Pay Per Click
We strongly believe in a slow and steady approach to SEO, but sometimes you need to be in the number one spot sooner than later. PPC (Paid Advertising) is usually the most effective way to bring in leads early when launching an SEO campaign.
Pay Per Click, The Basics and Your Business
One of the most popular types of online advertising is pay per click (PPC) advertising. The name itself provides a general idea of how this model of advertising works – you’re paying a certain amount every time a web user clicks on your ad. But if you want to get the best return on investment (ROI) from your PPC ads, you need more than just a general understanding. Here’s all you need to know about PPC ads, from the intricacies of how they work to getting started on your first campaign.
Why Your Business Needs Pay Per Click Advertising
Bringing traffic to your business’s website is essential to its success. More traffic means more leads that you can convert into paying customers.
There are plenty of ways to bring free traffic to your business. Using SEO techniques can increase your search engine rankings, boosting organic traffic. Posting on your business’s social media accounts is another way to bring more people to your site.
Both methods take time, though, and may not bring in as much traffic as your business needs. Another issue is that some of the traffic won’t be the type of traffic you want. People could visit your site because it shows up in the rankings for a certain search term, without having any intention to make a purchase.
Online advertising solves these problems. When you run an online ad with a search engine, it will show up on the first page of the search results. You can target specific search terms to ensure that your business’s paid traffic consists of potential customers.
The two most popular online advertising models are PPC advertising and cost per thousand impressions (CPM) advertising. With CPM advertising, you pay a certain amount for every 1,000 people that see your ad, whether they click on it or not.
The obvious downside with CPM advertising is that you could pay for it without anyone clicking your ad and coming to your site. PPC advertising is the safer option because it guarantees that you’ll get people visiting your site.
Where You Can Advertise
There’s no shortage of advertising networks that allow you to run PPC ads. Google AdWords is by far the largest. With Google AdWords, you’re able to run ads at the top of the search results for specific keywords you’ve chosen or on private websites if the webmaster wants to run ads.
Bing Ads is another popular option for search engine advertising, allowing you to run your PPC ads on Bing, Yahoo and the other search engines that Microsoft has. Google may be the most popular search engine, but don’t rule out Bing because of that. The cost per ad is usually cheaper than it is on Google AdWords for the same keywords.
Many of the most popular social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, offer PPC advertising. One of the advantages of Facebook ads is that you can set up your preferences so only users in certain demographics or with certain interests see your ads.
The downside with social media advertising is that you may end up with more people clicking your ads who have no intention of buying anything from you, because people typically don’t go on social networks to shop.
The Cost of Your Ads
You’re paying per click, but how much money will each click cost you?
There is no standard cost for paid traffic. The ad network you choose plays a part, as do the keywords you target.
Google and Bing each use a bidding system for your PPC ads. When you search for the keywords you want in their Keyword Planner tools, they’ll include suggested bids. You can then bid the maximum amount you wish to pay for each click.
Your maximum bid can be less than the suggested amount, but this could result in your ads not running. Google, in particular, sets up a scoring system to determine ad placement. It gives your ad a quality score and multiplies this by the amount you bid. It then compares this number to the number of other companies that bid to determine which ad receives the top placement. Depending on the number of the ad directly beneath yours, the amount you pay could be lower than what you bid.
Getting the Best Return on Investment from Your Ads
There are several essential components to run a successful PPC ad campaign.
You need to target the right people. Let’s say that you’re selling living room furniture. Your target audience is obviously people who want to purchase living room furniture online. Anyone who just wants living room furniture ideas or decorating schemes is wasting your money if they click on one of your ads.
You may target keywords such as “living room furniture under $100,” “living room furniture with free shipping” or “buy living room furniture.” Keyword research is important to find the keywords that will bring your target audience to your site.
Your ad itself needs to create a good first impression and entice people to see what your business offers. It’s smart to hire a copywriter to handle the creation of your ad.
Your business’s site needs an effective landing page that people reach after clicking your ad. Ideally, your landing page will make the conversion, turning leads into paying customers. Again, it’s best to have a copywriter to write this page for you.
Boosting Conversions
Building a landing page and ads that convert is no small feat. Without prior experience, you can spend much of your time and money on failed campaigns.
Getting to the Number One Spot
We make it happen with our carefully crafted three-step process. Using pay-per-click ads, your website will skyrocket to the top of any search result.
- Find the right keywords
Trying to find the right keywords is like looking for a new pair of jeans. They needs to fit right, be affordable and hopefully come with Brett Favre’s personal endorsement. When developing a keyword strategy we steer clear of generic, high competition keywords. Instead we aim for specific, low competition keywords.Dominating the right combination of specific, low competition keywords will always be more powerful and cost effective than throwing money at generic, high competition keywords.
- Pay-per-click and display ads
Once we’ve identified the right keywords for you, we put them to work. Using a tried and true method we identify the lowest cost search engine spots to place your ad. This saves you money and gives your website more traffic than downtown LA during rush hour. - Remarketing
Let’s say a user comes to your website and for some reason doesn’t engage in your services. Well just like Liam Neeson, we have a very particular set of skills. We will look for them, we will find them and we will redirect them to your website.Using remarketing we track everyone’s IP address that visits your website, it sounds really creepy but we promise it’s totally legal. After we track them down we place display ads for your website on other websites they visit. Sometimes we can even place these ads on your competition’s website, making their money work for you.
Whether you’re just getting started with PPC ads or you’re not happy with recent campaign results, Create the Movement “PPC service Provider” can help. We’ll handle your entire PPC campaign to optimize your ads and get the best ROI. Start by providing your site’s URL for our free website audit. We’ll break down your current marketing efforts and build a plan for going forward with PPC ads.
