PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Campaigns are the best choice for building awareness and get immediate results for any business. If you have already heard about the term PPC and wanted to learn more about the PPC campaigns then you have come to the right place to have this PPC beginners guide. So let me help you understand what actually a PPC campaign is and the advantages of running before discussing the fundamentals with you.
What Is A PPC Campaign and why it is important to include them in your digital marketing plan?
If you are an absolute beginner then you might get a doubt that what actually PPC means as well. Don’t worry let me explain the basics. Pay-Per-Click Campaigns are often referred to as PPC campaigns which is the process of paying money for every click received on your ads.
PPC campaigns can help you build that awareness initially when you are a newly launched brand to make the people about your presence in the market. So with the ever-growing competition among similar business websites for their business-related keywords, if you want to get a boost either in the form of sales or revenue immediately, running PPC campaigns( Google Ads)might be a good choice to include as a part of the digital marketing strategy.
Before sharing the fundamentals with you let me share some advantages of running PPC campaigns for business.
Advantages Of PPC campaigns:
- Helps you acquire quality leads in a short time
- Helps you build awareness as soon as you run campaigns which takes a lot of time in the case of search engine optimization
- It helps you reach specific audiences only with many ways to precisely target the audience based on their gender, location, etc.
- Nothing to worry about the competition of a keyword as long as you are ready to pay higher costs per clicks
- Higher chance of conversions/sales when you choose to bid on the right keywords which ultimately leads to higher Return On Investment
Before starting to run a PPC campaign you need to figure out the following aspects:
1.Goals and Strategic Planning:
What you want to achieve running a PPC campaign.If possible make a note of your goals whether you want leads, sales, etc. Based on the goals you want to achieve try to plan the things how many campaigns/days you run them.
2.Buyer Persona:
Any business can grow only when it has customers making a purchase of the product or service offered by them.PPC campaigns can bring you success only when you identify the goals and target audience so that you would be able to show your ad to probable customers only avoiding unnecessary expenditures.
Most Important Terms of This PPC Beginners Guide, That You Need to Be Aware of Before Starting A PPC Campaign:
1.Cost Per Click:
It is the amount of money that you as an advertiser would be paying for a click on your ad copy. This CPC acts as a bid in the auction with various other advertisers who would be competing to get better ad placement in the search results.
But you might be thinking if you pay higher you might get the best position. It doesn’t work like that because ad placement depends on the various factors like Quality Score, Ad rank and of course your bid amount as well(assuming Google Ads).
2.Click-Through Rate:
The ratio of clicks received per 1000 impressions is defined as Click-Through-Rate. After launching the PPC campaigns, checking CTR you can understand whether the people who are searching and seeing your ad are clicking on your ad or not.
For example if you receive 100 clicks after getting 1000 impressions then your ad has a CTR of 10%. If you are not receiving any clicks on your ad then your ad copy might be wrong or you have targeted the wrong keywords in your campaign.
3.Quality Score:
Quality Score is a score given to your ads based on various metrics after you start running your ad campaigns. Some metrics that impact the quality score of an ad are CTR(Click-Through-Rate), the relevance of the targeted keywords, landing page relevancy, etc.
If your Quality score is high then your CPC and Conversion costs would get lower saving your money on ads without reducing your current performance.
4.Maximum Bid:
It is the highest amount of money that you are ready to pay in the auction to get higher placement while competing with others targeting your ad to show up for searching a particular keyword. Remember bidding higher prices might help you initially but if you can’t get a good quality score, then you won’t get top position even if you pay higher as the search engines give more priority to the viewer experience.
So these are some of the most important terms you must know before running a PPC campaign. But you might be wondering what is the best PPC platform?
Most Preferred PPC Platform:
There are different types of PPC platforms but the most commonly preferred platform is Google Adwords. Wanna know why Google Ads(Formerly Google Adwords) ? Let me explain to you in detail. Most of the people who are getting started with the online world start their journey making a search to find answers for their questions using the search engines.
