Those who have never invested in online ads of any kind, PPC might be an alienated term for them. But we bet, once you find how effective it can be for your business, you’ll hardly ignore it or think ‘why didn’t I use it earlier?’
Businesses love PPC because of its benefits and effective results. And today we’re going to list them for you so that you can make the right choice. Before we jump right to why you should use PPC, let’s understand what actually it is.
What is PPC?
PPC is an online advertising model where the advertisers pay only when their ad gets a click. And therefore, pay per click.
It is an inorganic model that several advertisers use to buy clicks on their websites or landing pages. And search engine marketing, which involves platforms like Google and Bing, is one of the most popular forms of PPC.
The reason is that most of the buyers, who have the purchasing intent, research on Google or other search engines before purchasing.
Here’s a word that you will often hear in the world of PPC, and it is CPC. Here’s what it means;
Cost Per Click (CPC): As the term indicates, it is the specific cost the advertiser will pay when the ad gets a click.
And now you know what PPC and CPC is, let’s explore how it works. And then we’ll see how effective it can be as part of your advertising strategy.
How Does PPC Advertising Works?
The PPC advertising model remains the same across all platforms such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, Facebook, Amazon, etc.
And these platforms include various ad formats so that businesses can target their users effectively. The ad formats include;
- Search Ads
- Display ads
- Video ads
- Shopping ads
- Social Media ads
Search ads and social media ads are the two most popular ad formats in PPC. And before we talk about how effective these ads are, let’s learn how PPC actually works.
Let’s understand this with an example of a search ad.
Search ads are the ads that you see on search engines like Google. They are mainly positioned at the top of organic search results mentioned with ‘Ad’ written before them.
Imagine three brands that want to appear at the top of search results — for the keyword, email marketing tool — using search engine ads or Google ads.
So, whenever a user searches with a keyword, Google will trigger an auction with respect to that keyword and arrange the ads in the best first manner. As the ad gets a click, the advertiser will be charged according to cost per click, and the user will land on the advertiser’s landing page.
However, the challenge for Google will be how to arrange three of them in the auction, especially when all of them are willing to spend more to appear at the top.
That’s where the selection criteria comes into play, which is uniform among all of the PPC ad platforms.
Google uses two factors to rank ads on its page; (i) CPC and (ii) Quality Score
CPC: As the name suggests, CPC, i.e., cost per click. You have to decide how much you’re willing to pay for every click your ad gets. An advertiser can set the CPC to maximum, but the final cost will depend on the second factor, i.e., Quality Score.
Quality Score: The higher the quality score, the higher ad relevance will be. Here, the quality score of an ad depends on the followings;
- Expected CTR (Click Through Rate) of an ad,
- Relevancy of the keyword to an ad, and
- Landing page’s quality
However, this isn’t a complete blueprint of what Google considers to rank ads in the search results. But a general rule of thumb is, every PPC platform considers these factors to rank ads.
That’s it for search ads and how PPC works. Let’s see how effective PPC is.
Is PPC Really Effective?
When it comes to PPC, the choice of the right keywords, CPC, and your landing page’s copy can set up the stage for your campaign’s success.
According to Word Lead, paid advertising produces 200% ROI — $2 for every $1 spent. And it’s the success rate of PPC that makes it a strategic advertising move.
Here’s what makes PPC an effective strategy for your business.
PPC is Fast
If you rely on organic rankings for your business, you never know when your business will take a flight. But that doesn’t mean we are demeaning SEO in any way. It takes time, and we all know that.
However, those who want quick results and willing to pay for them must not hold themselves back. PPC allows you to act fast in such conditions.
You can quickly set up your account on the platform, and once your campaign is eligible for auction (depending on the factors we discussed above), you can see the results rolling.
Due to its quick nature, PPC has a huge role in the advertising and marketing industry.
Provides Complete Liquidity — Give You Control Over Ads
It’s your target keywords, their competition level, and business industry that account for your cost-per-click. Since PPC allows you to have control, you can strategize accordingly and choose other keywords that target effectively and lower your cost-per-click.
PPC also gives you complete control over your campaign. If you think you need to pause your campaign for specific days, do so. Suppose you feel that your visitors are likely to shop at night hours, set your campaign’s time accordingly.
There is no other advertising model that’s so liquid and yet provides excellent results.
Offers Higher Return on Investment (ROI)
As we discussed above, PPC allows you enough control over your ad campaign. It indeed depends on your industry and the competition level of keywords, but you can always strategize to lower your cost-per-click.
According to stats, the max cost-per-click can go as $50, and the least could be $0.05. But if your one sale values $400 with a cost of $12, then it isn’t a bad return at all.
And when you leverage retargeting, it’s like a cherry on the cake. 70% of marketers look for search retargeting primarily to build brand awareness — says IAB.
Easy to Measure and Easy to Track — in Real-Time
What makes PPC even easier is it’s easy to measure and easy to track nature. There are many metrics right at your fingertips that allow you to track your campaign and make improvements in real-time.
Some of the valuable metrics that can help you comprehend your campaigns and ad spend are CTC (Click Through Rate), CPA (Cost per Action or Conversion), and Conversion rate.
By analyzing these metrics, you can make changes to your campaign in real-time. For example, if your CTC is low, then you have to experiment with your ad text to see what works well.
Target Users Incredibly and Effectively
You might have seen those billboards on the roads in your city. The problem with those billboards is that they cannot target your audience specifically, whereas PPC can.
Every business has a specific audience to cater to, and PPC allows you to target them depending upon their demographics, interests, what device they use, their location, etc. Not only this, you can improve your targeting by retargeting the visitors that visited your website before but didn’t take any action.
Moreover, this incredible ad targeting also helps you eliminate wasted ad spend, which your billboard can’t.
Different Ad Formats for Different Businesses
Remember the list that we shared above regarding different ad formats? That’s one of the keys that make PPC effective.
When you have different goals and different businesses, you can choose different ad formats for your campaigns. If you have an eCommerce store, use shopping ads. If your product or service is about visuals or your audience is an active YouTube user, use display ads or video ads.
All you need is some retrospection and the right decision to see the results from PPC.
Captures Almost Overall Internet Users
There are 3.96 billion people who use social media, and that’s a huge percentage — almost 50% — of the world’s population, which is 7.9 billion.
There’s no way that your audience cannot be on social media, and when you leverage social media ads, you’ve got their attention.
So, when you consider search ads and social media ads in your advertisement strategy, you make the most out of your PPC campaign by targeting overall Internet users.
Conclusion
There’s hardly any other model that could match PPC effectiveness — it is fast, works in real-time, and delivers quality ROI.
All you need to do is give it your time to understand the nitty-gritty of audience targeting, retargeting, selecting the right keywords while keeping an eye on Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
There’s an abundance of different platforms that you can use to run your PPC campaigns. See where your audience is and utilize the best of your PPC campaigns today. If you need any help regarding PPC services in India. You can always contact us.