What Is PPC? How it works

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SEO is one of the best ways to get better search engine rankings. But even the advanced SEO strategy takes time to give you the result you want. Most SEO campaigns take 6-12 months to show any page 1 results. And even after that year SEO requires constant work to keep your rankings. After all, competition for page 1 rankings is very high. This is where PPC advertising jumps in.

PPC stands for Pay Per Click. This means you only pay once someone clicks on your ad. If people don’t search and read your ad without clicking on it you don’t have to pay anything. PPC is a best choice for businesses who want new leads fast. In some cases a PPC campaign can start generating sales within hours of watching.

On social media the ads can appear as posts on a feed, banner ads on the side and then a variety of other forms too. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and even Pinterest have options for advertising. Is PPC right for your business?

Why PPC

Let’s look at why PPC might be a great addition to your online strategy.

1.Pay per click advertising is extremely targeted

You can precisely choose who to show your ads to, based on location, keywords, interest, age, gender, language and even the type of device. Rather than wasting your time on mass marketing you can advertise your goods and services directly to the people who are most likely to be interested in what you have to offer. You can also adjust your ads for people who have already visited your website. This type of PPC advertising is called retargeting.


2.Retargeting

Retargeting is massive. On an average of every hundred people that visit your website only two convert into an actual customer. That means 98% of the initial traffic virtually goes somewhere. Retargeting let’s businesses place ads that remain for the folks who left to come back and check out the products and services they missed. This in turn helps businesses capture more of the 98% of people who didn’t convert the first time.


3.PPC advertising is pretty cost effective

After all, the only time you pay a fee is when you are actually clicked.


4.PPC is super trackable

Generally this means you can monitor how well your ads are performing and adjust them accordingly. If a person is not giving as many clicks as you like you always know exactly which ads are actually driving sales and helping your business and which ones aren’t. Flexibility comes hand-in-hand with PPC.


5.PPC is fast

While ranking high in organic search results is important, it takes time to get there. But with PPC you can put the new ad up and start seeing results in a matter of days or hours. So if you are looking to immediately attract more traffic to your site and boost sales take PPC more seriously.


How Does Pay-Per-Click Advertising Work?

Pay-Per-Click as a marketing channel includes a number of different ad platforms, with the most familiar of these being Google Ads and Bing Ads.
And between each of these platforms are different ad formats, including:

  • Search Ads
  • Shopping Ads
  • Display Ads
  • Video Ads
  • Gmail Ads

Most often, you can see that businesses start their PPC marketing on Google Ads, for the simple reason that it provides access to the largest audience of potential clients and customers, as well as a number of different ways to establish and run campaigns depending on your goals.

But irrespective of the platform and ad format, the way that PPC works remains largely constant, and it is a pretty easy process:

  • Login in to an advertising account with the platform.
  • Develop ads and select the correct targeting by adding keywords or audiences, etc..
  • Set the maximum cost you are willing to pay for each click.
  • Your ad will go into an auction with other advertisers who are bidding on the same keywords.
  • The auction determines the order in which the ads are shown.
  • when someone clicks your ad you pay.

It is quite straightforward and simple to get hold of, and while there are variations between different ad formats and other bidding strategies that can be used, as an example, the main principles remain.

PPC helps give your website the attention it deserves from the people who appreciate it most. So ensure to make use of it in the right way.