Pay Per Click Advice For Beginners

A successful business needs to have a robust online presence, and to do so; you need to be visible in search results. If your customers can’t find you, they won’t know about your business and the great products and services you have to offer.

So how can you ensure that your business comes top in search results? One of the most effective methods is via PPC advertising.

However, those that are new to pay per click, or PPC might find it daunting, and without understanding how it works and how to use it effectively, you could end up wasting your money or seeing disappointing results that put you off trying again.

So how do you start using PPC? Here are some useful tips for beginners.

First, get to grips with how it works

When you search for something via Google, the very top results and those to the right are paid search advertisements. Setting up a PPC campaign and bidding high will enable your business to be the one that features in these positions. To get to the top you bid against other companies who are also trying to reach the top spots, and you only have to pay out when someone clicks on your ad. Naturally, the higher you bid, the more likely that you will be the highest bidder and the more clicks you are going to get. You need to devise a smart bid strategy that promotes your visibility while sticking to your marketing budget too.

Create measurable goals

When you create a PPC ad, you need to make sure you have defined goals around your conversion rate and tools in place to ensure that you can measure the success of your advertisement. Establish what you want customers to do after they have clicked on your ad – it might be that they subscribe to a newsletter, order a brochure, submit their email address to receive a discount or make a purchase. Make sure you are clear on what your goals are before you make your ad live and that you can monitor whether these goals are met.

Choose a platform to publish your ad

We’ve been talking about Google to keep things simple, but you can actually set up your ad on several different platforms including Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, and Bing. Doing lots of research around these platforms around search volumes and cost per click and the types of benefits that each one might have will ensure that your ad is visible in the optimum place and that you get the best results.

1. Undertake keyword research

One of the most important parts of devising your PPC campaigning will be around selecting the right keywords to focus on. This can really make a difference to your ad’s success, so it is vital that you do thorough keyword research around the keywords you might target according to your conversion goals. Remember the more generic a term, the more you might end up paying and the more specific you are, the better you can target particular traffic that is looking for what you offer.

Decide on your budget

Budgeting for PPC can be tricky. You not only need to decide how much you are willing to pay per click but also to estimate your return. Even if you only expect that 1 in 50 people who click on your ad convert, if that conversion nets you a profit of, say $500 then you will make a 100% ROI. Your budget should be flexible as it may change depending on how successful your ad is, and because you can continue to optimize and update the campaign to help improve performance, you can adjust your budget accordingly.

Create your ad

Your ad needs to be slick, smart, and contain compelling copy that will pique the interest of your audience. Remember, while a high bid can work to secure you a position at the top, you also need to ensure your ad title, description, and display URL all contain your target keyword too. You can always try split testing your ads and seeing which ones perform best and then allocating extra budget to these to further boost your conversions.

Create relevant landing pages

Finally, you need to ensure that the landing pages linked to your ad are relevant and contain copy that keeps the visitor interested and directs them to what you want them to do. Your landing pages should be related to the advertisement and easily enable customers to do what they hoped to do without having to navigate around your website further.

PPC advertising can be tricky to understand at first, but the more time you spend researching your keywords, competitors, and target audience and making sure you have the tools in place to test and amend your ads the more success you will have. Use these tips to get started and good luck!