Have you heard a little about PPC marketing and want to know more? or do you already know and want to try running but not sure where to start? You've come to the right place!
PPC, which stands for pay per click, is a paid digital advertising model that requires advertisers to pay a fee every time their ad gets a click. PPC can help advertisers target very specific potential customers, for example based on location or interests. Because of this, many businesses or brands include PPC in their marketing strategy.
In the field of digital marketing, marketers are usually familiar with PPC, especially if the role is related to SEM (Search Engine Marketing). Currently, many platforms offer PPC strategies, such as Google Ads, Twitter Ads, Facebook Ads, YouTube Ads, and many others. Even so, Google Ads is the most popular PPC platform that many advertisers use.
PPC ads can also appear in a variety of formats and sizes, such as video, text and images. These creatives appear on search engines, websites, social media, and many others. In this article we will discuss what PPC is. Starting from the definition, types, advantages and disadvantages, to the steps to run it and how you start!
What is the pay-per-click?
Pay Per Click or commonly abbreviated as PPC is a digital marketing model where advertisers will pay every time one of the advertisements being run is clicked by the audience. This digital marketing strategy works by allowing advertisers to bid on certain keywords or phrases they want their ads to appear on.
This means that when a user performs a search for one of the targeted keywords, the run ad will appear among the top results. When a user clicks on the ad, the advertiser is then charged a fee. Therefore, one of the PPC models is often found on search engines.
How does Pay-Per-Click Works?
Each PPC platform (such as Google Ads and Bing Ads) has different ad formats, including search ads, video ads, display ads, and others.
However, regardless of the advertising platform, most of the ways PPC works have similar rules. The process is as follows:
- Advertisers register accounts through the platforms they wish to use.
- Advertisers start creating advertisements with goals or objectives they want to achieve, adding keywords, and so on.
- Advertisers set the maximum amount they are willing to pay for each click.
- Ads will participate in an auction with other advertisers bidding on similar keywords.
- The auction determines the order in which ads are displayed and the winning ad is ranked at the top of the search engines.
- Advertisers pay to the PPC platform every time someone clicks on their ad.
What are the Advantages of using PPC?
PPC is a method that has various advantages so there's no harm in trying it for business owners. Some of the advantages of PPC are as follows.
1. Get faster results
The traffic generated from this ad is very fast. This is because there are quite a lot of search engine users every day. So, you can get advertising results relatively quickly too.
2. Can set the target audience
You can set how many audiences you target according to the costs you want to spend. The more targets you want to achieve, the higher the costs you will incur, friend. You can also set narrow targets for your ads so that they are more precise on target. For example, you focus on a certain location according to your business goals.
3. Can adjust the budget
Because you can set the target you want to achieve, so you can adjust it to your budget. You don't need a high budget, you can get the target you want. Apart from that, you only have to pay when your ad is clicked by the audience, so it's even more economical on your pocket, right, friend?
4. Provide quality web traffic
As previously explained, PPC is a method where you can regulate who the advertising targets for your product are.
That way, the traffic you get can be said to be quality, because the traffic comes from people who are interested and want to use the product or service you offer. So the chance of conversion will be even higher.
5. Not affected by the algorithm
Even though various social media platforms and search engines continue to update their algorithms to improve services for their users, PPC will not be affected by this. So, PPC advertising is the right thing to convey various advertisements to potential consumers or audiences.
Disadvantages of Pay Per Click (PPC)
Cognitive SEO and Search Engine Journal also mention several disadvantages of PPC, including:
1. Expensive long term strategy
If used as a long-term business strategy, companies must continue to prepare a special PPC budget. When a company stops paying, ads will also stop showing.
Wanting ads to continue to be visible on SERP means that the PPC advertising budget must always be spent by the company.
2. Visibility is lost when you stop paying
One of the main disadvantages of PPC is that ads will no longer be in the top search engine positions when the company stops paying for advertising.
This is different from a content marketing strategy which can still be on the SERP as long as the content remains relevant to the keywords.
3. Likely to produce low ROI
One of the disadvantages of PPC advertising for advertisers is that it produces low ROI. PPC ROI is calculated for the short term through the amount of product sales revenue minus the amount of costs incurred for PPC.
This means that every time a company stops paying for advertising, ROI will not increase in the long term.
4. Not suitable for increasing brand awareness
The goal of PPC is to sell products/services quickly. Because the way it works is by paying advertising platforms, PPC strategies are less suitable for increasing brand awareness.
Companies still need a content strategy (such as social media or blogs) that can increase brand awareness among customers.
What Types of PPC are there?
After knowing what PPC is, the next thing you need to understand is the types of PPC. As the number of digital platforms increases, the types of PPC also increase. There are many types of PPC that you can run. Some of them are:
1. Search Marketing
One of the most common types of PPC is Search Marketing on Google. The way it works is that ads will appear to users every time they search for certain keywords that you target. For example, the keyword "digital marketing bootcamp".
