If you’re a business owner who is new to PPC, you may be wondering whether pay-per-click is a good investment of your time and money. With the potential to help your business reach its ambitious goals more quickly, we’re revealing the top 8 reasons to start a PPC campaign in our latest blog.
So, what is PPC?
PPC stands for pay-per-click which essentially refers to how you pay for your advertising – each time someone clicks through to your website, typically from a search engine, your account will be charged.
The two main players for PPC advertising are Google and Bing. You can place adverts on specific search engine pages to increase traffic to your website and promote product sales. By honing in on your target audience and choosing the right keywords you can easily build a successful campaign.
If set up and managed efficiently, PPC campaigns can be extremely beneficial for many different businesses and provide conversions swiftly and efficiently. Read on to discover the top 8 reasons why your business should implement a PPC campaign today.
1. Reach the right customers at the right time
The top advantage of using PPC campaigns is the ability to reach your customers when they are actively searching for your product or service. You can find and target multiple search terms that you want your adverts to show up for, putting you right in front of your customers or audience when they need you.
In fact, targeting options are always improving – in 2020 both Google and Bing refined their audience options so that businesses could reach a more relevant audience. Instead of targeting a relatively broad term such as ‘clothes’, businesses can reach people looking for more specific products, such as ‘white running shoes’ or ‘elasticated waist trousers’.
But what does this actually mean for your business? Essentially, you can make sure your adverts are targeting very specific products or services, meaning they appear in front of a captive audience who are more likely to make a purchase – a big win for your business!
2. Cost effective (most of the time)
So you may have already guessed it, but pay per click means you only pay-per-click. That’s right! No setup costs, no charges for impressions, no cut of your revenue – you just pay for the traffic that reaches your site.
With a well prepared (and regularly monitored) PPC campaign you could see a fantastic conversion rate which could perform much better than your organic listings and social ads. In some sectors in the US, PPC visitors generate almost 50% more conversions than organic visitors, which indicates people don’t mind receiving adverts when it’s a product or service that fulfils their needs.
As consumers often use search engines to look for a specific item or service, paid ads can be a highly effective way to increase the right consumer traffic to your site.
However (and we cannot stress this enough!), while PPC is an amazing marketing channel, it’s not always the right solution. In order to generate the return on investment you’re after, you’ll need to invest the time in your initial keyword research to find terms that suit your budget.
Note: PPC is effectively a bidding network, so the price is dictated by how much a company wants to pay for a position. The cost varies across different sectors and keywords, which can mean that for some industries PPC is not cost effective because the bidding costs are expensive – as an example, keywords related to solicitors in some areas can cost up to £15 per click!
3. You control your budget
As a business owner, you’ll be glad to know that you’re in complete control of your budget. You can set a daily maximum budget for your campaign which means you won’t have to worry about your costs spiralling out of control. The platforms are completely flexible and allow you to amend the budget, pause ads, or even run more than one campaign simultaneously. You are not tied into any contracts and there are no upfront fees.
The best approach is to closely compare your budget against the conversion rate and revenue generated. If you’re seeing a healthy return on ad spend, great. If not, then it’s probably time to go back to the drawing board.
With Google Ads, you can directly see the cost of your ads vs conversions which will help you work out how profitable your ad campaigns are.
Still worried about throwing money at PPC campaigns? We recommend always starting small and quickly assess if the campaign can be scaled up – and as long as the market is big enough, the campaign can be scaled up exponentially.
4. Maximise your return on investment (ROI)
Pay-per-click is one of the most accessible and accurate methods of advertising. It provides an easy to use platform which quickly and accurately measures your return on investment – in other words, you have constant access to your ongoing campaign results. This allows you to ascertain which keywords are working and which ones are not, and you can tailor your campaign accordingly to improve your ROI.
Compared with traditional marketing techniques which can be a pain to track, pay-per-click advertising can target key phrases so you can be confident that your adverts are only being seen by those actively searching for your services.
