Pay per Click (PPC)

For a profitable e-commerce business, continuous inflow of prospects and customers at site gateways should be maintained. There are many digital and online marketing strategies to attract customers or generate leads. Pay per Click (PPC) is one of the important marketing techniques used by business owners to promote their business. It helps every type of business to get instant customers, visibility and brand awareness. In this article, we will focus on different aspects of this popular marketing strategy.

What is Pay per click (PPC)?

It is an online marketing model in which marketers are charged with a fee when their ads are clicked. The marketers are charged only when clicks are made on their ads. It is also known as cost per click model. The ads of advertisers are shown on search engines like Google, Bing and other platforms.The advertisers bid on profitable keywords and pay on each click.

Why PPC is important for small businesses?

In the digital century, pay per click has been well proven online marketing method. It is an efficient paid online marketing strategy. The better targeted PPC campaigns can be launched. The campaigns can target specific groups, demographics based on their interests and requirements. The beauty of this method is that the marketers know the cost in advance and adjust the budget. The revenue generated through PPC can be many times the cost incurred in the campaigns.

How is it different than traditional paid marketing ads?

In the traditional advertising methods, the marketers did not have any idea how and where their budget would be spent.PPC is much more flexible and transparent and keeps the records of the budget and performance of the campaign.

How it is different than SEO?

SEO is a marketing strategy to get organic traffic or leads. It involves optimizing the content and outreach efforts to increase the search engine ranking. The sites with optimized content do better in search engine results pages (SERP). It is an unpaid technique to promote business and increase online visibility.

PPC is paid marketing technique. It is the process of getting leads by purchasing or buying ads on search engines. It can be adopted in the initial stage of business, and then the company can switch to SEO for getting a huge audience.PPC help in getting on the first page of the search engines.

Is PPC better than SEO?

enough leads or traffic on a consistent basis through SEO may take time therefore to get instant leads, many new businesses or startups invest into paid media marketing.SEO is beneficial for long term sustainable business. Pay per click strategy is helpful in getting faster results. It can lead to high exposure to the business in less time. Marketers have full control over the budget hence depending on budget availability companies can schedule affordable campaigns. It is helpful in exploring the popular keywords through analysis of campaign reports.

Since every click may not convert into buying decision.it may increase the marketing cost or budget. It is observed that consumers or buyers trust more on organic search than paid ads.

Depending on the need and resources both techniques should be used. If you do not have extra money to spend on paid campaigns you need to rely on free SEO techniques.

What are the important factors which affect the performance of the PPC campaign?

There are some key points which need attention while running an effective and profitable successful PPC campaign. It is very important to know the intent of the user’s search by doing keyword research and analyzing search volume. Scheduling campaigns at the prime time of your prospects can enhance the reach of the ads to the maximum potential customers. The landing pages should be specific to a particular ad on which the user has clicked. Good quality score can help in better placement of the ads. Geo-targeting and using qualifying terms and negative keywords also play important roles in better conversion.

Know why high Click Through Rate (CTR) is most important for successful PPC campaign

Why long tail keywords are so important for successful PPC campaign?

The short tail keywords which comprise of less than 3 words have high search volume monthly. For small businesses having a low budget, it is difficult to rank for these short keywords because they have high competition and bid costs. Even if a high number of leads can be generated but they are less likely to convert into buying decisions because of their general nature. Therefore competing for these general keywords through PPC ads is not a good economic decision. On the other hand, long tail keywords may have slightly less volume but they are more specific to consumer needs. There is a high probability that after clicking on these ads, the prospects can finally buy goods or services. Building PPC campaigns around long phrases are a good idea for greater ROI.

What is the importance of negative keywords in an optimized PPC campaign?

Like better SEO results the PPC campaigns should be highly optimized and targeted. Why would you want clicks on your ads from irrelevant and unrelated users? By incorporating a set of negative keywords in your ad copy, you can avoid clicks from bad traffic. Suppose you are a seller of new smartphones but your ad is also being shown to users who are looking for repairing service. So, the customers who are specifically looking for repair service will not give any profit. Therefore by adding these unwanted keywords into the negative list can save advertising cost.

What are likely important PPC trends in 2019?

When it comes to PPC ads Google, Bing and Facebook are leaders but over the years Amazon search platform has emerged the main platform for products advertisement. The marketers of products can not underestimate the power of Amazon because in this platform searchers make a specific query for product buying. The queries on Amazon marketing platform have high buying intention.

Google recently updated exact match algorithm to give more weight to user intent and context because of which marketers will have less control on PPC ads keywords. There will be growth in visual, video and voice searches. A short and smart video can play a very important role in brand awareness. Use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in automating the advertisement will increase. The importance of personalized ads or audience targeting will increase.

What are the best platforms for PPC ads?

Google AdWords(now known as Google Ads) is an obvious choice for advertisers. Google has the majority of shares in the search market. Bing Ads platform similar to Google Ads is another popular search engine for placing marketing ads. Although the share of Bing ads platform is less than Google Ads it is gaining popularity rapidly. It is seen that CTR(Click Through Rate) is high on Bing Ads because of its better ad placement. If you want to sell products on Amazon marketplace then it is a great opportunity because of higher conversion rate. The share of social media networks is growing day by day because of their increasing popularity and user base. Each social network has its unique identity, for example, Linkedin which is good for placing business to business ads, jobs etc. For increasing brand awareness Facebook’s ads are promising.The CPC for Facebook ads is also low comparatively.

Which tools can be used to study competitor’s keyword ideas?

The study of keywords on which your competitors are bidding can give important insights about your business or niche. You can gather new ideas, opportunities or keywords which you may be missing but are more profitable. Tools like SpyFU and Keyword Spy can be used.

PPC is a win-win formula for both marketers and ad agencies. Popular search engines and marketing agencies offer the place for ads and in return get lucrative commissions. Because of this profitable nature, many new ad marketing networks are emerging. Before launching any PPC campaign on any of these marketplaces, the depth research on profitable keywords, cost of ads, budgeting process, placement, scheduling, negative words, and competitors should be done.

Just pouring money into PPC ads without proper planning and execution won't fetch good results. The return on investment may be negative and campaigns won’t be sustainable for a long time. For example, Google Ads gives more importance to quality score. The focus should be on improving content quality, landing pages, and user experience. The research on negative and competing keywords also play a key role in high CTR and revenue generation.