The benefits of running pay-per-click (PPC) ads for your business

There are a variety of means available to a business to boost their digital marketing outcomes. To increase online traffic, brand awareness and brand recognition, businesses can utilise SEO strategies, paid ads, social media and more in their future projects. However, effective online advertising does cost money, and so small businesses are always looking for the most cost effective ways to get results.

Ad spend can be one of the costliest aspects of online advertising, having to pay for countless ads to run across the display network of a variety of search engines. The good news is it doesn’t always have to be this way. In comes PPC advertising. PPC ads are one way of getting your google ads out there without needing to pay exuberant upfront costs. There’s also a range of other benefits of PPC advertising that can help boost any marketing strategy.

What is PPC advertising?

So, what is PPC advertising? PPC (pay-per-click) ads are a form of advertising where the advertiser pays a small fee only for the clicks on their specific advertisement. Instead of paying up front for estimated impressions you can end up spending much less money by only paying for the impressions or views that an ad actually receives. Google Ads, Microsoft Ads & Facebook Ads are the cheapest and most effective PPC advertising platforms out there. Google in particular has high value to offer in its PPC campaigns because of its volume of searches and huge Google display network. Through Google, your ads are typically automatically hosted on a range of other websites beside related content. Otherwise, you can set organic keywords that you want your PPC ads to show up for in your search engine marketing. That approach does typically require keyword research to be able to understand the internet users that make up your target audience and what they might be searching. Many businesses already use pay-per-click advertising to keep them ranking highly.

Who uses pay-per-click advertising?

The PPC marketing strategy is effective across all industry segments – from car dealers looking at offering new products and services to hairdressers offering limited time special offers. A pay-per-click campaign is one of the most popular methods for gaining more leads to a site. As we’ve mentioned, there are a range of PPC platforms to suit a business’s needs and preferences. Successful PPC campaigns are also easy to set up and run, making them highly accessible. The PPC platforms are user friendly and streamlined. These are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the many benefits of PPC advertising. Let’s look at what other benefits of PPC advertising your business might experience.

Benefits of PPC Advertising

PPC advertising brings PPC traffic to your landing pages quickly and in high quantities. Your ad could be sitting among the top of Google search results, getting noticed by potential customers at just the right time. PPC ads are also a great way to gain new customers in the short term while investing time and money in longer term strategies such as SEO and the likes. Without further ado, let’s take a dive into the additional benefits of PPC advertising.

1. Fast results

   Most small businesses are looking for quick results while they invest in sustained results and growth. PPC can be a fast way in which businesses can run advertising campaigns with quick results. By simply creating a Google Ads account, you can start generating PPC ads, bringing more traffic to your site and making more money to fuel those longer-term growth investments.

2. Measurable results

   PPC also provides clear, quantifiable metrics for all your efforts. All PPC campaign metrics can vary, and therefore so will the amount of money you’ve spent, but from the moment your PPC campaign starts, it’s easy to determine if the campaign is proving successful or not. If you’re using Google ads to run your PPC campaigns, then Google analytics is a great option in the way of keeping an eye on the performance of your campaign and tracking PPC data.

3. No dependency on SEO or Google algorithmic changes

   Google algorithmic changes can affect advertising in substantial ways. One day you can have your landing pages rank organically at the top of search engine results pages and the next your SEO strategy can prove suddenly less effective. This means that longer term strategies such as SEO are dependent on maintaining an uptick of blog posts and website copy that incorporates keywords as they change and evolve according to the algorithm. We’re not saying SEO strategies, or the like should be avoided. In fact, they’re integral to long term success. However, a successful PPC campaign can help remove the stress of that dependency in the short term.

4. Reach the right audience

    

   
   The placement of a PPC campaign depends upon several factors. This might be the keywords you’ve asked Google to associate your PPC ads with when showing them on a search engine results page. It could also be dependent on whether you sign up for Google AdSense, which displays your PPC ads across the Google display network on other websites. This flexibility allows you to segment your market to get your business to a specific audience easily. Google or any other PPC advertising platform will help local businesses develop a PPC model that has your ads popping in the search results as well as on the display network.

5. Take advantage of business opportunities

   Sometimes, business opportunities arise that require us to act fast. Consider the failings of your competitors as such opportunities. For example, if you were running a telecommunications business and your competitor had technical trouble that meant their services went offline suddenly, it gives you a chance to increase brand awareness without them in the way… but only if you can react quickly enough. Paid ads such as a quick PPC ad could be used to quickly respond to the situation and market how reliable your technology is and offer customers a service transfer discount to switch providers. While your customers are Googling ‘Company x phone line down’, they could see your offers popping up in your PPC advertising. Powerful stuff, eh?

