Depending on your SEO experience and knowledge, it can take a lot of time and effort to get your website ranking on the first page of SERPs.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could just pay to put your website in front of the right people, pretty much instantly, and bypass all that hard work?
Enter PPC.
PPC, or pay-per-click, is a type of advertising that can get your website at the top of Google search results quickly and easily.
It shouldn’t be considered an alternative to SEO methods, but it can work well alongside SEO to complement it. Intrigued? Good, let’s jump right in.
What is PPC?
PPC, which stands for ‘pay-per-click’ is a type of advertising strategy in which the advertiser only pays when a user clicks on their ad. It is a common way of attracting traffic to a website, as an alternative to SEO practices which drive traffic more organically.
It commonly goes hand in hand with search engine advertising, but there are other platforms where advertisers can launch pay-per-click campaigns, including Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
How Does PPC Work?
Perform almost any search on Google and you’ll be presented with sponsored posts, such as these hotels in Milan sponsored by Booking.com:
As a user, I haven’t clicked on any of these links to hotels in Milan, so Booking.com isn’t paying for me to see them.
However, if I click on one of these links, Booking.com will have to pay Google Ads for that advertising.
PPC can be a really effective marketing tool for businesses because it gets you in front of your target audience, and you only have to pay when a user clicks through to your site, at which point there’s a fairly good chance they’re interested in what you have to offer.
You reach your target audience by bidding on keywords, and Google can opt to display your ad when a user inputs a relevant query. In this example, it’s likely that Booking.com has bid on the exact keyword phrase ‘top hotels in Milan’.
PPC Vs. SEO
PPC and SEO have the same aim. They work to get your website in the top spots on search engine results pages. But their methods are different.
With SEO, you’re running a marathon and the only way you’re going to complete it is with consistent training and putting one foot in front of the other.
With PPC, you hop on a bus and take the short cut. Either way, you’re going to get to the finish line.
With SEO, you’re working to get your website ranking amongst the top results on search engines for specific user enquiries.
Once you’re consistently ranking highly, you’ll have a consistent flow of organic traffic. With PPC, you create a campaign to get your website ranking on a search engine or social media site for a particular keyword.
Each time that link gets clicked, you get charged. It’s a form of paid-advertising.
Both of these methods can see an increase in traffic and conversions, but arguably they work best when used in conjunction with each other.
Benefits of PPC
Reach Your Target Audience
When creating a PPC campaign you can identify target audience, which enables you to get in front of the types of users you know are going to have an interest in your products or services.
Save Money
Compared with traditional advertising and some forms of modern marketing, PPC campaigns are more cost effective.
You only pay a fee when a user clicks through to your website, so the money you’re spending is somewhat guaranteed to get your traffic numbers rising, even if those users don’t immediately make a purchase.
Get Immediate Results
You can set up a PPC campaign and it will be running usually the same day or the following day. It will put you in front of your target audience quite literally overnight. Compared to traditional advertising and SEO efforts, the speed of PPC cannot be argued with.
Increase Brand Awareness
PPC gets you showing up at the top of search engine results, or on social media sites. Even if a user doesn’t click through to your website, they’re still seeing you. This can help to increase brand awareness, essentially for free.
Measure Your Success
You can measure the success of any PPC campaign using analytical tools, and this can be crucial for adjusting your marketing efforts going forwards.
Creating a PPC Strategy
Here are the key steps you should take to launch a successful PPC campaign.
- Planning and Research
- Budget
- Keywords
- Campaign and Bidding Strategy
- Formulate Your Campaign
- Enticing Ad Copy
- Landing Page
- Call to Action
- Analysing Performance and KPIs
- Adapt and Improve
Planning and Research
Before launching your PPC campaign, you need to put in the prep work. We all know the old adage; fail to prepare, prepare to fail. Well it’s no different with a PPC campaign.
If your strategy is based on data, analytics and research then you are setting yourself up for success.
If you are new to website analytics check out our article on Google Analytics for Beginners which covers all the basics you will need to jump into the world of website data.
To start off on the right foot you should:
- Establish your budget.
- Research which keywords your consumers are searching with.
- Research which keywords your competition are bidding on.
- Calculate how much these keywords will cost you.
- Build your bidding strategy around that information.
Let’s look at how you can do that.
