Pay Per Click (PPC) is a model of internet marketing where the advertiser pays a certain fee every time someone clicks on their ads. Today it is a proven method for putting your business on the map quickly to instantly start generating leads.

Pay Per Click advertising can be done on search engines like Google through Google Adwords or it can be done on popular social media platforms like Facebook, Pinterest etc.

Whether you are a Canadian business trying to get more traffic to your website or increase your revenue, a PPC marketing campaign can help your solve both these problems in a targeted and effective manner.

The most common PPC Advertising Search Engines are:

• Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords)
• Bing Ads (Microsoft Advertising)

The most common PPC Advertising Social Media Platforms are:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest

How does PPC work for Search Engines?

Crafting a well-structured PPC marketing strategy can help you –

• Generate high-quality leads
• Bring in targeted traffic to your website
• Give your brand awareness a massive boost
• Drive more sales and consequently more revenue

PPC does this by using paid ads on search engines, which allow you to reach shoppers who are looking today for your products or services. By understanding the keywords buyers are using to search, you can reach people quickly and efficiently.

Your ads will show up at the top of the search engine results page (SERP). It’s above the organic listings and is one of the first things users will see.

A well-crafted ad copy and landing page will capture the right search intent and offer users the right search results. They will see your ad and click on your offer, which sets you on the path of a new lead and customer.

However, it’s unlikely that yours is the only business who is advertising to your buyers. To be placed at the top, you will have to bid against your competitors.

You win these bids by doing careful analysis, setting up a strong ad campaign set up, and carrying out well-planned targeting to reach your ideal customer.

These shoppers enter certain search terms into their browser when they’re in research mode, and a different set of search terms, or keywords when they’re ready to buy.

You can be very strategic with the keywords you are bidding on. The fact that these buyers went to search engines means that they’re actively looking for a solution. In this way PPC advertising brings buyers with purchase intent.

Using Social Media for PPC Advertising

Social commerce is a new phenomenon that has gained popularity in the last year. Social commerce is a powerful trend that gives the viewer the ability to shop while he is surfing the platform.

To do well on social media, your ad needs to capture the attention of your audience. By offering the ability to purchase, social networks have shortened the customer journey. A buyer no longer needs to visit your website and search for that product again after finding it on the social platform, so the buyer journey is shortened, and you capture new business directly from the social media page.

If done correctly, social PPC can be an effective supplement to your PPC campaign.

You can reach people on the social platforms who may not find you otherwise. There are rich audience targeting options only available with paid social ads, and in particular Facebook. Since it is relatively inexpensive, social ads can be a great way to build your follower base.

How to do a PPC Campaign?

There is a lot that goes into building an effective PPC marketing campaign. It starts with researching and selecting the right keywords which matches your potential customer’s search intent. These keywords are further organized in the right campaigns and ad groups. With the right search query, ad copy, well designed landing page, and resulting quality score you are on track to launch a campaign that will perform.

There are several types of ad campaigns like search ads, display ads, video ads, paid social ads, shopping ads etc. These require meticulously designed campaigns that have the right targeted keywords, negative keywords, offer and call to action.

An ad campaign is set up, and a monthly ad budget is allocated. The campaign requires regular ongoing management. The size of the ad budget will determine how many business leads you will attract, as will the quality of your ad copy, landing page and offer.

PPC is an advanced and sophisticated model of internet advertising which requires trained, and experienced experts to manage it. It is not advisable to try to figure out PPC on your own. There is a steep learning curve, and the platforms are updated frequently.

While PPC agencies are the experts in writing ad copy or designing landing pages and using tools to analyze data, you’re the expert in your own business. For example, you may have insights into the common search terms used by your ideal customers. Sharing this valuable information with your agency can speed up the success of your PPC campaign.
Here are the steps to keep in mind when doing PPC with an agency:

Step 1: Setting Clear Objectives. Clear communications between your team and your agency is essential to ensuring both parties are on the same page about goals and outcomes. Some common PPC goals have already been listed at the beginning of this blog.

If you’re looking at increasing sales, a PPC marketing campaign with a focus on search or Product Listing Ads (PLA) can be particularly effective.

Prioritize your main goals and then use a combination of PPC strategies leveraging different ad types and platforms, to achieve those goals.

Step 2: Audience Targeting

The PPC strategy that you use will be determined by the kind of audience you target and their stage in the Sales funnel. Each stage needs a different strategy.

AdWords Audience targeting must be based on search intent rather than relevance. The three main types of search intent keywords are –

• Transactional – the intent is to make a purchase
• Informational – the intent is to research or learn more about a product or service
• Navigational – the intent is to find and arrive at a particular webpage or resource

If you’re a Canadian business, you can even target audiences in Canada alone to further fine-tune your campaign and get high-quality leads.

