What are the Top PPC Ideas Everyone Needs to Know?

“Pay per click” can feel like a phrase that drains cash just by speaking it. The concept of paying a company every time your advertisement gets clicked can be galling to those who know little of how PPC actually works.

The facts show that PPC is actually a very fair and breathable atmosphere, one that uses money but doesn’t prioritise it over legitimacy and quality content. Google ad services can be your best friend or biggest foe depending on the work you put into it. 

First Page Digital can help you with a good ads campaign, but if you feel up to the task, or want to know more about what we’d be doing for you, read on for a full guide to PPC marketing!

What You Need to Know

It’s always a good idea to understand PPC marketing before you go ahead with it, and to prepare accordingly. You want to know three main things before you start:

-How much money you have in your marketing budget.

-How much competition you have.

-What your audience is searching for and when.

This takes time, and due diligence. These ads are going to cost you money every time they’re clicked, so you need to turn those clicks into investments. Digital marketing needs thorough research at the best of times but when you’re getting potentially hundreds of clicks per day – all at your expense, then you need to be sure that the expenditure is worth it.

Concerning Budget

You have to spend money to make money, but you can only make money if you spend it on the right things. With a little planning and research, there’s no reason PPC can’t be the right thing. If you look at your marketing budget and see that you don’t have enough for PPC, it might be prudent to put that money into more organic traffic from elsewhere like SEO.

However, if you do have the money to spend then your budget needs to go into two main things. First there’s your “bid”. The way that Google ads services works is that it measures your bid and your quality score (which we’ll get into shortly) against those of your competitors, and ranks your ads accordingly. It’s an elegant blend of capitalism and SEO that creates an innovative and fair advertising sphere.

However, the most direct way of improving the likelihood that your paid ad will be displayed at the top search result is by raising the amount of money you’re willing to pay Google everytime someone clicks your ad. The more money you bid, the more likely your ad is to be displayed favourably. However, beware of this. As stated, money isn’t everything in the world of PPC, and too much bidding for too little of a conversion rate may spell disaster.

Yet, trusting that you’re able to find a comfortable amount to bid, the second thing you want to do with your marketing budget is pour it into good content.

Content marketing is an absolute must these days. Not only does good content that’s made well and provides relevant information to your audience improve your SEO and your brand’s image in the eyes of your audience, but it also raises your quality score – which is the second metric that Google uses to rate the appearance of paid ads in search results, and in a lot of cases can be the deciding factor between you or your competitor’s ad getting displayed.

If you don’t have much of a budget and you want to pursue PPC marketing, then it would be a better idea to set yourself at a low bid, and funnel your money into content. Not only does good content raise your SEO rank, and quality score (thereby improving your ad’s chances of being displayed), it makes you trustworthy, and a source of information to your consumers. There’s a reason that content creation has taken over the realm of digital marketing over the last few decades, and that’s because it works.

Concerning Competition

Typically industries with higher competitiveness have higher CPC or “cost per click” which, you guessed it, is how much you’re paying up every click you get. It is integral that you understand whether or not you’re able to compete with your competition, both in terms of budget, and your content. Making PPC successful is all about making sure that your maximising the amount of money you get, while minimising the amount of money you hand over.

Think of it this way – the best in the business can afford PPC, because everytime someone clicks their ad, 9 times out of 10, that click leads to a sale or engagement of services. If 9 times out of 10 someone clicks your ad and doesn’t end up buying something, you’re going to be haemorrhaging money really quickly.

If you can’t compete through money, then prove your skills to the public. Offer deals, workshops, make videos and blog articles establishing you as an authority. Show people that you’re willing to put your money where your mouth is, make your brand a trustworthy personality with all the answers, and soon people will be paying your PPC for you.

Concerning your Audience’s Search Habits

Google ads begin with consumer queries, that is, the keywords or phrases they punch into Google to find you. It’s really impossible to stress just how important knowing this information is.

Google ads services allow you to specify what queries you want to associate with, how closely you want to match to those queries, and what queries you specifically do not want to associate with or match for. All of this information is important, because it allows you to search for quality leads that are more likely to engage your services and increase your conversion rate – or, in layman’s terms, it increases how likely someone will pay you for something!