Google is the top search engine with a larger userbase compared to others like Yahoo, Bing, etc. So it is important for every business to maintain its online presence to get in front of these search engine users who might be the probable customers.
Search Engine Marketing is the best way to market your brand business using search engines. Search Engine Optimization and Google Ads are the best ways to get your website visible on the first page and top position of the search engine results page.
SEO Vs Google Ads:
If you want results in a short time then you need to spend money on google ads. If you are ready to wait for the results to come and don’t want to pay any money to the search engine then SEO is the best choice.
My honest opinion is when you are getting started then Google Ads are the best way to drive the sales immediately which boosts the business. This is why even small businesses are spending money to acquire customers initially.
So now you got to know about Google Ads let me guide you on starting a PPC campaign in a step-by-step manner.
Basic Things You Must Know Before Getting Started With Google Ads:
Campaigns:
A campaign is a set of ad groups that share some common things in terms of budget, location or any other aspect. There are different types of campaigns available to choose from based on where you want to show your ads. They are:
- Search Network With Display Select
- Search Network Only
- Display Network Only
- Shopping
- Video
Universal App Campaign
So when you are getting started with the ad campaigns it better to stick with the Search Network Only. Make sure to keep their names unique especially based on any aspect so that while running multiple campaigns you might not get confused as you need to monitor their performance regularly.
For example, if you are planning to run a campaign for products then naming your campaigns with a name like a shoe or socks can help you easily track them while trying to pause or stop non-performing campaigns.
Ad Groups:
One or more ad groups make a campaign. Ad groups have ads that are different but target same audience. You need to name these as well carefully just like in the case of campaigns
As discussed earlier, if your campaign name is for shoes then name the ad groups as white_shoes or black_shoes. This way you can easily check any ad group to view its performance.
Keywords:
Keywords help you explain the search engine when to show your ads for a user. You need to make a list of keywords before starting a campaign by picking the right ones checking the relevance of the keyword and intent of a user using it to make a search.
Keyword Planner is great a tool available within the Google Ads dashboard that can help you with this process to make a list of keywords.
Landing Pages:
A landing page is the web page that you want to redirect a person when you receive a click on your ad.Whether your goal is lead generation or conversions, you must ensure that the landing page is attractive in design and loads quickly.
Remember if you have a good CTR then landing page plays a key role in achieving your goals using the remarketing lists feature of Google Ads.
Ad extensions:
Apart from the ad copy, the headline you can show the readers of your ad various kinds of extensions based on your goals that help you get one step closer to achieve results. Even though there are many some of the most frequently used are:
- Site Links Extension: Helps in adding links to extra web pages in your ad
- Call Out Extension: Helps in highlighting the features or benefits of a thing you are promoting
- Call Extension: Helps to give a direct call button to your reader
- Location Extension: Helps in getting more visits to a local business
- Price Extensions: Helps in adding the price and more details
Settings You Need To Choose Before Running Campaign:
- Devices: Select on which devices you need to show your ad especially important while running ads with different ad extensions like call extension which won’t work in desktop devices.
- Location: Choose the location where you want to show your ad depending on the location of your target audience. If you are running an ad for a local business then it would be a waste of time running an ad for all locations in the country.
- Bid Strategy: You need to choose a good bid strategy based on your goals so set them realistic.Later you can adjust based on the results.
So now you got clarity about all these you just need to signup for Google AdWords account to set your campaigns, ad groups and save them. Ensure to monitor them regularly to check their performance and remove non-performing ones to avoid wasting ad budget.
Conclusion: PPC Beginners Guide
PPC Campaigns can help you build awareness or gain conversions immediately which is not possible with any organic method. After reading this guide, you would be able to understand the things and launch your first campaign.So get started with PPC campaigns and ensure to review their performance regularly.
Apwebworld is a reputed PPC Marketing agency in Delhi that can help you get started and help you get higher ROAS from your campaigns because of the well-experienced PPC professionals who have great expertise in PPC marketing. Feel free to get in touch with us if you need any help with the PPC campaigns.
