PPC or Pay Per Click is an advertising model where you pay when a person clicks on your digital ad. Everyday business owners and marketing directors, run advertisements in various places on the internet. Some find these ads more successful than a magazine or billboard advertisement. Two of the most powerful channels for advertising are search and display advertising.
Search Ads
When a potential customer is looking for a product or service, many times they will “google it.” If your marketing department has done some good SEO, customers may see your business in the search results. Many times, they do not. Your company can buy advertising space in the search engine results. This is called a PPC Search Ad. It is a block of text with advertising language and information about your business. The text will link back to your website or place a call your company. Search Ads are powerful tools to get the attention of people who are actively looking for a product or service online.
How much do search ads cost?
Businesses do not pay when the ad is viewed. They pay when the potential customer clicks on the ad. You set the price you want to pay per click. We charge a monthly fee to manage your search ads.
Get a quote for Google Ads Management
Display Ads
We can also catch the attention of people who are not actively looking. The display network is a group of websites who sell advertising space on their web pages. Display Ads appear on websites as a banner at the top or side. Popular websites who run effective display ads are news outlets and popular bogs. A potential customer will view your advertisement on a website that they frequent. Display is a good tool for brand awareness. If people don’t know your business exists, how will they know to buy from you. Once they are aware that you are open for business, they can then make a decision to look into what you have to offer.
How much do display ads cost?
Unlike Search Ads, display ads charge the business a fee every time the ad is viewed. As with search ads, We charge a monthly fee to manage your ad.
How does PPC work?
Search Ads are triggered by a keyword or term being entered into a search engine like Google or Bing. Display ads are generated when a user visits a website. The person may be served a generic ad that is shown to everyone or they may be served an ad that is based on their interests and demographics.
What are keywords?
Your marketing consultant can help you define terms that a person might use to look for your business. For example, a person looking for a plumber might search using the phrase “plumber in Chicago.” The keyword is not usually one word. It may be a phrase that is common for your industry. Marketers do research to discover what keywords are the most effective for your business and location.
Ads Compete in an Online Auction
Digital ads differ from magazine ads or billboards in that you are not guaranteed a fixed ad placement. On the internet, everyday there is a real time auction taking place for ad space. Your business is competing against other businesses that desire that ad space. The marketing consultant will make an educated guess as to what the ad will cost, but you won’t discover the true ad costs until you have placed your bid in the auction online. The campaign can then be adjusted to compete for prime advertising placement.
Set a Budget
Although you are competing for ad space, you will set a cap on how much you want to pay per click and how much per day. During campaign set-up, Google will estimate how much your keyword will cost per. Set your budget as to how much you want to pay each time the customer clicks on your ad. You will pay one penny more than the ad below your ad. In addition to your cost per click, you set a budget per day.
Find out how much the average cost per click is for your industry.
Where will my ad rank?
Ad rank is where your advertisement appears on the page of search results. Since your ad is competing in a real-time auction, your ads manager cannot guarantee ad rank. We will be attempting to achieve first-page, top of the page placement. However, there are many factors in achieving the good ad placement. Budget is only one of them. The quality of the ad is a huge consideration for Google since they want to be relevant to the person searching. Make sure that the wording of your advertisement matches the search terms the user will be using.
Elements that Determine Ad Rank
- Bid amount.
- Ad relevance and quality. These are factors in the Quality Score that Google gives your ad.
- The context of the search. The includes factors such as the user’s device and time of day.
- Format impact- whether the ad includes ad extensions that improves the format of the ad.
Can my ad hit the target audience?
The great thing about digital ads is that you can specifically target geographic areas and set the times you want your ad to show. If you have a local business, you will likely want to draw customers that are within driving range of your store. You can target specific cities or counties. The ad can be set to show in a specific mile radius of your business.
Are you wanting to get calls and your office has specific business hours? You can set the digital ad to only show during business hours. Do you have a time of day that you think your customers will be wanting to buy from you? Set the ad to show during a specific time range. Other targeting methods can include the user’s demographics, Interests, and devices.
Digital Advertising Goals
Although the ad settings are measured in clicks, that is not the end game of running ads. Digital marketing professionals measure the success of a campaign in conversions. Examples of conversions are:
- Signing up for a newsletter.
- Phone calls/Messages
- Form completions resulting in leads
- Time spent/ pages viewed on a website
- Sales
The Ultimate Goal
There is only one true conversion and that is to make the sale, land the paying client, and increase revenue. Your marketing consultant doesn’t usually get to hear about that part of it, but she does care about it. We know what the ultimate conversion is and we want you to be thinking of it. All the website visits or phone calls don’t mean anything until you have a paying customer.
That means you should set some goals. These goals will determine if the advertising campaign is successful and help you set a budget. If your average client is worth $2,000 in revenue and it takes 3 phone calls to land a client, how much is that phone call worth? Do some math and determine how much you can pay to achieve that phone call.
Connections Digital Marketing has trained professionals to manage your PPC and Display ads. We love to help small businesses find solutions to get customers online.
