An Introduction to Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing
30th Apr, 2020
An Introduction to Pay-Per-Click Search Marketing
Wondering what Pay Per Click marketing is? If you have a business - regardless of its size - it is important to understand the concept of Pay Per Click advertising so that you can make the most of your integrated digital marketing strategy.
In a nutshell, PPC (or pay-per-click) marketing refers to advertising on the internet to ultimately drive traffic to your website. The advertiser only pays the publisher( third party website) whenever an advertisement is clicked on by a user, hence the term "pay-per-click".
The concept of PPC is most often associated with the most popular, first-tier search engines, such as Google or Yahoo. In such cases, the advertiser will usually bid on specific, keyword phrases that are relevant to the audience that they are trying to reach and the products and services they are trying to sell. Each time the advertisement is clicked, a visitor is redirected to a website and the search engine is paid a small fee.
Once you have used PPC marketing for a short while, you will notice that the small amount you pay to the search engine is well worth it since a visitor clicking on your website is like striking gold. For example, you may pay a search engine R2 for a visitor clicking on your website. However, the website visitor may end up doing business with you, resulting in revenue for you that is much more than only R2. The cost per click value is determined upfront as advertiser bid for search terms. Ad rank is also aligned to what you are prepared to spend on your PPC advertising.
Having a good PPC campaign can take a bit of work but you will reap many benefits. A great campaign will involve research such as finding the correct keywords, arranging these keywords into a well-thought-out campaign, selecting ad groups, and then configuring a PPC landing page that will attract website users. PPC integrates with results that are shown on search engine results pages.
The hard work that you or your digital marketing agency put into your PPC campaign will pay off as the main search engines reward advertisers when they have a clever and relevant PPC campaign. This is done by charging them a lower rate for ad clicks.
Ultimately, it means that if your website landing page and your advertisements are relevant and interesting to internet users, you will be charged less for every click on your ad. Your cost per click is also reduced over time because of your relevance to the search term. Google will issue your advert with a quality score that determines when it is presented to a user who is searching.
In terms of Google ads, many people often wonder if these are for free. The short answer is no, it is not for free, but the good news is that you only pay for the ads that are clicked on. So, if you create an ad campaign and no one clicks on it (unlikely), you will not pay a cent.
Using Google Ads can be very beneficial to increasing traffic to your website (by linking your advertisements directly to your site) and it is therefore definitely worth using it. For only a small sum of money, you can digitally market your business to millions of internet users. Of course, this will only pay off if website visits are converted into sales but the chances of this are much higher than if you advertise in any other way.
Do you make use of PPC marketing and Google ads? Ideation Digital cut its teeth as a Digital Marketing Agency in South Africa that manages a number of PPC campaigns for our base of clients. Our team of PPC experts are constantly on a drive to reduce the CPC associated with PPC campaigns to ensure a relative ROI.
If you need PPC assistance we are here to assist.