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Digital advertising came into play in October 2000. The process was somewhat straightforward — advertisers get to place text ads that will be displayed on the Google platform. This way, everyone who lands on the Google search engine platform will see the ad, and if the ad copy is compelling, the advertiser will drive lots of eyeballs to the brand.
However, pay-per-click (PPC) was introduced in 2002. And if you’re like most people, you’re possibly thinking of the pros and cons of PPC.
Well, that’s a valid thought process — and in this guide, you’d discover everything you need to know about the pros and cons of PPC.
Before the introduction of PPC marketing, the model for charging advertisers was the Cost per mille (CPM), or cost-per-thousand impression model.
Before moving further, you’ve got to get a good grasp of PPC marketing. Here comes the big question — What is PPC marketing?
If you’ve made search queries using Google, then you must have come across ads at some point — these ads PPC ads. It’s an online advertising model where your ads are showcased on web pages and Google search results.
PPC ads are displayed on search results typically above the regular search results and they are identified by a small green box. You can also point them out by looking out for the word Ad as shown below:
For a PPC campaign, you only pay when people click on your ads. If there are no clicks, it either means that people were not interested in your ad copy or the ad copy was not good enough. You’ll need a Google Ads account to get started with PPC.
Furthermore, you’d have to choose your target keywords, and bid on those keywords. When people make search queries on Google, Google would have to show your ads to them. For clarity, bidding on ads is no guarantee that your ads will be appearing at the top of Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).
Typically, ads that appear at the top of SERPs are from the highest bidders. And if someone clicks on the PPC ad, they will be directed to a dedicated landing page, and you’d get charged for the clicks.
Now you’ve got a good grasp of “what is PPC marketing?”, the next step is to figure out how pay-per-click marketing works.
If you’re like most people, you probably think that advertisers have to pay more for their ads to appear at the top of SERPs. Well, that’s far from the truth as there are processes that determine how high ads will rank on SERPs — and this process is known as Ad Auction.
Ad Auction is an automated process that’s used by major search engine platforms like Google to determine the validity and relevance of ads before they appear on SERPs.
Knowing how pay-per-click marketing works is good, but it’s not enough. You’ve got to take a step forward by understanding the next big question — what are the challenges in PPC, PPC pros and cons. Well, here’s what you need to know.
When PPC marketing is done right, it would help you generate more brand reach, and build a loyal community of customers.
Back to the big question — what are the challenges in PPC, PPC pros and cons? Well, let’s start with the pros of PPC marketing.
SEO is a reliable process for driving organic traffic, but the process is somewhat slow and it takes lots of work. If you’re up for some quick results, then you’ve got to consider PPC marketing.
While waiting for your SEO strategy to pick up some steam, you’ve got to dive into PPC marketing. By merely using relevant keywords, you’d pretty much capture potential customers without losing sweat.
The best part…
PPC marketing produces quick results. Yes, you’d get your business in front of several eyeballs in no time. This way, you get to cover a wide range of audiences.
Furthermore, there’s no need for building your audience in PPC marketing. Your audience is already waiting for you — all you’ve got to do is create a compelling offer.
Getting your offer in front of the right audience is the first step towards building a thriving business. And PPC marketing helps you to target a specific audience that’ll most likely buy your product. Aside from choosing your target keyword(s), PPC marketing helps you run ad targeting to your most preferred audience. This way, you’ll record better conversions in Google Ads.
With PPC marketing, you get to tailor your campaigns by geographical location, interests, or demographic. It’s a reliable way of getting your offers in front of people who will most likely take action.
You can take it a step further by integrating a trackable URL into the campaign. This model helps you to track the traffic source and also provides other vital information about the campaign you’re running.
Moving on, there’s an option of setting up remarketing campaigns. Let’s say you’ve got people who have already interacted with your brand in the past, remarketing campaigns help you to reach them with juicy offers — and if the offers are good enough, you’d convert them. You see, the remarketing campaign is a solid way of retaining your existing customers, and also attracting new ones — after all, all they need is a little persuasion from your end.
All in all, highly targeted ads are a reliable way of showcasing compelling ad copies that resonate with your most preferred audience. If done the right way, your ads will generate a high clickthrough rate (CTR).
If you’re like most business owners, you’d love to maximize your return on ad spend (ROAS). Well, PPC marketing will help you do just that. The good news is, you only pay when your ad is clicked. That is, the amount you’ll pay is proportional to the number of clicks generated by the ads.
Driving traffic to your website is half the story. When these eyeballs land on your landing page, you’d have to convert them.
Making adjustments to your campaign is easy, and you can quickly do that during PPC marketing. By merely taking a look at your dashboard, you get to see how your PPC campaign is performing. And with the information provided, you’d make changes, reevaluate your campaign, and test new ideas. This way, you get to fully understand what’s working and what’s not.
This level of flexibility is not found in SEO, email marketing, or traditional advertising. Once a campaign is started using any of these three models, you’d have to wait to see if it worked or not. Making some tweaks in the middle of the campaign is not easy. All you can do is wait and use the performance metrics to plan a better-performing campaign in the future.
However, there’s no waiting in PPC — you get to easily tweak, test, and evaluate your campaign. This way, you’d maximize every second.
Generating organic traffic takes time. You’d have to invest lots of time and resources into improving your website performance and creating lots of optimized content. With PPC, all you have to do is set up your campaign and get it running.