Sometimes it can be worth targeting less competitive terms. This may sound counterproductive, but where there is a suitable keyword opportunity it can help lower your cost-per-click and produce a higher conversion rate – it’s a win win situation! A great place to start when fine-tuning your keyword research in a competitive market is to find your niches.
5. Tailor to seasonal trends
The beauty of a PPC campaign is its flexibility. You are able to set what hours and days your adverts are shown and, importantly, how much is being spent. If your products are seasonal then you can increase your ad spend during busier holiday seasons when you know more people are searching for and buying products like yours.
6. Target different stages of the customer journey
As a business, you’re going to want to smoothly guide potential customers through the conversion journey, from awareness to a purchase or lead. One of the strengths of a well thought-through PPC campaign is the ability to leverage different campaign styles to attract users at different stages of the conversion funnel.
Let’s take a look at Google Ads for an example. You have Search Campaigns, which are the text based ads that show at the top and bottom of a search engine results page; Shopping Campaigns, which are the product based ads which display to users searching for a particular product; or Display Campaigns, which are image or video based ads that appear on third-party websites. Whether the user is making an initial informational search or is searching to make a direct purchase, you can make sure your business appears right in front of them, giving them exactly what they need at that moment in time.
Once you have enough data, you’ll be able to run a remarketing campaign. This enables you to target your ads to users who have already shown interest in your business – perhaps they added a product to their basket but didn’t checkout and you want to give them that extra nudge to come back. These types of campaigns can be extremely effective, as users are already a fair way down the conversion funnel.
If your current goal is to simply attract better brand visibility, PPC platforms such as Google Ads have handy elements such as the Partner Network. This places your advert on different websites rather than just the search engine results page, appearing in front of relevant users who are browsing the web. This is a great way to get your brand name out there without targeting a specific search term.
If used effectively, PPC campaigns can cover all stages of the customer buying journey, from initial awareness right through to conversion and retargeting.
7. PPC is accurately trackable
If you’re hitting each stage of the buying journey, you’re going to want to see how this impacts your conversions. You’ll be happy to know that PPC is completely measurable, meaning you can clearly see the performance of each ad and understand what makes your customers tick!
By tracking the performance of your ads, you can discern which ones offer the most conversions and which ones are underperforming. You can also try methods such as split tests to see which landing page your audience responds best to.
This level of detailed measurement and performance comparison isn’t always possible with SEO. Make use of the data available to you and you should be able to watch your campaigns grow from strength-to-strength.
8. Small businesses friendly
PPC is by no means just for the big brand names with tonnes of budget behind them. While you will need to pick and choose your keywords carefully to make sure you don’t fight a losing battle with the big players, PPC can offer a super quick entry into the market for smaller businesses.
Compared to SEO, results from PPC can be instantaneous. Choose the right keywords and your business could appear at the top of the SERPs in no time. PPC enables small companies to swiftly generate an online presence and compete when entering a market – even when that market is dominated by big players.
This is a massive benefit and one that so many small businesses thrive off. For example, if you search for a term like ‘reclaimed wood desk’, an abundance of retailers would get lost in the search results. With the Shopping and Search ads that we outlined earlier, smaller businesses are able to get themselves noticed and, ultimately, generate revenue.
Final thoughts
PPC is not always effective, however for many of our clients at Echo it provides measurable, reliable results that have generated millions of £’s worth of revenue year after year. Most businesses who dominate online will use PPC in some shape or form – whether that’s the sole driving force of their digital marketing strategy or in support of other channels, such as SEO, email marketing, and social media.
From our experience working in partnerships with businesses of all shapes and sizes, we know that PPC campaigns have the capacity to work very well as part of a multi-channel approach and usually have a positive impact on conversions. If time is invested into the initial research and set up, PPC can help businesses secure their ambitious goals one click at a time.
Have we convinced you that now is a great time to set up a PPC campaign, although you’re not sure where to begin? The Echo team are Google Partners and, as experts in the field of PPC, we love to help businesses set-up and manage successful marketing campaigns. If you have any questions or wish to find out more you can contact us today for a free consultation.
Contact Us Give Us A Call
