A Beginners Guide To PPC Marketing

PPC stands for ‘Pay Per Click’ and refers to a type of digital marketing/advertising. The basic principle of PPC is that you pay money every time someone clicks on your site through a search engine.

How Does It Work?

Your company will ‘bid’ for a keyword through one of the search engines marketing systems. For example, Google Adwords is the advertising system Google use. It’s in place to help companies market their websites. Through Google Adwords, you sign up and are given a page detailing all the steps you can take. You’ll have a section called your ‘campaign’ that will show the keywords you have bid for. Remember, you’re likely to be bidding against lots of other people, so you may not even win the auction. The winning bid will determine the price you pay for each click your website gets in the search results. Websites that use PPC are displayed in the ‘sponsored links’ section of a search engine. This is the small selection of results you see above the ‘natural’ search results. What it essentially means is you pay to have your website seen higher up than the natural results.

How Much Do Keywords Cost?

There are various factors affecting the cost. Firstly, your bid will obviously affect the keyword cost. If you bid a low amount, the keyword price will be low. And if you bid a large amount, it will be higher. It also depends on the popularity of the keyword. If lots are fighting over it, this will drive the price up. One of the biggest factors in determining price is the keyword’s ‘quality score’.

What Are The Benefits Of PPC?

PPC, along with SEO, is a staple in most outreach strategic marketing campaigns to drive traffic to your website. By bidding for keywords, your site is going to appear higher up than those who aren’t using PPC. The higher up you appear in search results, the more likely someone will click on you. Because it’s keyword based you will be targeting an audience who are looking for your service or something very similar. Eg if you bid on the keyword ‘online piano lessons’ your ad will appear when people are looking for that service. It’s a great way to potentially generate revenue, at a low cost.

What Are The Drawbacks Of PPC?

You may find that even though you gain site traffic, no one buys your product. If that’s the case, it’s probably down to you having a poor product/website that doesn’t attract the consumer. But the biggest drawback of PPC is a little thing called ad blocker. If a user has an ad blocker application running, then the sponsored links/ads won’t show up in a search. So even if you pay for a popular keyword, you won’t show up to them. Luckily, not everyone has an ad blocker installed, so it’s not like you’re wasting all your money.

Using PPC isn’t for everyone. You need to weigh up whether it’s cost effective for your business. It’s also not the only digital marketing technique you can use. Check out these Easy Ways To Improve Your Digital Marketing Campaign!