Budget
When creating a PPC campaign you bid on terms relevant to your business. Your ads are only shown if a user searches for those terms. These search terms are often referred to as key phrases or keywords. So you say: “I’m willing to pay X amount of money per click/impression/conversion that I gain from this keyword.”
That’s your bid. The more money you bid for a keyword, the more your ad will appear in searches and the higher your Cost Per Click (CPC) will be. For popular keywords, there will be more competition, which drives up costs of ad space, so you can end up spending a lot of money for not a lot of clicks.
This is why it’s so important to constantly monitor your PPC campaign and have a clear budget and strategy laid out.
How many clicks is your ad getting?
Has the search volume for your keyword changed?
How much have you spent so far?
How much do you want to spend going forward?
You always want to know how much you plan to spend and make sure your campaign stays within that.
When you have decided your budget and researched the keywords you want to target, then you can put together a strategy on the best way to spend your money.
You can set a maximum budget for your PPC campaign, and when this is reached the campaign will end. This can be beneficial for controlling expenditure.
Keywords
A truly successful PPC campaign will be driven by accurate Keyword Research. This is how you make sure that your target audience will see your ads.
With a PPC model you want to make sure that the people clicking on your ads are potential customers, or else you’ll feel a dent in your ROI!
Keyword research is crucial for creating your PPC campaign. It will affect the types of users you reach, cost of your clicks, and conversion rates.
Users who input more specific searches are more likely to make a purchase, because they know what they’re looking for.
Broad searches are more likely to be input by users in the early stages of planning a trip, so by opting for specific keywords you can save money, have less competition, and to an extent, qualify your leads.
You can attract targeted visitors by doing thorough keyword research. Here are some of the tools you can use to find the keywords your business should target:
- Brainstorm possible keywords
- Use keyword tools such as Google’s Keyword Planner, Semrush, Moz and Ahrefs
- Analyse consumer behaviour with Google Trends, Google Search Console. The Performance Report will give you an idea of the keywords your visitors are using. Google Search, Autocomplete and the ‘People also Searched’ section can offer insights into what your audience are searching for.
Once you have done your Keyword Research, you want to use this info to create a great PPC campaign! There are a few different perspectives you should look at when choosing keywords for your campaign.
Search Volume
A keyword with a high search volume means a lot of people are searching for those terms, and so your ad has more opportunity for clicks. On the other hand, low search volume keywords won’t be as in demand with your competition which will help your ad stand out! It’s all about strategy.
Competition
Successful online business owners never make the mistake of not analyzing the competition. What keywords are your competition targeting and is their strategy working for them? Have they overlooked a niche in the market that you can leverage?
Short Tail and Long Tail Keywords
Short Tail = One or two words, for example, Running Shoes.
Long Tail = A phrase or sentence, for example, Womens Black Nike Running Shoes for Marathon.
Short Tail keywords generally have high search volume but can be more expensive as they have more businesses competing for them and are often dominated by big brands. Long Tail phrases often have less search volume but clicks can result in higher purchase intent and are great for targeting Voice Search results!
Negative Keywords
Negative Keywords are the search terms that you don’t want your ad to appear for. This is highly beneficial in making sure your ad is shown to the right people and your budget is maximised with clicks only from potential customers.
You want your ads to be seen by people searching for your Keywords. Unfortunately, so do your competitors. The quality of your campaign and your bidding strategy will determine the visibility of your ads.
Pick a Platform
Google Ads is the most popular platform used globally for PPC, but there are other platforms worth considering for pay-per-click campaigns, such as Facebook Ads Manager, where you can control campaigns for both Facebook and Instagram.
TikTok Ads and Microsoft Ads are other alternative options, and LinkedIn Ads can be a good place to get in front of a professional audience.
Set a Budget
You can set a maximum budget for your PPC campaign, and when this is reached the campaign will end. This can be beneficial for controlling expenditure.
Monitor Your Campaign
Use the associated analytical tools to monitor your campaign, gaining insight into how users respond to your ad, and how they use your website. Understanding what works and what doesn’t can help you grow your success in the future.
Audience Targeting in PPC
Keyword targeting is an important part of PPC, but it is not the only way to reach the right people. Many PPC platforms also allow advertisers to use audience targeting, helping campaigns reach users based on their interests, behaviours, demographics, search intent, or recent online activity.
One useful type of audience targeting in Google Ads is in-market audience targeting.
