Ian Dodson
Published 13/07/2015 | 14:34
Pay Per Click (or PPC advertising) is a form of paid digital marketing where advertisers pay a fee each time their ad is clicked.
The term PPC can apply to paid ads on social media networks, like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
However, today we'll focus on Google Adwords which helps your ads stand out to search engine users, displaying them at the top and right-hand side of Google's search engines.
We'll also explore Google Display Network which displays your ads on relevant websites your customers and prospects land on.
We'll take a look at the benefits of both services to help you decide the best fit for you business and the best way to reach your target audience.
1. How to Decide if PPC is A Good Fit for Your Business:
To decide if PPC is a good fit for your business you will need to assess whether you can afford to be involved. Do you have a budget for paid advertising or do you need to focus on amplifying your organic reach? If you do have a paid budget is it best to spend the entire sum on PPC or are there other paid tactics you have to account for?
PPC is an effective option if you want to reach people who are actively searching for terms related to your business. If you decide to create a PPC campaign your budget will be determined by your audience, competition and the types of products/services you wish to drive awareness of.
2. Choose the Best Google PPC Option for Your Strategy:
Why Choose Google Adwords?
Google Adwords helps you get your business found by your target audience who search for specific terms related to your brand, products and content. You can find out how to set up your Google Adwords account and set your budget here. First, let's take a look at the benefits to help you decide if Adwords will help you achieve your digital marketing objectives and enable you to reach your ideal audience.
Benefits:
• Use the free Google Adwords Keyword Planner to help you research the longtail keywords your target audience are searching for - use these terms to create your Adwords campaigns.
• Create compelling ads that deliver the messages and products/services your prospects are searching for.
• Set a daily budget to ensure you don't exceed your allocated spend.
• Reach your customers on whatever device they are searching on - e.g. desktop, mobile or tablet.
• Measure the impact of your campaigns and find out how many people see your ads, the percentage of prospects who click on your ads and the amount of sales you've made as a direct result.
• You can test and tweak your ads at any time and pause and re-start your ads as you see fit.
Why choose the Google Display Network?
The Google Display Network allows you to place your ad in front of the right person at the right time and on the right sections of relevant websites. You'll find everything you need to know about setting up your Google Display Network ads here, but first let's take a look at the benefits to help you decide if it's the right option for you.
Benefits:
• You can choose between an array of ad formats, including text ads, image ads, mobile ads and video ads.
• Target your ads to ensure they reach the right, specified audience of your choice - the topics targeting feature enables you to place your ads on websites related to your chosen topics.
• There are a selection of pre-made ads you can choose and customise or you can choose to build your own ads from scratch.
• The automatic bidding tool automatically sets the budget on your ads for you - the budget is set to ensure your ad achieves the maximum number of clicks for the lowest cost.
• Reach and frequency reporting allows you to track and measure your ad's performance and enables you to discover how many people your ad reached and how many people clicked it.
Stay tuned next week for the final article in the series, where I'll explain how to measure the success of your digital marketing campaigns.
Ian Dodson is co-founder and Director, Digital Marketing Institute