6. Brand recognition

   Having your digital marketing ads show up across a display network, whether they gain user clicks or not, is a great way of building brand awareness and brand recognition. A customer can be subjected to the same PPC ad multiple times in their organic search results or website browsing. This can help them become familiar with your brand online so that when they do eventually go actively searching for a product like yours, they may remember you and start by searching your brand name.

7. Budget friendly

    

   
   PPC is free from the confines of a limited maximum budget. You decide how much to spend for individual clicks, as well as advertising placement. As discussed earlier, you can easily analyse the ways in which your spending creates profits or losses and adjust the amount that you spend on the go. In the world of digital marketing, there are few options out there that provide such control over ad spend and ad budget.

8. It’s a great tool to test your marketing strategies for other mediums

   PPC advertising can be considered a great trial run of your content marketing strategy before implementing that same content marketing elsewhere. A business can quickly throw together a PPC strategy with varying content in their ads, and then analyse which ads are the most effective (receive the most clicks or impressions) based on the content they shared. This can help you determine what kind of content you should include in your other marketing efforts so that you grab the attention of your target audience.

9. Rich functionality and reporting

   When creating and maintaining PPC ads, platforms like Google have loads of tools built in that you can take advantage of. These allow you to set keywords, edit the design of your ad, choose from a range of ad formats, and track PPC performance metrics.

Before you launch a PPC campaign

Okay, we’ve looked at some pretty convincing benefits of PPC advertising, but before you jump on the PPC train and start PPC advertising, there are a few things you’ll want to consider.

1. What are your business goals?

   The benefits of PPC advertising are only as good as your goals. If you don’t have clear goals, you won’t have clear desired outcomes, which leads to a misdirected and scattered PPC campaign. Think carefully about what you want to get out of PPC advertising. Is it more lead generation? Is it more sales? Is it higher website traffic? What impact will these things have? Once you’ve determined your goals, it’ll be much easier selecting the design of your ads, the keywords you want to set them to, and whether you want them only showing up in search results or across the network.

2. What other marketing are you investing in?

   If you’re already running different ads, maybe you’re wanting a combination of ad formats and strategies. If you’re already running SEO strategies and social media campaigns, maybe you want something more immediate to boost business in the short term until the others pay off. Consider how PPC advertising fits in with whatever else you’re doing. One thing we would recommend you remain cautious of is becoming too reliant on a PPC advertising campaign. There are many benefits of PPC but it typically is a short term fast paced strategy. Ensuring you’re still investing in longer term growth strategies to build continued traffic is important.

3. What’s your product or service?

   This might seem like a silly question… of course you know what your product or service is! Well, what we man by this is to consider what your product or service is in relation to how it might affect the way you run a PPC campaign. For example, it could influence the keywords you select for your ads to show up against in search advertising. When entering PPC keyword data, you might need to think creatively about what individuals will search, and when your product should show up. For example, if you’re selling cricket bats, you might go straight to entering keywords like ‘bat’, ‘cricket’, or ‘sport’. However, you might not have thought about entering the words, ‘beach’, or ‘backyard’. Consider what your product is, how and where it’s used and what might be searched. This will help your search advertising be more targeted and get in front of the right audience at the right time.

You can launch a PPC advertising campaign in no time

Keen on getting into PPC advertising and making the most of this tool to boost sales and brand awareness? Awesome, that’s what we like to hear. It doesn’t take long to get started! All you’ll need to do is find a PPC advertising platform such as Google Ads. Sign up and create an account. Then, simply follow the prompts to create an ad unit and select PPC ads. Before you launch your ads, and if you end up using Google, be sure to link your Google Ads account with Google analytics so that you can track your website traffic and the success of your PPC ads from the get-go.

Good luck out there!

We think it’s awesome you’re giving something new a go in your advertising. It can be intimidating trying to understand how best to take advantage of all the tools available to a business in search advertising. Take your time, optimise those landing pages, write high quality ad copy, and follow the other tips and tricks we’ve given you in this post to ensure a successful PPC campaign. PPC advertising can pay off big time. The benefits of PPC are at your fingertips!

The experts in PPC campaigns

From developing a strategy to understanding the best way to utilise different ad formats, we’re here to help you nail your PPC campaigns. First Page New Zealand has the expertise and experience to take your PPC advertising to the next level.

Call us today on 0800 235 001 or visit https://firstpage.nz/. We look froward to working with you!