If you’re delving into the world of digital marketing, you’re likely to come across the term PPC, or Pay-Per-Click. You’ve probably encountered the term when looking at search engine advertising like Google Ads.
So, what is PPC? How does is work? And who should you use it?
What is Pay-Per-Click?
Pay-Per-Click, or PPC, is a digital advertising model where an advertiser pays a publisher every time an advertisement linked is clicked.
Pay-Per-Click is offered by search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, and social media platforms like Facebook with Meta Ads.
In a nutshell, you only pay for advertising if your ad is actually clicked on.
PPC ads can come in all different shapes and sizes. They can be made up of text, images, videos, or a combination. They might be social, shopping, search, or display type ads.
How Does Pay-Per-Click Work?
PPC is based primarily on keywords. On Google, online ads, also known as sponsored links, only appear when someone searches a relevant keyword related to the product or service being advertised. This type of PPC advertising might also be called Paid Search or Search Engine Marketing.
If you want to effectively use PPC advertising, you must do sufficient keyword research to get the most out of your campaign. Research and analyse keywords relevant to your product or service, what keywords your competitors are targeting, and what keywords you can target that have high search volume but aren’t too highly competitive.
The PPC model is hugely beneficial to advertisers as it provides an opportunity to advertise their products or services to a specific audience who are actively searching for related content. A well-designed and optimised PPC campaign can mean an advertiser saves a substantial sum of money as the value of each website visit (click) from a potential customer exceeds the cost of the click paid to the publisher such as Google.
What are the Different Pay-Per-Click Models?
PPC advertising rates are determined using the flat-rate model or the bid-based model.
The Flat-Rate Model
The flat-rate pay-per-click model is where an advertiser pays a publisher a fixed fee for each click. Publishers generally keep a list of different PPC rates that apply to different areas of their website. You might be able to negotiate the price you pay with a publisher.
The Bid-Based Model
The bid-based model is where each advertiser makes a bid with the maximum amount of money they are willing to pay for an advertising spot. A publisher then carries out an auction using automated tools. An auction is run whenever a visitor triggers the ad spot.
The winner of the auction is generally determined by the rank, not the total amount, of money offered. The rank considers both the amount of money offered and the quality of the content offered by an advertiser.
User experience + relevance to keyword + expected CTR = quality score.
Quality score x max bid = ad rank
The ads with the highest ad rank scores are the ones that show.
PPC and Google Ads
Google Ads is probably the PPC marketing channel that most businesses are aware of or familiar with. Google Ads are particularly valuable as Google is the most popular search engine and gets massive amounts of traffic, therefore delivering the most impressions and clicks to your ads.
Whilst a number of factors determine how successful your pay-per-click campaign will be, you can improve your chances of success by doing the following:
• Bid on Relevant Keywords: Pull together relevant keyword lists for your PPC campaign and work on your ad text.
• Focus on Landing Page Quality: Create optimised landing pages with persuasive and relevant content, alongside a clear call to action tailored to specific search queries.
• Improve your Quality Score: Quality score is Google’s rating of the quality and relevance of your keywords, landing pages, and PPC campaigns all together. Businesses with better quality scores get more ad clicks at lower costs.
• Capture Attention: Enticing ad copy is important, if you’re running a display or social ad you also need to consider eye-catching ad creative.
The Benefits of Using PPC
PPC has many advantages that can benefit your business, including:
• Cost-effectiveness
• Your ad will be displayed on the first results page when someone searches for a related term
• More exposure and brand visibility as targeted traffic is directed to your site
• You can run multiple ad campaigns for each keyword
• It tends to result in higher click-through rates (CTR), more conversions, and increased sales revenue
• Provides instant traffic
Who Should Use PPC Advertising?
Pay-per-click advertising is suitable for small businesses as you are able to decide how much you’re willing to spend on each keyword, making it easy to manage how much you’re spending when your ads go live. This ensures that the money you’re spending on ads isn’t wasted.
Ready to get started with PPC? At Dash Agency, we’re experts in all things Paid Search, SEO, and Google Ads – we’re also Google Partners! Work with us to drive the traffic you want to your website, boost your conversions, and increase your sales through the power of PPC marketing.