To run this type of PPC, you have to set up a campaign by writing ad text, selecting relevant keywords, and choosing the appropriate landing page on your website.
2. Display Advertising
Next, the type of PPC is display advertising. If you have ever entered a news site and found an ad in the form of a banner or poster, then that is one of the ad placements from Display Advertising. This type of PPC displays more visual content, so your image and video assets must be attractive..
3. Social Media Advertising
As the name suggests, this type of PPC is on social media platforms. You can choose to place your social media ads in various inventories. For example, on Instagram, you can choose whether your ad will be displayed on home, stories or reels.
4. Google Shopping
Google Shopping is an advertising service provided by Google which contains product information, product images, prices and online shop links. This type of PPC is usually used by e-commerce on search pages like Google.
5. Remarketing Advertising
What is PPC remarketing advertising? PPC remarketing is a strategy where you retarget audiences who have visited product pages or who have transacted there. This type of PPC is considered very effective because the target audience is definitely interested in the product and has a connection.
This PPC strategy uses cookies on users' browsers to show certain ads based on their previous online actions. For example, a user searching for digital marketing may see a display ad for the latest digital marketing bootcamp deals.
6. Gmail Sponsored Promotions
Another type of PPC is a type of marketing that makes it easier for you to reach various platforms, namely Gmail Sponsored Promotion. You can do PPC advertising via Gmail, which will later be sent to users with the hashtag "Ad" as a marker.
What is an example of cost per click?
The most popular example of pay per click is Google Ads. With this platform, a business can bid on certain keywords used to advertise on the Google search engine. When companies have managed campaigns and PPC payments, their website can be ranked at the top of search results.
The company will pay Google every time a visitor clicks on the website. With the Google Ads pay per click platform, advertisers can also customize ads to reach certain segments or groups, including based on geographic area, interests, and so on).
Great flexibility and control in Google Ads helps businesses grow sales and revenue. PPC can also be implemented on various social media platforms. Examples of using pay per click advertising on social media are Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, and LinkedIn Ads.
How do I Run a PPC?
Here are the ways and steps to run PPC properly:
1. Create Marketing Goals
Defining goals at the start is the main step that must be taken every time you want to run any digital marketing strategy, including PPC. This aims to enable you to measure the success of your advertisement and serve as material for subsequent evaluation.
By determining marketing objectives, it will make it easier for you to determine the platform and type of advertising that best suits your business's marketing needs.
Marketing goals can vary for each company, but the most commonly used in PPC include increasing site traffic, bringing in prospects, driving sales activity, and increasing brand awareness which is supported by optimizing social media or display ads.
2. Conduct Audience Research
Knowing where your audience is is very important to make it easier for you to reach them. Therefore, before actually running PPC, you must do audience research first. This audience research is also useful so that you know their interests and behavior in cyberspace.
By knowing various information about your audience, it will be easy for you to determine which platform is suitable for use and what your advertising strategy will be.
3. Choose the platform to be used
As explained above, PPC has several types and platforms that you can use. But of course you don't want to spend your entire marketing budget running PPC. So you need to choose which platform is most appropriate for you to use. This is adapted to audience research that has been carried out previously.
4. Determine the keywords you want to use
Keywords are one of the components that support your PPC success. The right keywords can be said to be the backbone of PPC. Therefore, you must do research first regarding what keywords are the most suitable and most searched for, so that PPC is more optimal.
5. Determine advertising costs
Please remember, the results from PPC will not betray the PPC marketing budget spent. The bigger your budget, the bigger the audience you can reach. In this way, there are more chances of clicking on the ad.
6. Create a quality landing page
The landing page or first page that users go to after clicking on an ad is one of the main things you have to pay attention to. If the landing page is good and easy to understand, there is a possibility that the audience will stay there for a long time and continue buying the product. On the other hand, if your landing page is not attractive, then users will leave your landing page quickly.
7. Create Interesting Content
Another component that is no less important when running PPC is content assets. You have to create content as creative as possible. The more creative the content is made, the more attractive the ad will be to users, which means that it is more likely to get clicks.
Closing
Pay per click is a type of marketing that involves paying for an ad every time a visitor clicks on the ad. In other words, companies will only pay for ads when visitors actually click on them.
With PPC, it is easier for companies to reach specific advertising targets, measure results, manage advertising budgets, and get faster advertising results.
Online marketing strategies are currently very diverse. One of them that we have discussed is PPC. So in conclusion, PPC is an extension of Pay Per Click, which is an online advertising model where users need to pay for each click.
It is important to implement an online marketing strategy, especially in the digital era like today. So, if you want to know tips about other businesses, don't forget to read various interesting information on Erzedka's blog, OK, friend!