Not only this, but another feature within Google ads services is the ability to specify a time that your advertisement will appear. This means you can really specifically target your consumers. Find out what lifestyle brackets your audience fit into, find out when those brackets are browsing, and specify your PPC ads to appear only during those times! This minimises cost for you by filtering out excessive clicks with no profit, and ensures that the maximum number of people in your target market will see your ad.

Light Bulb

So while we now have a solid understanding of what exactly is involved in PPC marketing, now is probably time for the “ideas” mentioned in the title.

If you’re planning on running your PPC campaign yourself, then these ideas may help you plan something that will yield far better results. If you think you might be a bit out of your depth with this whole PPC thing, it might be worth checking out the services offered by First Page Digital, one of Australia’s leading marketing professionals. Not only can we help you out with PPC, but we can also audit your website and find out what can be done with your ads to improve them.

If you think you can handle it, however, then read on for some great Google ads tips.

PPC Ad Type

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that there’s only one type of PPC ad. Google ads come in five main forms:

–Search Ads are the most common kind of PPC advertising, and are usually text ads discovered in response to queries on search engines.

–Display Ads are usually graphic-based, and take up real estate on an external, third-party website. 

–Social Media Ads are featured on social pages such as Facebook and Twitter, and can be targeted to show up in the feed of target markets.

–Remarketing is the act of targeting an audience that has already engaged with your brand in some way, whether it be filling out a form or clicking through to your site.

–Google Shopping is a form of PPC specifically useful for ecommerce sites. Depending on your goals, one form of Google ad will be inherently better than the other. Search and Display ads would be better for wanting to build an audience or increase your brand awareness, while a remarketing or socials campaign would be better suited to enhancing the leads you already have, and increasing conversion rate.

Linking to Content

When you set up your PPC ads, you’re going to have to specify which links go where. For a long time, people would just link to their home page or “about us”. Recently we’ve discovered this isn’t the most effective use of the links we put out on the net. 

Rather than linking to a common page that just sets up customers for having to explore your site themselves, you want to direct them to some kind of content you’ve produced. A photo gallery, blog post, or video gives consumers a much more engaging picture of who your brand is and what kind of work you do, than your homepage will.

Not only that but it shows your audience what you can do, it puts them where they need to be to immediately see the best of you – and after all isn’t that what marketing is about?

Countdown Timer

Google ads have a nifty little feature that works wonders – a countdown. Enabling a countdown on your ads increases a sense of urgency in your customers, and makes them more reactionary to the call to action in your ad copy. If someone is looking for lawn mowers, and your ad displays that you’re having a special on lawn mowers and there’s only 2 days left to collect on it they’re likely to click on your ad. People react more when time is ticking.

These timers can be for special deals, grand openings, the launching of a new product, even new content posts.

Price Extensions

One of the reasons content marketing works so well compared to other digital marketing methods is that it makes your company or brand looks transparent. People like to know that they’re being treated fairly and that they can trust the people selling them the things they need or want.

To this end, there are a variety of extensions available to increase your apparent transparency at a glance with your Google ad, but one of the most effective is the price extension.

This extension allows your Google ad to display a product or service that you offer, and how much for. This takes the hard work out of comparison shopping for your potential clients, and gives you the appearance of being honest and up front.

The Round-Up

PPC marketing can be one of the best things to happen to your business, but just like anything it requires work.

There are a lot of tools at your disposal to increase the effectiveness of a PPC campaign, what’s included here is a basic introduction and some Google ads tips that people generally overlook because of inexperience. However, that’s where First Page Digital is uniquely placed.

As one of Australia’s leading marketing agencies, our experience in digital marketing is almost peerless, and PPC marketing is a particular specialty of ours. If you don’t believe us, check out our learning centre, or give us a call on 1300 479 226 and we can have a chat about your business and what PPC can do for you.

Whatever you decide the facts are facts, PPC marketing and shopping ads when used well can help you generate an audience, increase conversion rate, and promote your business like almost nothing else can. Just remember, when engaging in PPC marketing, it’s fundamentally important to remember how you’re ranked (bid + quality = $$), as well as a few simple ideas to help you get out on top.