What is Pay Per Click Marketing?

What PPC Advertising actually is and more importantly what it can do for your business

What is PPC?

PPC stands for pay-per-click, this is a type of internet marketing whereby advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is displayed to a user and then clicked.

To understand the difference between PPC and a regular (organic) Google search, it’s easiest to think of PPC as way of buying visits to your website, rather than attempting to ‘earn’ those visits organically via a regular Google search.

What’s Search Engine Advertising?

Search engine advertising, most commonly through Google AdWords, is the most popular form of PPC. Advertisers place bids for ad placement in the sponsored links section of Google’s search results, these are always the first links at the top of the page so having your business appear in the top listings represents the best opportunity for visibility.

Each time the advert is clicked and someone gets sent through to a website or landing page (i.e. the page you first ‘land’ on after clicking a link), the advertiser has to pay a small fee. When this is done correctly, that fee is trivial as the visit is worth a great deal more than what the advertiser pays for it.

E.g. let’s say the advertiser pays £4 for a click, but this click then nets your business a £500 sale, well your business has just made a hefty profit!  

Why Do You Need PPC?

Pay per click advertising can generate the right type of traffic right away. If you spend enough, get top placement and pick the right keywords – potential customers will see you very quickly.

PPC advertising is also very nimble – where other forms of marketing can lag days or even weeks behind changing audience behaviour, pay per click campaigns can be adjusted in hours or days. This means you get unparalleled ability to adjust your campaign to market conditions.

Why Do You Need To Be Careful With PPC?

If done incorrectly, PPC bidding can cost a fortune. ‘Ego’ bidding, whereby a marketer or executive in the business wants to appear first in the listings no matter what cost can ultimately waste thousands of pounds – not to mention highly searched phrases always progressively get more expensive.

Poor traffic can suck the life out of your campaign. Many marketers will take traffic from deep and dark corners of the internet to prop up their traffic figures – these vanity metrics don’t mean anything to your business and are simply costing you money. If you want to make profit, you must be concerned with conversions and your return on investment.

How Do You Get the Best Results?

Doing PPC correctly, especially through Google’s platform AdWords, requires a lot of technical knowledge and understanding of Google’s platforms. To create a winning AdWords campaign you need to ensure you’ve:

• • Researched and selected the right keywords

• • Organised those keywords into well-ordered campaigns and targeted ad groups

• • Set up a landing page that is optimised specifically for conversions (i.e. clicks that then lead to good enquiries or sales).

• • Created relevant, intelligently targeted PPC campaigns to ensure you are showing your adverts to the right audience.

• Stay on top of Google’s (frequent) changes and make adjustments to your campaign accordingly.

Do these steps correctly and Google will view your ads as being useful and satisfying for users. As Google’s number one priority is user experience on its platforms, it will then reward you with cheaper clicks on your adverts – meaning more profit for your business.

But beware, Google often changes and adds in additional features to its AdWords service – to get the best results it’s important you stay on top of these changes and do not fall behind the rest of the pack.

Google gives Google Partners early access to new additional features and specific guidance on how to use them – so if you want to ensure you’re at the cutting edge of advertising, you want to ensure you’re working with a Google Partner.

Why Choose Bluespark Digital?

As a Google Partner, Bluespark Digital work closely with Google to stay one step ahead of the competition. We optimise obsessively, turn your website into a money making machine and get the right prospects to your business at the right time.

We aren’t tied to any platforms, our strategy is to use whatever platform necessary to make your campaign wildly profitable. We also use data-driven insights from our advanced analytics tools to continually improve your campaigns – we only make changes to your campaigns that make you money.

Are you ready for your business to make you more money? Get your free strategy session now.

We Have Google Working On Your Campaigns

As a trusted Google Partner, we have dedicated Account Managers and Campaigns specialist within Google who will be working on your campaigns. Unsurprisingly they have access to information, tool and know-how which isn’t publicly available. This means we can get your results faster and even get you access to new product features which give you an edge over the competition, long before they’ve even heard about them.