Pay Per Click (PPC) is one of the most popular types of online marketing, through which businesses can strategically place their ads on online platforms (WordStream, 2020) for attracting more visitors to their websites when they are not getting enough visitors organically (Gooding, 2020). PPC marketing helps businesses in developing brand awareness, creating demand for their products or services, attracting new customers, generating quality leads and successful conversions (Perricone, 2021). Whenever an ad is clicked by a visitor, an amount is paid by the advertiser (Google Ads, 2021). The ad fee paid by an advertiser is regarded as Cost Per Click (CPC) and rates of CPC varies and ranges from pennies cents to more than £50. (Bluehost, 2016).
Setting up a PPC marketing campaign seems very simple, but in reality, it is very difficult to run and manage it successfully. There are so many elements that you have to get just right in order to see success. Following are the building blocks of a PPC strategy:
• Define the Audience
Either you are starting a new business or expanding an existing one. In either circumstance, targeting the right audience is crucial. Finding the right audience makes your job a lot easier when it comes to creating the content for the ads, and the landing pages.
• Mapping out the Customer Journey
Knowing and understanding your customers is most important for solving their problems. It is always profitable to map out your customer journey, answer their questions through content, and nurture them through to converting. PPC search ads usually target users the decision stage and suggest immediate action, but a comprehensive PPC strategy will have ad groups targeted at each stage of the buyer journey; research, awareness, purchase and retargeting.
• Planning Keywords
PPC campaigns are built around keywords, which are the search terms that your audience put in a search engine, and the search engine result page provides them relevant results. Keyword research is a crucial in the success of your campaigns. You should focus on the search volume and the average cost per click, and select appropriate keywords based around these metrics. As people usually use long phrases for searching things online, it is important to utilise long-tail variations of your keywords. These are often less expensive too.
• Selecting Platforms
When selecting a platform, make sure it has huge traffic, availability of keywords, and is easy to use. The most popular platforms for PPC marketing are Google Ads, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, AdRoll, and RevContent (Perricone, 2021).
• Deciding Budget
As budget can significantly affect your PPC strategy. Therefore, it is very important to plan your budget before starting a PPC campaign. An affordable acquisition cost can be determined by valuing sale price, per lead cost, and gross profit from each sale.
• Developing your Ads
You should develop your ad content, including your chosen keywords in the headlines and descriptions. Including your keywords in the ads will indicate relevancy- Your ads are more likely to be shown only to those with intent, rather than being shown to irrelevant audiences.
• Developing Landing Page
After researching your keywords, understanding your audience, and planning your budget, it is important to develop a beautiful landing page with clear and inviting calls to action for successful conversion. The content on the landing page should offer value, and be presented in a user friendly design. Your landing page needs to attractive, mobile-friendly, keyword optimised, and call to action.
Nailing the above still doesn’t mean you can count on your campaign generating results. You need to monitor and optimise, reviewing your keywords, your bidding strategy and your budgets. Effective set and effective management can generate surprising results. More than 80% of businesses prefer PPC marketing to any other because it yields over 50% of conversions compared to organic marketing. There are many types of PPC marketing, which businesses select according to their business and marketing goals. These include paid search ads, display ads, social media ads, remarketing, and affiliate marketing. Any type of PPC campaign can work if it is supported by an impactful, proactive and strategic approach (Rose, 2021).
