More and more businesses are using pay per click ad campaigns to increase traffic and profit, so they are hiring PPC management firms in California, if their businesses are located in this area. In fact, when Yahoo! invested in purchasing the pay-per-click ad placement Overture in 2003, it generated $9 billion in revenue in 2004 alone.
Today more businesses are looking to implement cost-effective and profitable pay-per-click campaigns to help generate leads and increase revenue. They invest in paying marketers with the technological skill to spearhead pay per click marketing efforts.
As you plan to launch this internet advertising model into your business, let’s kick off with the basics.
What is Pay-per-click Marketing?
Pay-per-click marketing was first introduced at a 1998 TED conference by Idealab founder Bill Gross and has evolved ever since.
It is an advertising model that lets marketers place ads on an ad platform and pay the owners of that platform every time their ad is clicked by an internet user. It is considered a method of purchasing targeted advertising space on an internet platform that takes advantage of organic search terms.
The commonly associated first-tier search engines associated with pay-per-click marketing are:
- Google Ads
- Amazon Advertising
- Microsoft Advertising (Bing Ads)
Social networking platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter have also adopted pay-per-click marketing as one of their advertising models.
How Does PPC Work for Your Business?
- As an advertiser, you will need to join a search engine’s PPC program and load your account with a certain amount.
2. You then create a small text ad (with some images, if preferred). Ads typically contain:
- Headline
- URL
- Description
3. You will have to specify which keywords your ad should be associated with.
4. You then specify how much you are willing to pay each time someone clicks on your ad when it is posted.
5. An internet user arrives at the search engine where you posted your ad, enters one of the keywords or keyword specified, and clicks the search button.
6. The search engine finds the matching ads, which will include yours if you specified that keyword, and places them on the results page.
7. If the searcher clicks your ad, he or she is taken to your website, and you are charged for the click.
Budgets and Bids in a PPC Campaign
When you join a PPC campaign, you are participating in an auction so you need to decide how much you are willing to spend on a given keyword. This is done using:
- Budgets at the campaign level can be exceeded on a daily basis but will not be overspent on a monthly basis.
- Bids at the ad group or keyword level which is a more precise way of controlling spending. All ad groups must have bids, but keyword level bids override ad group level bids. Google Keywords Planner tool can give you an estimate of what position you would be in and how much you would have to pay.
The actual amount you pay is dependent on the competitor activity and ad rank, not just the maximum bid. Your bidding affects your ad position and the overall result of your PPC campaign.
What Quality Score Means in a PPC Campaign
It’s important that you understand how quality score is used to determine your cost per click and also your ad position. Quality score is google’s way of rating the quality and relevance of ads that are displayed in its search engine.
To make sure that you have a good quality score, you should have a relevant ad with relevant keywords, a good click through rate, and a quality landing page. A good quality score can be the difference between paying a small cost per click and a huge cost per click.
Search engines also penalize advertisers who bid on keywords with low Quality scores by rarely showing their ads, even if they have high bids. So don’t shortchange having engaging and relevant ad copy that includes high-volume keywords.
The Point of Pay-per-click Marketing
The real point of a PPC campaign is to obtain conversions, that is when users do what your ad’s purpose is—purchase your product or service, sign up for your newsletter, or place a phone call, among other actions.
Pay-per-click marketing is attractive to business owners because it can be highly effective at a low cost. It can allow your business to reach a bigger audience through PPC ads on websites and search engine results that are related to your product.