When it comes to online advertising for your business, you've probably looked at several options. From search engine optimization (SEO) to social media marketing, many campaigns make sense. However, these are not the only digital marketing tactics. More and more small and medium-sized businesses are investing in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. But PPC costs money and has numerous pitfalls. Find out whether pay-per-click advertising can pay off for you in this article.
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What is PPC advertising?
Pay-per-click belongs to the large field of online marketing. You pay a certain amount for ads to be displayed in Google's search results and on other websites.
In the search results, PPC ads are displayed above the organic search results, marked by a small box with "Ad" or "Ad". As the name suggests, you only have to pay for these ads when users click on them.
To get started with PPC, you need a Google Ads account. Then you select the appropriate keywords and bid on those terms. When users search for these keywords, Google displays ads of the highest bidders at the top of the search results. When a user clicks on your PPC ad, they are redirected to your specific landing page. You are charged for the ad click.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of PPC advertising?
Like any form of advertising, PPC marketing has numerous advantages and disadvantages. If you too want to use pay-per-click advertising for your business, you should weigh up a few factors beforehand.
These are the advantages of PPC
Pay-per-click offers numerous benefits. It's not for nothing that so many companies use PPC. The main advantages are:
- Fast results: Unlike SEO, where it takes some time for the first results, PPC ads can start generating revenue from the first second. One day is enough to give you results that you can analyze and profit from.
- Top placements: Even the best SEO content is not displayed with the "position zero". The results at the top of Google search results are reserved for ads. With PPC, you can be at the top of the results page - above the organic content.
- Flexibility: Already after publishing an ad, you can change it immediately. You can replace target pages as needed and suspend keywords that don't work for you.
- Targeting: PPC ads are only served for keywords you bid on. You can additionally use targeting to narrow your focus even further. For example, you can limit ads to searches performed in a specific geographic area.
The disadvantages of PPC
Unfortunately, no marketing method is perfect and PPC is no exception. Here are some disadvantages of PPC:
- Expenditures: With PPC, you only pay for ads that users click on. However, depending on your industry, you may have to budget a lot per click. In highly competitive industries, you sometimes have no choice but to bid high to win the top spot.
- Reputation: Many users differentiate between paid and organic search results. These users simply scroll past PPC ads to organic results because they see them as more credible.
- Conditions: If you create content using SEO and it ranks well, that's all. You have no other expenses. With PPC, on the other hand, your ads are only visible as long as you pay for them. If you stop bidding, you also stop the ads.
Is PPC worth it?
Let's say your company sells high-quality clothing. You start your PPC campaign by creating a landing page. Then you call up Google Ads and use that landing page to run around 50 different keywords related to clothing, from "suit" to "top hat". Once these steps are done, sit back for a few weeks and wait for the revenue to start flowing in.
However, to your shock, no revenue comes in. In fact, your campaign consumes your entire PPC budget, but you barely generate any new sales. At this point, your first thought is probably, "That wasn't worth it!"
How could this happen? How did you get such poor results? The problem is: you didn't optimize your PPC campaign properly. If you had done a few things differently, things would have gone better. PPC can actually be worthwhile for small and medium-sized businesses - as long as you know how to make it work for you.
How to optimize your PPC campaigns
Here are some steps to ensure maximum return on investment:
- Target Relevant Keywords: Target only keywords that are actually relevant to your business and target relevant landing pages. This will get interested buyers to click on them. Don't use broad one-word keywords that have a lot of competition.
- Limit the size of the ad group: Don't target a hundred different keywords with one ad. You will end up with an ad that is too broad. Use no more than 15-20 keywords per group and make sure they are all very similar so that the ad is as specific as possible.
- Use exclusionary keywords: In the above scenario, by targeting a keyword such as "dress", your ad was probably also placed in searches for summer dresses, which are not relevant to you. Select "summer dress" as an excluding keyword and get around the problem.
- Track results: Whether you use Google Ads or not, you need a platform where you can track the results of your PPC campaign. The more data you collect, the sooner you'll know how to optimize your PPC campaigns for better results.
Conclusion: This is why pay-per-click advertising is worthwhile
Your business will remain invisible in the vastness of the Internet without financial investment. PPC advertising is your investment in a successful business and attracting new customers. With Google Ads, you apply one of the most important strategies and can generate additional revenue through professional analysis, design and execution. Hopefully, you found the above points helpful in deciding when to use pay-per-click. However, it goes without saying that these points are not a complete PPC checklist. If you're not sure how to start optimizing your PPC campaigns, don't worry - we can help!
