models. Planet Oasis, a company founded in 1996, invented the PPC advertising model. Planet Oasis was a search engine that existed before Google.
Advertisers all over the world use these platforms to increase brand awareness, target high-intent marketplaces across the web, and boost sales.
Google AdWords (or Google Ads)
Google Ads is one of the most well-known and widely used advertising platforms. The majority of advertisers who have PPC strategies in place are including it in their platform mix. Google Ads is a great higher-intent platform that is suitable for both new and experienced businesses. PPC in google ads contributes to higher click-through rates (CTR) and conversion rates for businesses that use the keyword advertising model.
Google Ads offers three basic ad formats: search ads, display ads, and video ads.
Facebook Ads (or Meta)
When Facebook first launched in 2004, most social media users were still experimenting with platforms like Myspace. Facebook recently changed the name to Meta. Facebook Ads is just a platform that allows you to target specific audiences. Rather than targeting keywords (as you would with Google Ads), you target audiences of people according to their interests, demographics, behaviours, or actions on your website.
All Facebook Ads include visual mediums, which can be combined with primary text, a headline, a description, as well as a call-to-action button.
Instagram Ads (part of Facebook Ads)
Surprisingly, Instagram Ads is not a separate advertising platform. Instagram advertising placements are included in Facebook Ads because Instagram is owned by Facebook. If you only want to advertise on Instagram in Facebook Ads, create an ad set with manual placements but also select only Instagram-related placements.
Types of Ads available here are:
- Image ads
- Video ads
- Carousel ads
- Story ads (IG stories)
- Reel ads (IG reels)
- Shop ads (IG shops)
Microsoft Ads (formerly Bing Ads)
Many advertisers who already use Google Ads choose to include Microsoft Ads in their platform mix as they can conveniently import Google Ads campaigns into their Microsoft Ads account as well as start running them immediately. In many ways, the Microsoft Ads interface mirrors the Google Ads interface, making campaign imports between the platforms is not a big problem. Microsoft Ads displays paid search ads on a variety of search engines, including Bing, AOL, Yahoo!, and MSN.
Microsoft Ads display paid search ads along with display (image) ads, much like they do on Google search results or partner sites.
LinkedIn Ads
LinkedIn Ads, a good platform for B2B businesses. This isn't to say that other types of businesses can't succeed on LinkedIn; however, due to its targeting options as well as typical user base, B2B advertising generally performs better here. LinkedIn is a business-focused social networking site. Users promote the company for which they work and connect with other users from the same and other companies.
Types of ads available:
- Single image ads
- Video ads
- Carousel ads
- Event ads
- Conversation ads
- Message ads
- Lead gen form ads
- Text ads
- Spotlight ads
- Follower ads
Twitter Ads
You can use Twitter Ads to create targeted ad campaigns to increase your brand's following or even drive more conversion traffic. In essence, your ad is a tweet that you're paying to distribute to a larger user base with a campaign goal in mind. Twitter Ads is one of the ad platforms that was launched later.
Types of ads available:
- image ads
- video ads
- carousel ads
- moment ads
- text ads
Youtube Ads
We've all sat through advertisements at the start of a YouTube video we're trying to watch. If you decide that video advertising is the next step for you and want your ads to appear on YouTube, they will appear within YouTube videos, in YouTube search results, and on Google video partner websites. YouTube ad campaigns today are hosted within Google Ads, making testing or transitioning to video advertising simple if you already have Google Ads running.
Types of ads available:
- in-stream ads (skippable)
- in-stream ads (non-skippable)
- bumper ads
- masthead ads
- outstream ads
- in-feed video ads (formerly discovery ads)
Types of PPC Ads
Following is the list of the best PPC platforms available which can help you grow your business through PPC advertising.
Search Ads
A paid search ad is the most common type of PPC ad. This is the type of ad that most advertisers start with when experimenting with PPC advertising. Advertisers choose keywords for which they would like their advertisements to appear. They then tell Google Ads what ad copy they want to appear when a user searches for their keyword and how much they are willing to pay if their ad is clicked.
Display Ads
Display advertising is a type of paid advertising in which you promote your service or product to people who are browsing the internet. Display advertising is different from PPC search advertising in that your ad may appear in front of users who are actively searching for your product or service with a Search campaign. Display advertising displays advertisements to users who have expressed an interest in your service or product.
Remarketing Ads
A remarketing campaign targets people who have previously visited your website with advertisements. Since the user has already expressed an interest in your company, a remarketing campaign is a highly profitable PPC campaign.
Video Ads
Video advertising is becoming an increasingly important component of digital marketing. 85% of companies use video in their marketing efforts. Online videos are expected to account for more than 84% of all consumer traffic by 2022.
Shopping Ads
A Shopping campaign, like a Search campaign, allows ads to appear on search engines. Unlike a Search campaign, however, Shopping ads include a picture of the product being sold, as well as the price, title, and description of the product. E-commerce businesses that sell products rather than services can create a Shopping campaign.
Paid Social Ads
Paid social advertising involves displaying advertisements to users while they are exploring a social media website. Many paid social platforms provide PPC advertising services. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Quora are a few examples. Advertisers who want to do Instagram PPC can do so easily through the Facebook PPC advertising section.