Nowadays many small businesses have good products and great potential to grab user attention and generate high revenue. But they fail to do it because they have a lack of knowledge on how to spread the awareness about the product and brand among users.

Many businesses are aware of the role of SEO in bringing a website on the top in SERP to gain organic traffic. But this type of marketing technique requires time to drive quality traffic. To, get rid of that many businesses use PPC (pay-per-click) advertisement. PPC ads are most popular for driving quality traffic and generating high revenue. Businesses pay some amount to Search Engines, Social Media and Video streaming platforms to place their ads to get paid traffic.

In the succeeding series of Inbound Marketing, we will be drawing your focus on one of the most popular advertising methods that have helped many brands and businesses in showcasing their product and brand to a wide range of audiences.

In this article, we will be talking about

What is PPC(Pay per Click)
Different types of PPC Ads
What are Google Ads?
PPC keyword research
Budget & Bid
How to optimize an underperforming PPC Campaign?
What are the Benefits of PPC for Small And Large Scale Businesses?
Conclusion

What is PPC (Pay Per Click)?

PPC (Pay Per Click) one of the well-known terms in the online marketing world. In which advertisers pay some amount to the online advertising platform every time their ad is clicked. It is a form of online advertising where the website owner-run paid campaign on top advertising platforms like Google, Facebook, and other search engines to place their website on the top of SERP.

In today’s online marketing world there are various types of PPC ads you can find on the internet. But Search ads are considered to be the most common type of ads displayed in the SERP(search engine result page). PPC helps in bringing the potential audience on your Landing Page.

It is a way of buying traffic or visitor on the site which we call it paid visitors. These types of searches are carried out when users are looking to purchase something and advertiser looking to sell something.

Nowadays Search engine is considered to be the most vital option for searching and buying on an e-commerce platform. By looking at the image you can figure out if a user is searching for men casual shoes on search engines. The first three-four results they get on the search engine are Paid Ads posted by the seller.

Different types of PPC Ads:

1. Search Ads

If you are surfing the internet or searching for a product to buy online, then search ads are one of the most common ads you will come across in the search engines. These ads are displayed by the seller or companies to gain more visitors. You will find these ads in search engines with “AD” displayed before landing page URL.

As you can see in the image that there are no visuals in search ads. These types of ads generally contain text and snippets. If you are looking to create search ads then you have to visit Search Engines ads or most popular Google ads to set up your advertisement.

2. Display Ads

Display ads are one of the essential parts of PPC (Pay Per Click). These types of ads are displayed on the website, apps and social media to showcase the product and company’s innovative ideas. Display Ad formats can be made of texts, attractive images, converting videos, and audios.

If you own a product that can attract users then display ads can be one the best medium in attracting potential customers. It is very common among users, as it can be viewed on google’s partner website. By looking at the image you can figure out the appearance of display ads.

The main difference between Search ads display ads are:

Search ads can be viewed by the publisher.
But display ads only give performance reports about how advertisers ad is performing. It can’t be viewed by the publisher.

3. Social Ads

Currently, the world is facing an immense increase in social media users. And because of that businesses are diverting more on social media marketing. Social ads are part of SMM and PPC. It is very much well-known among users. These types of ads are created to spread awareness of the brand and the upcoming events. You can find these types of ads in social media feeds with “Sponsored” mentioned below the title of the advertisement.

If you are looking to create social media ads then select the platform, where you want to place your advertisement. There are various social media platforms:

Facebook
Instagram’
Twitter
Pinterest
Linkedin

4. Re-marketing ads

These types of ads are created to reengage with your target audience. Most of the times user visits you Search ads and engage with your products but fails to convert. It happens because your potential customer needs more time to think about your product and services.

That’s why Remarketing ads are created to market your leads and convert them into a customer. Once your leads are clear about your products, you can repost your ads and ask them to buy your product.

5. Google Shopping Ads

Google Shopping ads also known as window-shopping is a part of PPC advertising where you can display your products. This type of ad will help your lead in navigating your product easily. By seeing the image you can discover that if a user is searching for men’s shoes. Multiple company’s carousel format ads will appear in the SERP above the main google search results.

6. Local Service ads

Local Service ads are displayed when users search for services like Plumber, electrician, HVAC companies, etc. These types of ads are not open to every business. However, if you own services like Locksmith, Plumber, Garage, etc. Then you can use Local Service ads to display and boost your business.

7. Instream ads

These types of ads appear in the youtube videos. Generally, Instream ads appear before the video content starts or at the end of it. Generally, instream ads are skippable and non-skippable depends on the type of ads you want to run. Non-skippable ads are a bit costlier than skippable. So if you own a business and have some engaging and converting shot videos then you can use YouTube to run those videos and drive more traffic and sales.

What are Google Ads?

Google ads one of the widely known and used online advertising platforms where advertisers pay to display their ads in the SERP. Google allows advertisers to use this platform to create and publish their ads. Generally, google ads are created to gain more traffic and boost the company’s sales. It operates on the pay-per-click model where the advertiser has to pay for each time the user clicks on the displayed ad. Google ads formerly known as Google Adwords has played a major role in boosting the website traffic of many small businesses.

Whenever a user search for a term in the SERP, google filters the list of all the ads run by the advertisers and displays the ads depending on the relevancy of the keyword. If an advertiser is looking to display their ads on the SERP then they have to place the bid on the keyword. If an advertiser succeeds in winning the bid them their ads get displayed on the top above all the

Ads. Google is optimizing its ad functionality and they have made it simple for users to create an ad by introducing “Express campaign”.

