A Guide To PPC

Investing some of your marketing budgets into Pay-Per-Click (PPC) can be a great way of buying visits to your site and hopefully seeing more conversions, but as with any marketing strategy, it needs to be done right. If you are looking to get started in the world of PPC advertising, there are a few things you need to know before you begin.

Understanding PPC

Rules and algorithm changes mean that you have to constantly be checking over your PPC strategy and adjusting accordingly. It’s important to be aware before you get started, that you should never just set a campaign to run and hope for the best, PPC marketing, and any form of digital marketing for that matter, should be regularly managed and updated in order to optimise your chances of a greater ROI.

PPC works because it can bring faster results than that organic content and SEO, which can be time-consuming and take a while to build your rankings – though should still play an important part in your marketing strategy. PPC ads are a valuable tool for bringing a steady flow of traffic to your site and as you only pay for clicks, you are able to control exactly how much you spend on a daily and monthly basis, making it easier to manage your costs and calculate your ROI.

Stages Of A Campaign:

How Does It Work?

Cost-Per-Click (CPC) – Your CPC is quite simply how much it costs you when somebody clicks the link to your site. If your CPC is low, you have a good chance of a decent ROI, but this can be a competitive process, so you have to ensure you get your keywords right.

Keywords & Bidding – You need to conduct keyword research before you run your PPC campaign. Choosing the right keywords is essential in order to run a successful campaign, so be sure to use tools such as the AdWords built-in Keyword Planner and analysis of historical search data in order to work out the right keywords for you.

Once you know the keywords you want your ads to trigger for, you then need to get competitive! Be strategic with your bidding and keyword choices. Think about your budget and whether you are likely to outbid some of your larger competitors on very open keywords. Sometimes, when you’re just starting off, it might be best to use long-tail keywords – they might be more specific so often don’t rank at the top, but they do often suggest the user is ready to make a purchase.

For example, choosing ‘shoes’ as your keyword will mean you will have to have a large budget in order to outbid the larger retailers, but if you choose to bid on ‘red shoes size 5’, the chances are, your user knows exactly what they want and will buy when they find it.

Quality Score – Let’s say you and your competitors all bid high enough for that sought-after top position, this is where other factors will determine who actually makes it there, one of them being your quality score. Though we don’t know the exact details of how a quality score is determined, there are a few things that will be considered, including the quality of your ad, it’s CTR and its relevance to the user’s query. You should also ensure your landing page offers a smooth user experience as this could also hinder your quality score. You should be aiming for a minimum score of 5 out of 10, but a higher score means that you won’t have to pay as much to maintain the top position.

Ad Extensions – Something you should definitely not forget about is your ad extensions. These offer relevant information alongside your ad in the form of site links, callouts and more. They provide the user with more detailed information, allowing them to make more well-informed decisions. When used correctly and to their fullest potential, ad extensions will take up more screen real estate, meaning it can even be possible to take up a full mobile screen with just one text ad and all the relevant ad extensions.

The most important thing with PPC is to ensure you spend time optimising your strategy to get the right results. Businesses often find working with a digital agency that can manage their paid campaigns, provides them with more time to focus on other areas of the business. If you would like support with your PPC and digital marketing strategy, contact us here.