Simply put, Pay per Click (PPC) ads are an absolute vital part of your business’s growth.
In fact, recent podcasts by influencers across several industries have revealed that paid ads are the bulk of their revenue generation and traffic now. Even marketing guru Neil Patel recently said that SEO and PPC go hand-in-hand, with PPC being the dominant two in that relationship.
Last week I had a business owner tell me how he was very against paying for ads. He’d closed his mind to it, and I believe he’s going to struggle to keep up with the competition because of it.
Pay per Click (PPC) ads are no longer an option if you want your business to succeed.
While traditional web marketing (think SEO, link building, etc) revolves around targeting keywords to rank on the first page of Google, it may not be the best strategy for your business.
And if that’s your only marketing strategy, you’re missing a big opportunity.
If you’re new to PPC, or you’ve opposed it in the past, you may be missing some of the benefits of this popular marketing strategy. So, let’s take a look at the top benefits associated with PPC campaigns.
Instant Attention
PPC campaigns are a great way to spearhead your marketing strategy, especially if you’re trying to launch a brand new product, service, or business. One difficult problem new businesses frequently encounter is failing to reach their target audience online since they don’t already have an active following.
When you build PPC ads and turn them on, they’re on. People will see them within minutes, and if they’re well written and engaging, traffic will soon follow.
This means you have to know your market and who you’re ultimately talking to in the ad. And this applies to both sides of the ‘transaction’ – you need a well written ad, and you need a web page that backs up the reason that the visitor clicked in the first place.
Another great way to take advantage of this instant attention is by targeting the keywords you’re trying to rank for organically. You don’t have to wait for your SEO strategy to finally get you to page one. Tag-teaming your SEO strategy with your PPC strategy can really boost your traffic and lead to more repeat sales.
It’s important to understand that some forms of marketing are long term strategies, such as content marketing. When you’re starting out from square one and lack an audience of followers, PPC is a godsend, because it achieves instant results, compared to content marketing and keyword optimization strategies which may not help you rise to relevant rankings (and therefore traffic to your site) for months.
There should be a planned balance – PPC to get you that immediate and much-needed traffic, with your SEO efforts in high gear, and then over time you may scale back on PPC as your SEO kicks in.
Affordability
Unknown to most businesses and marketers who have never used PPC before, paid advertising is actually quite affordable.
Because of Google’s outreach to get businesses to advertise, many have taken them up on their offer only to see their budgets quickly dwindle with little or no success. This has turned off a lot of business owners to the potential of running new ads on their network.
Are you one of them?
One of the most common misconceptions is that you have to pay for each time a user sees your ad, but this simply isn’t true. Instead, you only pay for each time a user takes action by clicking on your ad. After all, it’s called pay-per-click advertising. And with modern tools like Google analytics, you can track exactly where your advertising budget is spent.
Plus, it’s possible to set an ad-spend threshold, which helps prevent you from accidentally overspending. You can set a daily, monthly, or campaign-by-campaign threshhold.
Most PPC systems are quite pliable, too. Not only can you change your limit on-the-fly, you can also modify and update limits any time. Basically, the threshold acts as a safeguard to ensure you only spend as much as you want to, which is crucial to protecting your budget.
Incredibly Precise Targeting
The old days of print advertising (as seen on Mad Men), whereby advertisements were inserted into magazines to fairly broad (and often ineffective) target audiences, are ancient history.
Google’s PPC ad system (called AdWords) can target markets and market segments with extreme laser-like precision. Not only can you target key demographic information, you can also target market segments based on their physical location and the time of day.
Facebook’s PPC ad system can target by all kinds of things – relationships, job title/position, customer likes and dislikes, publications your audience reads, and a lot more.
LinkedIn’s PPC ad system can also target (perhaps more precisely) by job title. It can also get you in front of key people in key industries, but be careful – LinkedIn ads are a lot more expensive and therefore the targeting becomes very important to the success of a campaign there.
It’s also possible to further hone your ads on all these systems with topic targeting, device targeting (i.e. targeting mobile devices instead of desktops), ad placement targeting, and even location.
Instead of resorting to older spray-and-pray shotgun-style approaches of the past, you can intelligently select which types of people will see your ads, and which won’t. This level of sophistication helps provide the greatest potency of your PPC ads so you get the highest return on your investment.
PPC Quickly Lends Insight to Other Marketing Channels
As I mentioned earlier, one of PPC’s benefits is it’s speed. When you run ads, you can see results almost instantaneously. Compared to slower elbow-grease tactics like list building and content marketing, PPC shows lightning fast results. In turn, you can use the information and performance data to develop insight regarding your target audience’s habits and which keywords to target.
For instance, if you notice one set of keywords performing significantly better than another with PPC ads, you can then use that information to develop more long-term strategies, such as keywords to target in your content creation endeavors. On the other hand, if you notice a set of keywords performing horrendously, you may want to avoid wasting time on them in other marketing channels.
Increased Revenues and Measurable Results
Some forms of advertising don’t always have the most measurable results. For instance, take a look at some of the biggest brands’ commercials on television which strive to create an image for the business. Despite loads of marketing and analytical data, it’s tough to say what the real ROI is on the commercial, because it’s difficult to say whether or not it influenced on or many purchasing decisions.
Ever heard the famous quote by John Wanamaker, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half”?
PPC advertising, however, isn’t as gray as television commercials. Not only will PPC advertisements increase your bottom line, you can measure how much your PPC ad-spend increased traffic, conversions, and revenue. The PPC statistics take all of the hocus pocus and magic out of marketing by producing cold hard data measuring the success (or failure) of your campaign.
It’s Time to (Re)Consider a Pay per Click Ad Campaign
There are some real reasons to not be like the business owner I mentioned at the beginning of this article. Paid ads offer quick and targeted traffic. They’re affordable and can help you boost your bottom line significantly.
If you want to affordable build a following and target your audience with precision, it’s time to reach out for professional help. PPC is certainly a fast and advantageous way to place a link to your site at the top of the SERPs, yet some people prefer long term organic strategies via content marketing. Whichever your goal, Window Treatment Marketing Pros can bolster your online presence to increase the number of site visitors who take action.