What is PPC? The #1 Reason Ambitious Businesses Seriously Need It

Did you know that the top 3 paid ad spots get 46% of the clicks on search result page?

This means that PPC presents an extremely lucrative opportunity for any business to grow online. But, what is PPC? And why do all businesses need it?

What is PPC?

PPC stands for Pay Per Click and it means that advertisers will only pay when potential customers click their ads. It is a form of online advertising that can help increase sales, generate leads and boost brand awareness. Advertisers can choose their own keywords to bid on, making Pay Per Click advertising extremely targeted and good value for money.

Pay Per Click ads are normally (but not limited to) found on search engines, such as Google and Bing, with both search engines having their own platform to help you get started with advertising on these channels.

PPC ads

As well as the keywords you will be targeting, you will also need to prepare attention grabbing ads for your campaigns. These ads are held within ad groups that target a shared sets of keywords, and are organised by common themes and keyword categories. Ads are what the users will see if the auction is won, so they’re very important to get right.

Typical PPC ads will contain a:

Headline
URL
Description

On a search engine, like Google and Bing, they can show up on top of the results or at the bottom of the page. It’s good practice to test different PPC ads to see which ad performs best.

Services like Google Ads and Bing Ads provide features to help your ads stand out, called ad extensions. These include:

Sitelink extensions, these allow you to include other links to your website, directing your users to the pages they need.
Call extensions, which adds a phone number to the ad during business hours.

Ad budgets and bids

In order to participate in the auction, you will need to decide how much you are willing to pay for a click on a given keyword. This is done using:

Budgets at the campaign level.
Bids at the ad group or keyword level.

Budgets are set at the campaign level and your budget can be exceeded on a daily basis, but they will not overspend your budget on a monthly basis. Budgets need to be set according to your overall account strategy, but bids are a more precise way of controlling spending.

All ad groups must have bids, but keyword level bids override ad group level bids.

Due to the RTB system, the actual amount paid by the advertiser is dependent on competitor activity and ad rank, not just the maximum bid. This is why it is best to use a PPC agency as they can continually optimise your campaigns for the best performance at the lowest price.

Conversions

You shouldn’t set up a PPC campaign just to get clicks. The real goal should be to obtain conversions.

Conversions are the actions that advertisers want users to complete after clicking on an ad, and depending on the type of business being advertised.

Here are a few conversion examples:

Purchasing a service.
Signing up for a newsletter.
Placing a phone call.

It is very important that you track conversions as you will not know whether a PPC campaign is doing well and how many conversions can be attributed to your PPC campaign, rather than any other marketing channels.

Why should I use PPC?

In a nutshell, if you want to increase your sales, generate more leads or grow your brand awareness, your business NEEDS to be using PPC advertising. PPC is extremely targeted, meaning you can show potential customers what your business offers, at the exact moment they are searching for it.

PPC advertising is also very cost effective, as you only pay for each click the campaign generates, meaning not only is it cost effective, but your results are guaranteed either way. PPC will drive the website traffic and all you have to do is make sure the campaign is converting!