Yes, PPC campaigns are easy to set up, but that doesn’t eliminate the learning curve that goes into it. You’ve got to understand how the platform(s) work and the strings to pull to generate the most results. Getting started with PPC is much easier than driving organic traffic to your website.
PPC marketing sounds all nice and juicy, but that doesn’t negate the downsides of the technique. Here are some cons of PPC marketing.
As a marketer, you’re most likely looking for ways to generate the most results while reducing cost. Well, PPC may not offer that as it’s becoming more expensive.
However, marketers are coming up with strategies to keep the cost down. These strategies include long tail keywords, improved targeting, and much more.
Since PPC advertising is effective, every marketer out there will want to drive traffic to their website using the technique. This will, in turn, lead to fierce competition for popular keywords. When competition rises, cost also rises with it — and PPC marketing is no exception.
As a marketer, you can maximize your investment by keeping a close eye on your campaign. Furthermore, targeting your most preferred keyword may be an issue if you’re on a tight budget. Bidding wars take their toll on marketers as they would quickly drive up the price of popular keywords.
Having a working PPC strategy is good, but it’s not enough — you’ve got to follow through with your plans. One way of doing that is by presenting a compelling offer for people who land on your website. Yes, it’s one thing to drive massive traffic to your website, it’s another thing to get people to buy your product. To do the latter, you need a compelling offer — and that takes work.
You have to build landing pages, grow your mailing list, and carve out ways to convert the eyeballs that land on your site.
PPC marketing is good, but it’s just a piece of the puzzle — you’d need to put lots of pieces together to get it going.
Digital ads have been around for some time, and people tend to develop a level of cynicism when they see them. Yes, not every user does that — but some people would skip an ad when they come across one.
If you put in the work, learning a platform comes easy, but creating a sleek PPC campaign takes time and effort. There has to be thorough keyword research, a review of Google Analytics data, and identifying the right audience. Also, you’ve got to keep a close eye on your campaigns and tweak them when necessary.
As a newbie, it takes time to learn the skill. Even experienced PPC advertisers have to do some trial and error before identifying a strategy that works for their brand.
One of the missteps people make when it comes to PPC marketing is to start a campaign and keep things on autopilot. However, to get the most out of your campaign, you’ve got to always keep checking the ad continuously.
Starting an ad without keeping in touch with it is a sure way of failing. It’s also one of the ways of losing money in the long run.
If you’re keen on generating the most return on ad spend (ROAS), you’ve got to keep a daily or weekly track of your marketing reports.
Speaking of marketing reports, you can do that by using the PPC Signal tool. The PPC Signal tool helps you to figure out how to optimize your PPC campaigns.
You probably want to generate maximum ROI. Well, here’s how to do that.
Identify relevant keywords and target them. These keywords should be relevant to your brand, and while targeting these keywords, use relevant PPC landing pages. This way, people would click on such keywords — and avoid using broad, one-word keywords during your campaigns.
Let’s say you target a keyword like a shirt, you’ll most likely pop up when customers search for t-shirts — but that’s not what you want. To avoid such scenarios, you’ve got to choose a t-shirt as a negative keyword.
Don’t target hundreds of keywords in one ad. Why? You’d probably end up running a somewhat broad campaign. To eliminate such scenarios, you’ve got to limit your keyword usage to 15-20 keywords per group.
Speaking of keyword usage, you’ve got to consider Single Keyword Ad Group (SKAG). SKAG helps in creating a focused relationship between your ad, single keyword, and the landing page. It eliminates confusing and complicated Ad groups.
That’s not all…
These keywords have to be similar. This way, your ad will reach the right audience type.
To track your results, you’d need reliable tools like Google Ads itself, Google Analytics or PPC Signal. To better optimize your PPC campaigns, you’d have to gather more data. If you opt to track your results using the PPC Signal tool, you’d get a dashboard similar to the image below.
The PPC Signal tool helps you track things like keyword performance, location targeting, device targeting, and important metrics. The tool uses artificial intelligence technology to monitor changes in your campaign. This way, you get to easily optimize your campaign to maximize the result.
In the long run, the PPC Signal tool helps you save both time and resources. From the image below, you’d see that the tool detected an anomaly between impressions and clicks.
By clicking the Explore option, you get to gain a better understanding of the signal.
PPC visitors are more likely to take action than organic visitors. Also, you can easily measure PPC stats more than SEO stats. This way, tracking your ROI will be easy, and you get to manage your budget without losing sweat. To get the most out of your marketing campaign, you need a mix of both PPC and SEO.
PPC optimization involves improving and analyzing your PPC marketing campaign at the campaign and ad group level. It could be changing ad copy, modifying keyword bids, or updating your landing pages.
PPC helps you to boost your reach and easily achieve your primary marketing objectives. It also helps you to create compelling ways your web traffic takes your desired action. Finally, it helps foster the relationship between your brand and potential customers. This way, you get to easily convert them into loyal paying customers.
No two PPC campaigns are the same — they are all unique, but successful PPC campaigns share the same things in common — comprehensive keyword research, organized structure, and ongoing management.
For PPC to be effective, you’ve got to know how to read your campaign data, make the necessary adjustments, and optimize your campaign for better results. If you can not track the changes and effect them, then PPC marketing will do you no good.
Furthermore, figuring out a working strategy takes time, but it’s worth all the time and effort.
Granted, PPC campaigns are not all rosy, there are some downsides to it. However, to get the best in your digital marketing endeavors, it would be best to have a mix of both PPC marketing and SEO.
Now you know the pros and cons of PPC, what steps will you take to maximize your PPC marketing efforts?
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