Paid Advertising – What is it and What are the Benefits?
If you are a business owner, it’s likely that paid advertising is a familiar concept to you. Whether you have paid for printed flyers or boosted a post on Facebook, the chances are you have paid for some form of advertising before.
However, there is another dimension to paid advertising that you may not know about, or perhaps you know about it but don’t fully understand it.
This is called pay per click advertising, Google PPC Marketing (Or PPC Advertising) and this article will tell you everything you need to know about it and why you should use it as part of your marketing strategies.
What is Pay Per Click Advertising?
Pay per click, also known as Google Ads, Google Adwords or PPC is a form of internet marketing where advertisers pay a fee every time someone clicks on one of their adverts.
This time-efficient, budget friendly model allows you to put your business in front of potential customers who are already searching for what you while you put time and effort into building your following organically.
Both paid and unpaid marketing strategies are important when it comes to integrated marketing efforts; you should definitely be using both models to market your business.
How Does Pay Per Click Marketing Work?
There are three main principles of pay per click advertising – keywords and phrases, bidding and ad rank.
Each one of these principles plays a key role in the success of the campaign and understanding these roles will ensure you get the most out of your campaign.
Keywords and Phrases
When individuals are searching for something online, they use specific keywords or phrases that, to put it simply, explain to search engines what they are looking for.
Selecting the right keywords for your campaign will ensure that your advert lands in front of your prospects.
Therefore, keyword research is arguably the most important step in the process of setting up a paid campaign. Guessing is not going to get you very far, so make sure to take the time and put in the effort to find which keywords are relevant and are actually being used.
Bidding
Bidding takes place in an auction; an auction is made up of a group of people who are competing for a product and (you guessed it) the highest bidder wins.
This exact concept applies to the bidding principle of pay per click advertising, except you will be bidding against your industry competitors for the same keywords and the highest bidder doesn’t always win.
Ad Rank
Google can be quite picky – well, let’s just say that Google knows what it wants and will seldom deviate.
So, Google assigns each advert an ad rank which is ultimately a metric that is used to determine the order in which the paid ads will be displayed on the search engine results page (SERP).
Your ad rank will play a crucial role in the visibility of your advert; the higher your ad rank, the more likely it will appear at the top of the SERP.
Google determines your ad rank by considering the following:
- The quality of your advert and landing page
- The ad rank thresholds
- Ad extensions and other ad formats
- Your bidding amounts
- Search context:
- The time of search
- The query itself
- User signals such as location and device
- Other adverts and search results displayed on the page
Benefits of Paid Advertising
Qualified Lead Generation
Paid advertising allows you to strategically target consumers who have already expressed interest in your brand (or similar brands).
For this reason, PPC advertising can help you generate more relevant leads and the traffic you drive to your site from these ads is more qualified.
A qualified lead is a consumer who is most likely to turn into a paying customer of yours based on information they have willingly provided.
Quick Results
Pay-per-click marketing strategies have the potential to bring fast traffic to your website and may result in immediate results or return on investment.
This is a useful, complimentary tactic to use alongside your organic SEO strategies which usually take some time before results are visible.
PPC advertising is not a one-way ticket to success but rather a powerful sidekick to your obligatory, ongoing SEO efforts.
Local Traffic and Accessibility
Paid advertising allows you to target potential customers that are in close proximity to your business’ location.
Many people are on the go and will use their mobile devices to search for a business that are nearby. An additional advantage of this is that your paid adverts can include a click to call and click for directions option, making your business super accessible to your prospects.
Local traffic refers to prospects who are in the same area as your business, whether they are living in the area or just passing by.
Pay-Per-Click Marketing is Measurable
What is the point of advertising if you aren’t able to track or measure your efforts? Pay per click marketing offers you the opportunity to measure the success of your campaign.
What can you measure? Everything from the number of clicks on your advert to how many sales were generated from the clicks and how much each click cost you.
Why is this important? You can use this information to fine tune future campaigns, ensuring you get even better results from your efforts.
Without the ability to measure your efforts, you might as well print some flyers and throw them into the wind with the hope that your customers will catch them.
Paid Advertising is Budget Friendly
Yes, sometimes you do have to spend money to make money. But luckily with pay per click marketing, you don’t have to spend much.
In addition, PPC advertising allows you to set a budget cap and the search engines will not spend more than the allocated amount.
This makes it an ideal marketing strategy for small businesses who are working with smaller budgets.
PPC marketing is customisable, allowing you to adjust your campaign and optimise your budget in ways that will boost your return on investment.
Digital Marketing South Africa – Digital Marketing Agency in Cape Town
Pay per click marketing can be a useful tool to support your advertising strategies and efforts. However, to get the most out of your campaigns, it’s important to know and understand what Google and other search engines are looking for.
That’s where we come in. Our digital marketers are skilled enough to know what makes search engines tick and, more importantly, how to create the connection between businesses and consumers.
If you would like to know more about how pay per click marketing can help your business or to chat about our digital marketing services, please feel free to contact us.