Have you used Google Ads’ in-market audiences to target your PPC ads?
Accurate targeting is the mark of a good marketer. The more your ad reaches the right people, the less you may waste on ads that reach people who are unlikely to convert. Consequently, your ROI, one of the most important digital marketing KPIs, will be better.
Targeting using Google Ads’ in-market audiences is one useful way to reduce wasted ad spend and improve campaign relevance.
What are In-Market Audiences?
Simply put, in-market audiences are audience segments accumulated by Google. As the name suggests, these segments consist of consumers who are ‘in the market’ to purchase a product or service.
Using in-market audiences you can target customers who are currently exhibiting pre-purchase behaviours such as:
- Browsing products/services
- Researching products/services
- Comparing products/services
How Do In-Market Audiences Work?
Basically, Google’s AI tracks and stores users’ information based on their search intent. Similarly, to develop in-market audiences, it collects data on users by tracking:
- Clicks on related ads
- Places on the web where the user got converted
- Content of sites and pages these conversions happened at
- Recency of visits
- Frequency of visits
By consolidating these online behaviours, Google accumulates audience segments across various business verticals. The people in the audience segments will have high purchase intent for your products and services.
Which Users Can You Reach Using In-Market Audiences?
In theory, those who are on the lowest stage of the sales funnel are the users whom you can reach using this method of targeting.
In Google Ads, affinity-based targeting reaches people based on their interests.
This is why in-market targeting is also known as interest category marketing.
You choose affinity categories, interests, the relevant copy, and tout benefits to reach a wider audience base. In theory, you will be reaching out to the prospects on the top of the funnel.
In contrast, on the other end of the funnel are those who will be conducting branded searches, keywords with “buy” in them etc.
In-market audiences targeting works to reach those who are in the middle of the funnel. It works well, especially, if you desire to attract people who are:
- Making product comparisons
- Checking out reviews
- Carrying out other product consideration activities before purchase
How To Use In-Market Audiences in Google Ads
In-market audiences can be found under ad groups. Once you log into your Google Ads account and you name your ad group, you’ll be asked to select whom you want to target.
Here, you can choose in-market audiences by selecting “Browse” and then “What they are actively researching or planning”.
Finally, once the in-market audiences section opens up, you can choose the verticals and niches you wish to target.
Things To Watch Out For
In-market audiences may not be the fairytale, money overnight scheme it is touted to be.
Often, businesses who are the first entrants in their market have reported great success in using this targeting feature. However, in highly saturated markets this way of targeting has reportedly resulted in high CPA.
Steps To Claim an Unfair In-Market Audiences Targeting Advantage
There are a few effective things you can do to jump over these costly hurdles.
Make use of combined targeting
Combined targeting is a feature in Google Ads platform using which you can combine multiple targeting options for a single ad group. The platform offers AND/OR functions to combine multiple targeting options.
You could join affinity-based targeting, demographic targeting with in-market audiences targeting to make your reach more granular. In addition to this, you could also combine your remarketing audience with in-market audiences.
Undoubtedly, it would be advantageous if you can develop a rich, detailed buyer persona before you use combined targeting.
Copywriting is key
Although there is a lot of AI-based targeting involved behind the scenes, PPC is still advertising.
Thus, use bottom-of-the-funnel copy to entice users into clicking your ads. Scarcity, urgency elements combined with deals and discounts work well with customers at this stage.
Use your Google Analytics data
One of the greatest advantages of using Google’s in-market audiences is that you already know their intention. This audience segment need not have visited your website. Yet, you know that they have a liking for your product and its likes.
Thus, make use of your Google Analytics’ data on affinity categories, interests and in-market audiences. You could replicate these patterns and use them in ads.
Final Thoughts
Investing in a PPC campaign can be worthwhile for a number of reasons, but it shouldn’t be used as an alternative to SEO practices since it only really offers short-term success.
A PPC campaign works best when running in conjunction with a website that has been properly optimised for search engines and customers. It’s essential to put in the research and background work before initiating a PPC campaign to ensure you get the most for your money.
Audience targeting, including in-market audiences, can make PPC campaigns more focused by helping you reach people who are already showing signs of interest or purchase intent. However, it should still be tested carefully alongside keyword research, strong ad copy, useful landing pages, and ongoing campaign monitoring.
You can find out more about how we can help with your next PPC campaign by getting in touch with us today.