Each of these three types of keywords should be used for a specific kind of business –

Using transactional keywords will work best for an eCommerce business, while a service-based business will benefit most from informational keywords.

You can also optimize your PPC marketing campaign using the following audience types:

• Life events – Reach audiences based on their life events like graduation, getting married, moving to a new city etc.
• Remarketing – Reach audiences that have previously engaged with your product or service, and nudge them towards making a purchase.
• Affinity Audiences – are made using places, interest categories, and specific URLs
• In-market audiences – are ready to convert are very close to the bottom of your sales funnel
• Custom-intent audiences – Adwords uses machine learning to create these based on keywords and URLs that your ideal audience would research on the web.

Step 3: Create a stunning landing page

Landing pages by design are supposed to be concise, clear and to the point. Tactics such as keyword stuffing on the landing page can actually be detrimental to your PPC marketing campaign.

Your search intent should be closely mapped to your landing page content and design. If the content is relevant, customers will stick around and end up leaving you a lead.

Start by creating buyer personas of your ideal customer, and next map their search intent to relevant content topics. Leverage that content to craft a landing page that is concise has a clear offer and clearly addresses the pain points of your customer.

Step 4: Choose your ads wisely

You’ve got your audience targeting set up, you know their search intent, and you’ve made a stellar landing page that addresses that search intent. The next step is setting up and optimizing the ads.

The ads are the missing link between the search intent and your landing page. Through your ad, you want to exhibit the benefits of your proposition, by experimenting with –

• Ad extensions
• Graphics
• Display URL
• Call to Actions
• Descriptions
• Headlines, and more!

The key to success with AdWords is experimenting with a lot of different ad types and combinations. Once sufficient variations are inputted into the system, AdWords relentlessly tests to surface the best performing ad (or the ad that gives you the highest conversion rate).

The same thing can be done on social media platforms as well (such as Facebook Dynamic Creatives).

Step 5: Rinse, repeat and Optimize

Last but not the least, always analyze the performance of your campaigns against key metrics, and work towards optimizing them.

Metrics such as click-through-rates, cost per click, cost per acquisition, and return on ad spend are good pointers to check whether your campaign is headed in the right direction.

Using PPC to Build Your Business

Here are several situations where PPC can be highly effective and is a great way to build your business.

When You Need Immediate Results

SEO is a great long-term strategy to build quality traffic to your website. But there are times when you don’t have months or years to wait.

For instance, if you launch a new product in Canada and are looking  to create buzz and obtain customers quickly. Or for a rapid post COVID recovery where you need new business to fill your leads pipeline.

PPC Advertising Brings Targeted Traffic

PPC platforms with relevant ads give advertisers a wide variety of data points that can be used for targeting. That means you can be very precise on who you want to show your ads to.

Use PPC for Testing Purposes

Since PPC can start bringing traffic in a short period of time, it’s ideal when you want to test a web page or an offer.

You can get quick data to use and optimize. You can run A/B tests, get feedback from the marketplace and optimize for conversions. This is ideal for testing promotions, offers and new products prior to launching.

Keep Up With Your Competitors

In some industries, PPC advertising is the standard. In some cases, businesses run PPC campaigns only during certain times of the year, such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Back to School. If your competitors are advertising and you’re not, you risk losing sales to them.

For Increased Marketing Efforts

PPC advertising can be expensive, but it is highly effective if done correctly. Working with a competent PPC agency can save you time and a whole lot of money in the long run.

Even if you’ve been doing PPC yourself, you can substantially increase your ROI and decrease your ad costs by partnering with an agency. They will find cost savings in your set up which you have missed, as well as campaign efficiencies because they know the ins and outs of the ad networks.

To Better Understand The Impact Of Your Marketing Budget

Traditionally, it was hard to measure the impact of advertising. It’s impossible to know how many eyeballs have seen a print ad in a magazine or a billboard on a highway. The best you can do is to get a rough estimate.

With PPC ads, you can get precise real-time data on how well your ads are performing. You have much greater control. You can find tune ads, pause and ad if it’s not doing well to save money, and you can increase spend on your best performing campaigns to scale your revenue.

Conclusion

Often a PPC campaign is an important aspect of the overall digital marketing strategy. The work does not end with setting up an effective PPC strategy, but it is only a beginning. The paid search campaigns need to be monitored daily to make sure it is performing as intended. The accumulating data needs to be studied to adjust the cost per click, bidding strategy, adding new keywords, testing new ad copy, pausing the ads that are not performing to continue to optimize your funnel.

If you are looking for professional marketers in Canada with years of PPC experience, then Asset Digital Communications is the solution for you. Get in touch with us today!