Over the last few years, pay-per-click advertising (PPC) has re-written the inbound marketing rulebook. It is a quick and effective marketing strategy that can boost traffic to your website and increase your sales. This blog post will discuss what pay-per-click is and how it works. Additionally, we’ve put together our top 5 reasons why PPC can make a solid cornerstone for any digital marketing strategy and why you may wish to consider hiring a PPC agency to manage your paid search campaigns.

What is Pay-Per-Click?

Pay-per-click (PPC) or paid search marketing is an online marketing strategy that involves bidding on keywords phrases relevant to your business and paying a certain amount for each click that leads to your website or landing pages.

How Does PPC Work?

Firstly, you must set your advertising budget, developed your marketing campaign, performed keyword research and chose a PPC platform. Then you can begin bidding on a keyword phrase relevant to your business.

If you choose to use Google Adwords as your PPC platform, you have the option of manually entering the keywords that are relevant or using auto-generation software such as Google Keyword Planner. You then pay for each click based on how much competition there is for that term, how relevant it is to your business offering and the cost-per-click (CPC) set by Google.

Your paid search advertisements such as Google ads will appear at the top of the search engine results page above the organic search results. It is a quicker method of increasing your visibility on relevant search engine results pages than organic search. The ultimate goal with PPC campaigns is to increase your sales and marketing visibility by effectively targeting those who are likely to become customers.

Actively segmenting your customers enables you to effectively target only those who are likely to convert into sales leads and customers. You only pay for the clicks you receive on the ad, not the impressions. As a result, the small fee incurred for each click should be nominal as the revenue gained outweighs the cost if the pay-per-click advertisement is targeted correctly. Paid search advertising has revolutionised the marketing industry as it ensures that those who are searching for products and services related to your business can easily find you.

Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Be Using PPC Advertising in Your Marketing Strategy

It’s Precise

A conventional advertising strategy relies on disrupting the attention of those who see the advert when they are engaged in some other pursuit: reading, watching TV, listening to the radio and so on. PPC advertising is designed to offer a solution to a consumer problem when the consumer is fully engaged in searching for a solution to that problem. Your advert is served by the search engine as a solution to the problem.

In addition, pay-per-click has the advantage of being more measurable. Google AdWords offers staggering quantities of post-campaign data about your Google ads, highlighting exactly what worked and exactly what didn’t.

To a skilled digital marketer, this is a significant advantage. It allows the marketer to refine each subsequent campaign and make iterative improvements, leading to a more predictable ROI.

It’s Fast

Many aspects of digital marketing involve playing the long game. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is a robust, organic, digital presence.

However, with the right approach to PPC, it can yield results at a blistering speed. Effective, and with a tangible impact from the moment you launch a campaign, with the right budget, PPC can help you go from relative obscurity to a major market player, overnight.

It’s Reactive

40% of all online transactions now occur on a mobile device, and this trend is set to only increase.

This shows that consumers are eager to shop on their phones, on the go. The rate at which consumers descend down the sales funnel has accelerated.

Having a well-configured a well PPC strategy in place means the second a consumer expresses a need for your product, you can communicate directly to them. Offering the right answer at the right time can be crucial in transforming an interested consumer, into a satisfied customer.

It’s Widespread

For whatever reason, if you’ve yet to run a PPC campaign for yourself, you can be sure of one thing. You’re giving money to your competition through your lack of competition.

By not running a PPC campaign of your own, you’re keeping the bidding price down for keywords relevant to your business. This makes it easier for your rivals to harvest a greater share of the market at a lower cost than if you were in the market also.

The situation will only get worse the longer you leave your competitors to dominate an uncontested market. Breaking their PPC monopoly is both good for you and the competitive environment as a whole.

It’s Deep

As the tools within Google AdWords become more precise, fine-tuning a PPC campaign can become truly forensic.

The level of depth and configurability on offer can be daunting. But to those savvy digital marketers willing to put the work in, it can also be extremely lucrative.

Being able to classify audiences by their potential profitability and to adjust bid prices accordingly, can help you optimise your PPC marketing budget and squeeze as much ROI as possible out of every click.

Conclusion

There are of course, much more than just five reasons why PPC is such a powerful tool for digital marketing. This blog post merely scratches the surface of what, in the right hands, is an extremely powerful string to the digital marketer’s bow. Whilst difficult to learn, the more time you invest into it in the short-term, the more profitable you’ll find it in the long run.

PPC Management Services

A digital marketing agency or specialist PPC agency can help you to develop an effective PPC strategy that will reach your target audience. Their expert knowledge in PPC management will ensure that qualified leads are directed to your website and landing pages.

At Azzurro-Blu marketing agency we create impactful and successful PPC campaigns for our clients which result in increased traffic, conversions and sales. If you are interested in learning more about our PPC management or any of our other digital marketing services please do not hesitate to get in touch on 01224 600005 or email us at info@azzurro-blu.com.