Online advertising has changed in so many ways over the last few years. One of the major changes that continue to grow, is the opportunity to start a business. If you have a good product, search advertising provides brands a way to appear directly in search results for any number of keywords. You don’t need to wait, you don’t even need a website in some cases. As PPC becomes more and more a staple for online advertising, the value of knowing how to save money on PPC ads continues to grow.
Digital marketing is a form of advertising that has become an incredible source of revenue for businesses. Brands are now shifting to SEO, email marketing, social media marketing, and paid ads (pay per clock) because they represent the highest ROIs in many industries.
Contextual advertising is one of the best ways to make money. While SEO averages a 14.6% return on investment, when done correctly, the average company makes $2 for every $1 they spend on pay-per-click advertising. That’s not a bad return in either method of digital marketing.
What is Pay-Per-Click?
Pay-per-click often referred to as “PPC,” is a simple advertising method in which you pay a search engine for every click made to your website. A paid ad on Google’s search engine is found at the top and bottom of the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Every day, the major search engines process over 5.6 billion search queries. About 83% of all global traffic goes through Google. Placing your website on Google’s search engine is crucial in reaching as many customers as possible.
For your website to be seen and clicked on frequently, it must appear at the top of the search list. If your website ranks anywhere but the first page of a search engine, your website won’t generate too many leads organically. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising changes the game for websites that don’t rank on the first page of Google.
There are no setup fees unless working with an SEO company or PPC specialist. You only pay for traffic when someone clicks on your advertisement. That is why it is known as “Pay-Per-Click.” Note: Most PPC specialists charge a monthly fee based on the size of your campaign.
Every day, millions of people around the world use pay-per-click advertising campaigns. With the expansion of online businesses and the growth of online companies, the ads of almost anyone on the planet can be seen on the search engines like Google from anywhere in the world(or social media platforms, as they too are considered search engines).
Pay-per-click is not to be confused with banner advertisements. For example, you could use a product like WooCommerce banner images to promote a product or service of yours on your website (or someone else’s) and not pay for every click. You may, however, have to pay another website owner a fee for advertising on their site. This type of payment structure is usually a monthly or yearly fee and NOT per click.
How to earn more money with your Pay-Per-Click Ad Campaign
The following tips explain how you can get the most bang for your buck with your PPC advertising campaigns.
#1. Focus on niche keywords with modifiers
Boost conversions and sales by only including niche keywords with modifiers in your PPC campaign. Long-tail keywords (3 words or more) allow you to narrow your focus to a specific audience that’s more likely to buy from you.
For example, if a retailer selling Nike sneakers for girls chooses to use a generic word like “shoes” as their keyword, they would end up paying a lot more money for the same number of sales than someone using targeted search phrases. The reason is it’s difficult to reach a target audience without keyword modifiers.
Everyone looking for shoes, in general, will click on the ad. Therefore, a lot of money gets wasted. Men might click on the ad, women looking for dress shoes might click on the ad, and literally, anyone that searches “shoes.”
One-word search terms tend to have a large search volume but do not convert well because they have a broad focus with too many searchers that have different “search intent.”
Search Intent: The underlying intent of a user when they use a search term in a search query.
Instead, if the advertiser were to specifically use the search phrase “Nike sneakers for girls,” the bid price might be significantly higher BUT the average cost per conversion will go down significantly. This means more sales in fewer clicks from an audience that is specifically searching for the product being advertised.
#2. Pick the right network
Choosing the right network is one of the first things you should focus on if you want to keep your ad spend reasonably. The fact is that different media networks are better for certain niches and all of them have different volumes of users flowing through daily.
For example, if you’re selling kids’ toys, you won’t do as well on LinkedIn as you would on Facebook! LinkedIn is much better for B2B products and services and is generally a corporate audience suitable for higher ticket items. It’s also an older demographic. Facebook, however, has the largest network of all social media platforms so the reach you have is larger. This makes the likelihood of finding the right audience much higher.
#3. Analyze and adjust
This is another important point when starting a PPC campaign. Any advertising campaign may, at some point, for any number of reasons, be ineffective. Therefore, it is crucial to analyze your statistics to identify why the ads aren’t producing sales.
There are loads of informative statistics you can go through to figure out what’s happening with your campaign. Here are a few standard cues to look for:
Bounce rate: If your bounce rate is very high-your ad may not reflect your offering. If people land on your ad and “bounce” back they are not engaging with the content you provided. In this case, you need to change the ad or change your landing page.
Time spent on page: The time people spend on your ad may indicate the level of interest as well. If they’re reading your content all the way through and not converting-you need to place more calls to action on your landing page. Tell your audience what to do to convert them from a visitor to clients.
Low # of impressions: If your ad is not getting shown very often it’s time to go over your keywords and see what search volume you’re getting from them. You may need to add more keywords, expand your reach and increase the size of your audience.
A low number of impressions could also mean you have poor ad quality and are getting pushed back by other advertisers. In this situation, you need to edit your ad to be more competitive with the ads that are consistently appearing on the first page for important terms.
You can counteract your low ad quality with a higher budget or cost per acquisition but that’s not a great strategy when you should be trying to reduce the CPA.
#4. Choose your audience carefully
A common problem among inexperienced advertisers is they don’t target their ads very precisely. To improve efficiency, use the pay-per-click information features that let you control who sees your ads.
Businesses that operate in a hyper-local market are going to have a lot of wasted ad spend if they’re not targeting specific cities, zip codes, or postal codes.
For example, physiotherapists typically do not get repeat clients traveling long distances. Most people want a physiotherapist close by that they can get to easily once a week without disrupting their schedule. If you’re targeting ads too far outside a reasonable distance from your practice, you’re not marketing effectively or efficiently.
#5. Test ad copy
Writing good sales copy can be difficult. If you don’t test different versions of your ads to see which ones work best, you won’t be able to maximize your conversions. One of the most powerful aspects of digital marketing is that you can track and analyze everything you need to maximize conversions.
Most PPC platforms allow you to set up split tests to replace different ads for each of your keywords. For the test to pass correctly, adjust the settings, so they are published randomly and not based on the model. The conditions for displaying an ad are determined to get the maximum number of clicks.
Google uses smart bid, an AI program that automatically does a lot of the calculations, and split tests for you. They will show the ads that get the most clicks the most often. Learning what’s working for your campaign allows you to adjust the rest of your ads to be more like the ads that covert the highest.
Final thoughts…
An effective pay-per-click advertising campaign attracts targeted customers as soon as you start your campaign. This is not the cheapest way to promote products or services (SEO is cheaper in the long run) but it holds many benefits and advantages that will earn you income.
By incorporating this method of advertising in your overall digital marketing strategy, you can track customers, learn more about what they search for, and what they buy. With the right creativity and analytical skills, you can target the right people who want to do repeat business, time and time again.
Christian Carere heads the SEO team here at Austin Bryant Consulting. After building an SEO agency in Toronto (Digital Ducats Inc.) Christian was hired by founder Keith Hunn who has created a full-service digital marketing agency in Plano, TX. Christian has been published on Search Engine Watch, Venngage, Small Biz Daily, Grasshopper, Data Box, Socialnomics, and Mention.