PPC is a powerful marketing strategy that can generate a lot of traffic, increase sales and boost brand awareness. But before you start, you need to understand the basics.
With Semrush, you can easily create campaigns, spy on your competitors’ keywords and optimize ads. You can even use negative keywords to prevent your ads from showing up for irrelevant searches.
Keywords
PPC is a digital marketing model that allows businesses of all sizes to drive traffic, leads, and sales through small ads that appear on search engine results pages (SERPs) or social media platforms. Successful campaigns depend on established goals, targeted audiences, and relevant keyword research.
Keywords are the foundation of every PPC campaign, connecting advertiser offerings with user searches. The best way to find the right keywords for your business is through a thorough assessment of your audience and the products/services you offer. This includes assessing demographics, pain points, and purchase habits.
Once you have a list of possible keywords, review their monthly search volumes and the average cost per click (CPC) paid by advertisers. A great tool to use for this is Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool, which gives you a list of related options and also shows you the average CPC that advertisers are paying.
Another important consideration when choosing keywords is the competition level. Using the Keyword Gap report in AdWords will show you the top search terms for your competitors and also their ad rank. This can be an excellent opportunity to identify low-cost, high-performing keywords that aren’t being bidded on by your competitors.
Depending on your business’s unique needs, there are many different types of PPC ads you can create. These include search ads, display ads, remarketing ads, and video ads. Each ad type has its own strengths and weaknesses. However, the most effective PPC ads are those that are well-matched to the audience and are optimized for conversions.
A website conversion is any action a user takes on a site that moves them closer to making a purchase, such as filling out a web form, clicking on a call-to-action, or purchasing a product. PPC advertising enables you to target a specific audience, such as people who have already shown an interest in your product or service, which can increase the likelihood of conversions.
Before creating your first PPC ad, decide how much you are willing to spend and establish your target audience. Choosing the right audience will allow you to maximize your budget and ensure that your ads are shown to people who are most likely to engage with them. You can use demographics, interests, location, and even the time of day to narrow your audience down, ensuring that your ads are seen by the most relevant people.
Ads
There are many different types of ads used in PPC, depending on the platform. Ads can be text, images, videos or a combination and can appear on search engines, websites, social media platforms and more. They can also be targeted based on user interests or location, and advertisers can use keywords to create a highly specific audience.
The first step in setting up a PPC campaign is to set the objectives and goals for your campaign. These should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound). The aims of your campaign will determine which type of advertising you do and how much you spend on it.
Once you have your objectives, the next step is to build your ad campaign. This will involve creating a number of ads within an ad group, each targeting a set of related keywords or key phrases. This allows you to target your ad content precisely, and ensures that your ad is shown only to people who are looking for the kind of information or products you are offering.
Another way that PPC ads can be targeted is by using bid modifiers, which allow you to adjust your bid amount based on device type or location. This means that you can target your ads to show only on desktops or laptops, for example, or to only display on mobile devices. This can help to keep your costs down by only paying for clicks from users who are likely to convert into customers.
In addition to allowing you to target your ads precisely, PPC ads can also be effective at increasing brand awareness and visibility. This is because the ads will be displayed to users who are actively searching for what you are offering, so they will be more likely to convert. Plus, your ads will be accompanied by a clickable link to your website or landing page, so users are more likely to take action on the spot.
It’s important to note that PPC should not replace your SEO strategy – rather, it should complement it by providing immediate traffic while your organic rankings improve over time. And of course, the data that you collect from your paid advertising can help guide your SEO efforts, so you can optimize and improve both your organic and paid search results over time.
Campaigns
PPC is an umbrella term for any paid digital marketing done on search engines (like Google or Bing) and social media platforms. There are various campaign types and channels to choose from, with each platform envisioning the structure of campaigns a little differently. However, all of them work by allowing advertisers to bid on keywords or key terms that they want their ads displayed alongside in SERPs when people search for those terms.
In PPC, one of the first things to do is decide what your campaign goals are. Then, you’ll create a series of ad groups that are centered on that overarching objective. Each ad group will have a different set of highly related keywords that will inform the ad copy and targeting strategies for each ad in the group.
Each campaign also has its own ad budget, which is the amount of money you’re willing to spend on the ad groups within it. This helps to keep costs in check, and it can also help marketers to determine a return on ad spend (ROAS).
With a campaign structure and ad budget in place, you can begin to build out your ads. PPC ads can take several forms, from text ads to video ads to call-only ads. There are also ad extensions, which add extra links or details to your ads that can improve click-through rates (CTR).
As with any type of advertising, it’s important to monitor campaign performance. Both Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising offer a change history feature that catalogs any changes made to the campaign, including bid changes and sitelink additions. The change history includes the alias or login email of the person who made the modification, as well as the date and time.
In the end, PPC is a powerful tool for marketers that can be used to reach new audiences and drive business growth. The key is to know how to use it effectively, which requires a deep understanding of its many components and performance metrics. In addition, it’s important to partner with a qualified agency to ensure the success of your campaigns and maximize ROI.
Analytics
Pay-per-click advertising is a powerful marketing tool that can drive traffic, leads, and brand awareness to your business website. To maximize the return on your investment, it’s important to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) like click-through rates and cost-per-clicks. PPC tools like Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising Editor provide easy-to-read visual reports to help you stay on top of your campaign’s performance.
To further enhance your PPC analytics, consider integrating your campaigns with your customer relationship management (CRM) system. When you sync your CRM with your PPC platforms, you can track the entire customer journey, from initial ad click to final conversion, and gain valuable insights into your audience’s behavior and preferences.
While PPC is a short-term marketing strategy, it complements longer-term SEO and content marketing efforts by providing measurable results within weeks. This makes it an important part of any digital marketing plan. But it’s crucial to keep in mind that PPC is not a set-it-and-forget-it strategy, and you need to be constantly monitoring your campaign and making changes to improve performance.
With PPC, you have full access to data on every click and impression your ads receive. This allows you to track and report on a variety of metrics, such as cost-per-click, click-through rate, and conversions. By analyzing this data, you can make informed decisions about budgets, goals, and optimizations that will lead to better campaign performance.
The ad platform you choose will determine which analytics tools are available to you. For example, Google Ads offers a range of free and premium tools to support your campaign management needs, from estimating campaign budgets with the Keyword Planner to exporting detailed reports on individual advertisements or ad groups. Meanwhile, the Microsoft Advertising Editor enables you to create and manage ad campaigns in Bing’s search engine results pages, as well as access real-time performance metrics with the Campaign Hub.
Another great tool is Ahrefs, which lets you spy on your competitors’ keywords and track their performance over time. It can also identify the best keywords for your own campaign. You can use these keywords in your ad copy and optimize your landing page to increase your chances of conversion.
By tracking your performance and analyzing competitor strategies, you can maximize the ROI of your PPC campaign. The unofficial motto of the PPC world is “test, test, and test again.” Keep testing new features and strategies in your account to find out what works best for you.
