Danielle Hayley at FSE Online explains the immediate benefits of investing in a PPC campaign
Use Google AdWords PPC in 2016 as an immediate method of jump-starting the traffic to your website and increasing your profit margins this year.
If you’re a business who is looking to jump-start your website traffic in 2016, then PPC is the solution for you.
What is PPC?
PPC stands for pay-per-click and refers mostly to the Google AdWords advertising platform, where an advertiser sets a budget and pays the search engine when their ad is clicked on by an interested user.
Google AdWords displays sponsored ads in three areas of the Google search page – above and to the right of the search results. These are some of the most prominent positions on the page. AdWords are also displayed across a network of publisher websites.
How does PPC Work?
When you set up a PPC campaign, you are required to choose keywords that you think your target audience will type into Google search. You then set a bid rate for each selection of keywords you choose and then set a daily or monthly budget. Once your ads have been clicked on the maximum amount of times that your budget allows, your campaign will pause until the budget is topped up.
What are the benefits of using PPC?
Immediate results
PPC offers a business the chance to get immediate, targeted traffic to its website within a few hours of an AdWords campaign going live. This is in direct contrast with using SEO’s organic rankings strategy which can take months to achieve good results. With PPC you can potentially start a campaign on a Monday morning and have converted clicks into sales and profit by the end of the day. This means that you can rapidly compete with your closest competitors and achieve much quicker brand awareness, gaining an instant buzz about your products and services.
Keyword testing strategies
The keywords that you select as part of your PPC campaign are able to be repeatedly tested and modified in a way that SEO doesn’t have as much control over. Play around with which PPC keywords are converting well for you. You can use the Google Adwords keyword tool for ideas. Swap the landing pages on your site that your ads go to and keep an eye on your conversions, sales and profit margins.
Geo-targeting
Geo targeting is another excellent feature of PPC. If you run a small business in the South-West of England, there’s usually little point paying to have your ad displayed to users who are located in Singapore. By using AdWords geo targeting, you will have control over which geographic locations your ad will be displayed in. These could be countries, regions or a radius around a specific location.
Budgeting
With PPC, you are completely in charge of how much you want to spend on your marketing campaign. Whatever your daily limit is, there is no commitment required, so it is an incredibly flexible advertising model for your business. If you only have a small daily spend set aside, then you still have much to gain out of using AdWords campaigns. PPC managers will recommend that you use more targeted keywords, making use of the long tail search phrases which will cost less but will still attract an excellent CTR (click-through-rate).
Google Adwords is the ultimate way to target the right consumers at the right time with the right ad. Get 2016 off to a flying start by investing in some PPC today.