Google Express Campaign has the following benefits:

It allows the user to create an ad quickly and easily.
An advertiser has to pay only when the user clicks on their website.
Helps in attracting more customers
You can measure the effectiveness of your ads.
It helps in targeting and attracting your local audience

PPC Keyword Research

Keywords are essential in PPC as they help Google to display your ad and help users to find your ads in SERP. Whenever a user enters a query in the search box, the search engine analyzes the query and checks whether your ad contains the same keyword or not. If your ad contains the same keyword then search engine displays your ad in SERP. Your ad rank is decided by the search engine depending on the bid for that keyword, ad relevancy, and quality.

keyword research is considered to be the most important and time-consuming part of the PPC. Because you have to go through a lot of factors in determining the user-friendly keywords and negative keywords. There are various ways through which you can

Brainstorming helps you in identifying your competitor terms, generic terms, and related terma
The keyword tool will help you in analyzing the highly monthly searched keyword for your business.

For example: if I’m running an ad for Winter wear then

I will first include the brand term, then
I will look for the competitor’s keyword. This practice will help in analyzing my competitor ad rank for that particular keyword. And it will also help in optimizing my ad for the same keyword.
After researching competitor terms, I will try to research on generic terms that are commonly used by users. These terms might be competitive but it will help in generating good revenue.
Lastly, I will research the related term to my product. My product-related term can be a sweatshirt, gloves, sweaters, etc.
Average monthly search metric will also help in analyzing my ad reach.

Budget & Bids

Budget and bids are one of the important parts of the PPC campaign. If you are planning to run PPC ads then you should be aware of how much budget you are going to spend on a campaign and what is the bidding amount for the particular keyword. The bidding amount differs with the keyword i.e if you are running an ad for a highly competitive keyword then your bidding amount may be high to rank on the top. The budget can be extended depending on how your ads are performing. A good account strategy will help you in setting your budget. And Bids will help you in controlling your expenditure on budget. Winning an auction doesn’t depend on placing the highest bid. Instead, google checks other factors like

Ad relevancy
Ad quality
Bidding amount
Context of the search (users device and time of day)
Check whether your ad contains extensions that enhance the format of the ad.

The quality score also plays an essential role in determining the rank and reach of your ads i.e. you ads relevancy Google checks your quality score before displaying your ad. So if you are looking to get a good quality score then you should check for:

Keyword relevancy to the ads
Adding appropriate negative keywords
Landing page quality
Keyword and ad relevancy to the search
Previous CTR (click-through rate) on the ads and your ad campaign.

Note-: Competitor activity and their ad rank play an important role in deciding the amount paid by the advertiser.

Different types of bidding strategy:

Manual CPC (Cost Per Click)
Automatic CPC
Enhanced CPC
CPA (Cost per acquisition)
CPM (Cost per thousand impressions)
Conversion optimized Bidding

How to Optimize an underperforming PPC Campaign?

Nowadays creating and running a PPC ad is not a big deal. Google has made it simple for users to create an ad by introducing the “Express campaign”. But it is necessary to determine whether your ad is benefiting your business or not. If you have already spent a lot of money on PPC and didn’t get any benefit from it then you should optimize your campaign to get good results. There are a few tips that will help you in optimizing an underperforming campaign:

Always focus on increasing your quality score.
Add negative keywords to make your add more specific
Check for the relevancy between your ads and the search term.
Before creating an ad, perform competitor analysis.
Always do the remarketing to convert your prospect leaves by displaying your ads.
Optimize your landing page by showcasing your goal to the user.
Take advantage of ad extension (call extension, app extension, review extension, etc)

What are the Benefits of PPC for Small And Large Scale Businesses?

PPC is one of the widely used advertising strategies in today’s marketing world. Many small and large scale businesses are generating hefty revenue using PPC ads. There are various benefits of using PPC to increase your sales.

Users are searching for your product on search engine
PPC helps in boosting your website traffic
It can increase your sales
Pay-Per-Click can increase brand awareness
Through PPC you can remarket your potential customer and leads.
PPC help in pulling quality traffic that likely to convert.
The best thing about PPC is that it can help you in measuring your campaign performance.
By using PPC you can rank your website on the top of SERP without using SEO
It is extremely targeted.
PPC helps you in competing with larger brands and businesses.
It helps in increasing your customer attribution
PPC allows you to plan your budget and ADs spend is controllable.
In PPC when a user clicks on your ad then only you pay the amount to Ad Hosting platforms
It is more reachable and smarter than any other form of advertising.

Conclusion:

If you own a business and looking to spread awareness and boost sales to generate more revenue. Then use PPC to advertise your product. SEO will help you in gaining higher ranking but it will take time to get on the top in SERP. Through PPC you can advertise your product and place your website on the top in SERP.

In PPC conversion rate varies with industry but the average conversion rate ranges between 2% and 5%. And the report (Google) says that business earns double the amount they spend on the Google Ads. That means for every $1 spent on ads, businesses earn an average revenue of $2.

Form the numbers you can figure out how businesses are generating good revenue and earning handsome amounts using PPC. So, To gain maximum and target customers use PPC and advertise your ads on social media and search engines to generate high revenue.

If you are looking for a PPC strategy that can boost your underperforming PPC ad then contact SFWP Experts. One of the leading advertising agencies in California that can assist you in building revenue-generating PPC ads.