Have you ever noticed the “sponsored search results” when using a search engine? More importantly, do you think your customers notice the “sponsored search results?” Luckily, research shows that sponsored results receive more clicks and are more likely to result in a sale than organic results on their own. In fact, the first organic search result in a Google search result receives only 32.5% of the traffic according to Search Engine Journal. This would suggest that nearly 70% of clicks go to other search results, including sponsored results like pay per click (or PPC) ads. Here are five considerations in determining whether or not to use pay per click marketing and how to use it:
What is PPC Marketing?
Pay per click marketing is a type of advertisement on a search engine in which the advertiser pays based on the metric they choose to track. More often than not, it takes the form of the number of times an ad is clicked on by a consumer.
PPC ads may appear in any environment, including mobile apps, games, websites, search engines, and social media feeds. Generally speaking, the most visible forms of pay per click marketing are Google PPC and Facebook PPC since these are the most commonly used search engines and social media channels.
How Does Pay Per Click Marketing Work?
Pay per click marketing is designed to target a user’s needs at any particular time. For example, pay per click advertising on Google uses search terms, location, and search history to decide which ads best serve the user.
Similarly, pay per click advertising on a social media platform uses the location, demographics (such as age, gender, and interests), and profile to select ads to serve up. The underlying theory is that by tailoring who receives the ads, the ad will strike when the “iron is hot” and be more likely to attract a click. Thus, an advertiser is not only paying for clicks in pay per click advertising, but they are also paying for access to the right potential customer at the right time.
How Is PPC Marketing Used?
To make effective use of PPC marketing, a business must know its customer. Rather than relying on instinct and stereotypes, businesses must take a deep dive into their customer data and determine who their customers are and what they are looking for. For example, while a tool retailer may believe that its customer base is primarily males between the ages of 18 and 50, it should not discount the fact that a large number of its customers may be older (since life spans have increased) or female (buying for themselves or as gifts). Likewise, in selecting keywords for sponsored search results, a deep dive into the business’s web traffic will reveal the searches already used to find the business, but may also reveal some missed opportunities as well. For example, a business may find that it is not showing up in organic search results for its highest margin products or services and, thus, can try to grab users searching for those products or services through PPC marketing.
Is My Business on Its Own?
The short answer is no. While Google and Facebook provide interfaces to review analytics and select how PPC ads are served, third party companies also offer pay per click management services. An expert PPC management service helps a business define its goals with the ads (for example, to generate more leads, convert more leads into sales, etc.). After determining the goals, an expert PPC management service helps craft the ad campaign, including the selection of the platform as well as the target keywords and profiles to be used. An expert PPC management service reviews web traffic analytics to tweak and re-tweak keywords and profiles to hone in on the right customers and experiments with other variables such as the time of day and days of the week that the ads are served. An expert PPC management service can use all this information to make sure that the original goals are met.
Are you interested in expert PPC management? Contact Studio98 for more information or download our new eBook on lead generation today!