What is PPC Marketing?

Do you struggle with advertising and marketing efforts? Are you looking to maximize your business efforts online? If so, Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing might be for you!

Pay Per Click (PPC) is one of the very best tools to attract the qualified visitors you need to your website. Since 90% of all local transactions begin with a search, combining sustained advertising and marketing efforts with the relevancy of Organic SEO, will lead people to find what they are looking for.

Defining PPC

Pay Per Click marketing, is a form of advertising that is a sub-category of search engine marketing (SEM). PPC lets advertisers like you target web visitors with relevant ads when people search for particular phrases. Unlike organic listings, where it can take a long time and a lot of creativity to prove to Google your website should be at the top of a particular search, PPC allows you to say to search engines: “I know my audience is searching for XYZ – put my ad up” and within minutes you’re getting in front of people looking for the answers to the questions that your product or service solves – at EXACTLY the moment you’re looking for them. PPC ads will be displayed on Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) and on pages throughout the web that customers visit after leaving the company page.

For example, an ad that shows up on Facebook after you recently searched for something like ‘Nike sneakers,’ I bet you have wondered how the ad for that specific Nike sneaker you were searching for showed up on Facebook… PPC!

How does PPC work?

In short, these are the 12 steps to guide you through the PPC marketing process:

1. Define Your Campaigns’ Objective: What is the purpose of your investment in PPC ads? How will you commit to tracking the effectiveness of your goals?
2. Define & Create Customer Profiles: Who is your target audience? Demographics? What kind of language is your audience is using to communicate their informational and transactional intent?
3. Research and Brainstorm keywords: They are the driving force of PPC marketing campaigns and must be selected very carefully! Brand terms, competitor terms, product/service terms, and related/ generic terms can be used as keywords and need to be given consideration.
4. Campaign Setup: Google AdWords – http://adwords.google.com
5. Focus on Organization: Keeping products, services, brand, and competitor’s terms separated into different campaigns will optimize your PPC efforts and keep you organized!
6. Leverage specifics: (broad match, exact match, phrase match, location, etc.)
7. Negative Keywords: These keywords eliminate wasteful ad spending (won’t trigger your ad to show up for irrelevant searches).
8. Create Compelling Ad Copy: Make your ad catchy and include as many “keywords” as possible.
9. Create Landing Pages: This should not be your homepage! Your landing page should focus on one thing, or a call-to-action! (Ex: Sale, Promotion, New Product)
10. Target Your Ads: Use all of types of keywords for your targeting strategy. Bid least for broad match, bid most for exact match, continuously improve keywords for relevancy, and organize ads by keyword type and category!
11. Combine PPC and with Organic SEO: By combining the two, you will take up more “search engine real estate” and improve your chances of increasing online conversions up to 70%!
12. Track, Evaluate, and Refine Your Campaigns: Pay Per Click or PPC marketing is an ongoing process and needs to be monitored regularly (at least once a month) for accuracy and relevancy. Ads with a lower CTR (Click Through Rate) might need to be revised for greater performance results. By using search term reports, you can identify which keywords are best for you and your campaigns.

Why Should YOU Use PPC?

• It is a great way to advertise! Once we set a client up with Pay Per Click marketing, we’ve NEVER had them leave. Because it works!
• It will reduce acquisition costs Over the past 10 years of using PPC at Atilus, our clients see a 900% increase in sales and leads mainly because of Pay Per Click marketing efforts.
• It will reduce conventional advertising costs such as TV and Radio. In one particular case we drove the cost/lead down from $800+ to $160 through this form of advertising alone.
• It will increase Brand Awareness, the whole point of advertising! People searching for a particular product or service may not even know
  your business exists. With PPC, you can get your business in front of your audience’s face.
• It will help you broaden you Organic Search Campaign. PPC marketing and Google AdWords in particular, provides tools and analytics
  so you can research your audience and enhance your actual website with relevant keywords and keyword phrases that search engines can understand.
• It will get in front of your audience at precisely the moment they are looking for your services! Using analytics in particular can assist in finding the words and phrases that your audiences are searching for hence, in their face!
• Overall, PPC will help gain more high quality business! By reaching out to the people who are searching for you and may not even know it, PPC basically introduces you to each other so you can conduct business!

Want to know more? Feel free to DOWNLOAD OUR FREE WHITEPAPER about PPC marketing or VISIT OUR BLOG and TOP 10 INTERNET MARKETING BLOGS.