PPC, also known as pay-per-click or Paid Search is a digital marketing strategy that allows you to reach your customers when they’re searching online for products or services. PPC provides a huge range of benefits for your business so we’re going to take a look at just some of them in this guide. 

What is PPC advertising?

PPC is a form of advertising that allows you to pay a small fee whenever someone clicks on your ads. You only pay for the clicks generated by your ads and you are provided with full control over your budget and the performance of your ads.

The most popular PPC advertising platforms include Google Ads, Microsoft Ads and Facebook Ads. However, Google Ads is by far the most used platform and controls around 75% of search share. 

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Google Advertising is made up of different types of ad, including:

• Search network - these are text based ads that are displayed in the search results such as sponsored links and Shopping ads. 
• Display network - these are image based ads which are displayed on the websites your audience visits.
• Video - these are video based ads which appear before, during or after YouTube videos. 

What are the benefits of PPC? 

Depending on your business, PPC can offer a huge range of benefits when added to your overall digital marketing strategy. 

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1. Helps with business goals 

PPC can align with and help you to achieve a number of your business goals. Whether you’re looking to create brand awareness or generate more sales, you can drive a range of conversions with PPC. 

PPC is key across many different parts of the sales funnel and your customer’s journey to purchase. From awareness to becoming a customer, Paid Search campaigns can help you to drive content downloads, newsletter sign ups or app downloads. Whatever your goals, there’s a PPC strategy that can help. 

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2. Fully measurable and trackable

The Google Ads platform makes your campaigns extremely easy to track and measure so you can see what’s working and what isn’t and tweak your strategy accordingly. You’ll be able to see details such as impressions, clicks and conversions to find out more about how your budget is performing and your return on investment. 

For other digital marketing strategies such as SEO (search engine optimisation) these statistics are not as readily available for you to see and it can be harder to determine the attribution of your budget to direct results. When you drive PPC traffic to your website, you can track individual landing pages and track conversions using Google Analytics so you can see exactly what your spend was and the results driven. 

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3. Immediate results 

Paid search allows you to get your campaigns up and running quickly and see results almost as soon as you turn your ads on. Other strategies such as SEO take much more time and resource to get to the same positioning that Google Ads can offer within minutes. 

PPC allows you to drive results instantly. However, it should be used alongside other strategies as it’s a short term tactic that allows you to pay to appear at the top of the SERPs (search engine results pages). It can work well while you take the time to get your SEO strategy working properly. 

Remember that once you turn the budget off for PPC campaigns, the results will stop. With SEO, the results are much more long lasting, making it a longer term strategy. 

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4. Full control 

Paid search provides you with full control over the options and targeting you use to find and engage with your potential customers. From the keywords you choose to where you choose to place your ad and the targeting you choose, you can control every element of your ads to make sure they’re seen by the right people in the right places. You set your budgets and the amount you’re willing to bid on each keyword. 

If you see good results from your campaigns, you can scale your budget up to increase the traffic and conversions being driven. On the other hand, if you find that your campaigns are not working, you can pull the budget back so you’re not wasting spend until you can find something that works. It can be hard to turn other digital marketing strategies on and off in the same way. 

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5. Works alongside other digital marketing channels 

PPC complements a range of other digital marketing channels and can help you build an audience across a range of strategies. 

Your content marketing strategy can take a huge amount of time and effort and is used to support the customer across their entire journey. Google Ads can help you to drive visitors to this content and improve ROI for your content marketing strategy. 

In addition, PPC and SEO work extremely well together as the keywords and audience you target are often the same. You’re targeting the people using Google to find more information on or buy particular products and services so investing in both can help you to capitalise on both types of traffic. 

The data provided by Google Ads, such as impressions, clicks and conversion can provide you with insights into which keywords work best for your business and you can use this to fuel your SEO strategy more effectively. 

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6. Range of targeting options 

Google Ads provides a huge range of targeting options for your campaigns. You can choose to target keywords through text ads to customers in specific locations with specific interests or you can target ads through remarketing based on past behaviours or use the display network to reach a wide range of customers. 

We recommend testing your ads and trying out a range of different types of ads and their targeting capabilities to learn more about how PPC will work best for your business and allow you to get the most from your budget. 

Paid search will also show you which ads and targeting options work best so you can understand how much you’re likely to pay for cost per click and cost per acquisition to find the best strategy to fit your budget. 

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7. Drive warm leads for your business 

PPC allows you to reach the right people at the exact time they’re actively searching for your products and services. You will only pay every time someone clicks on one of your ads and your ads will be put in front of searchers who are already interested in your business. 

These leads are much warmer than the leads you find through other activities which helps to increase the chances of conversion once they land on your website. 

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8. Utilise retargeting

Retargeting allows you to show ads to customers who have already interacted with your brand to try and bring them back to your website in order to convert. 

Retargeting works well because they target someone who is already interested in what you have to sell but they might need more time to decide. In fact, website visitors who are retargeted are more likely to convert by 43%. 

By keeping your product at the front of potential customer’s minds, you can increase the chances of converting them into paying customers. Retargeting also allows you to show relevant products ads to remind users of what they’re missing. 

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9. Make constant improvements 

PPC campaigns are not just something you turn on and leave to run. You should be constantly analysing and optimising your campaigns based on the results being driven to get the most from your budget. 

The more your campaigns are optimised, the better the results will be, which can help to maximise your budget, as well as clicks and conversions. 

To learn more about how PPC could help your business, please sign up to our newsletter. 

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