What is PPC?

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is a search engine marketing technique that requires you to pay a fee every time someone clicks to your website from an advert you have placed in a search engine’s results. Therefore, you only pay each time someone visits your site. 

PPC ( Pay Per Click ) Ad Campaign: A deep study 

Different techniques are followed by webmasters to get a good rank in the search engines and this ultimately boosts traffic for their websites. Among all the SEO techniques PPC (Pay-per-click) advertising is the most significant one, where you can get fantastic results. But before going for PPC advertising, you should have thorough knowledge about it. Here we are going to give a detailed description about PPC advertising and how it can help you in achieving your objective. It will explain the fundamentals of improving a visitor’s response to your website content through appropriate page structure and layout, and improving the inquiry rates and sales resulting from these prospective client visits by including an effective call to action within these pages. These steps will definitely add some value to websites, those who want to develop the effectiveness of their online promotional activities.

First of all you should know: 

What is PPC Advertising? 

PPC (Pay-per-click) is the advertising model in which advertisers pay for click-throughs to their website. These ads are served based on keywords or themes. PPC advertising works through a bidding process. It provides exclusive results in attracting the targeted customers to their website. If you are launching a new website, then this technique can provide you the best result than any other technique. PPC advertisers are aggressive marketers. 

Search engines shows two different types of results when a visitors searches for a particular keyword. Some of them are free search results and some of them are PPC advertising results. Free search results are displayed on the left side of the result page and pay-per-click results are displayed on the right side of the result page. These are text-based advertisements. 

Before assigning highest ranking to one particular website, the bids are checked by PPC bid management team. Pay per click advertising involves paying these search engines, only when a user clicks on your advertisement and visits your website. If the user doesn’t click on your ad, then it costs nothing. Your ad position specially depends on your bid value. The more you pay for your ad, the higher your ad will be displayed at the top of the result list. Another factor has great impact on your result, i.e. - keyword selection. During selecting keywords for your ad you should select those keywords which are very relevant to the theme of your content. It should be based on the products or services that you want to highlight. Your ad is only displayed when the user searches for those keywords that you have bid on. 

There are also some additional benefits that you can get through PPC advertising- 

1. If your keyword selection is good, then your ad will be displayed each time the user searches for that particular keyword. In this way you can get a lot of clicks on your ad and it will ultimately increases the exposure of your website.

2. In PPC advertising you can control the expenses on your ad. It depends on how assertively you want to promote your website.

3. If your ad is displayed for a particular keyword which is very relevant to your products and services, then your ad will get more number of clicks. In this way you will get more potential customers.

Basics of PPC:

During setting up your PPC advertisement, there are certain factors which you need to consider. They are- 

o CTR:

CTR is the acronym used for “Click Thru Rate”. This is the rate at which your Ad gets a click. It varies drastically, so you need to increase this periodically. If you are getting 5 clicks in 10 on your add, then you will achieve a 50% click thru rate (CTR). 

o CPC:

CPC stands for “Cost Per Click”. When a user clicks on your advertisement, a certain amount is charges to your account. There is one auction system in Google, where you can bid on a maximum Cost Per Click that you are willing to pay for a particular keyword or term. 

o Ad Position:

In this case your ad will be displayed in the advertisement list according to your bid value. So if you will pay more then your add will be displayed at the top of the search list. 

o ROI/ROAS:

To measure your result in Google advertising these two methods ROI (Return on Investment) or ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend) are used. This focus on how many bid value you have to give to achieve a alteration. 

o Advertisements:

These are actual text-based advertisements which are displayed on Google’s PPC advertising search engine results page. Google has restrictions on the nature of ads displayed on pay per click and also limits the amount of content that can be displayed within an advertisement. 

Google has certain restrictions on the amount of content that will be displayed on pay per click ads and the nature of the Ads. 

o Landing Page:

In PPC advertisement when a user clicks on your link, he will land on one particular page of your website. That is known as the landing page. This page is very important because here the user gets his required information about your products and services. 

Ad Position:

Ad position has great importance in your pay-per-click advertising. The results also vary according to the ad position. Generally people think that ad position is decided on bid value. It is right up to certain extent, but Google also take other factors into consideration to decide your ad position. If your ad is getting more number of clicks then Google consider that your ad contains some valuable information that people are generally searching for. It helps to increase the rank of your site in search engines. 

So sometimes if you are paying less bid value for your ad, but the keywords that you have used for your ad are very much relevant to the products or services you are offering and your landing page is very much relevant to the theme of your ad, then definitely you will be able to get a good position in Google’s PPC search result page.

Different Keyword Matching Strategies and their use: 

Google provides three main keyword matching strategies. Each keyword matching strategy has special uses. All are dependant on the sequence of keywords. They are as- 

Exact Match:

In this case the result will be displayed to the user only if the word entered by the user exactly matches with the keyword used in your ad. Exact matches are entered by enclosing them in [ ] square brackets. 

[SEO Services] will match with ‘SEO services’ entered by the user. It will not match with ‘SEO Services India’. 

Use:

o This is used as most effective campaign management tool.

o By using this strategy you can also measure, how specific terms used in your ads really show increased Click Thru Rate (CTR).

Phrase Match:

Phrase matches occur when a user given keyword exactly matches with the keyword phrase specified by you in your ad. 

Suppose you have used “SEO Services” in your ad and the user is searching “Affordable Services SEO”, in this case it will not match and your ad will not be displayed to the user. If the user is searching for “SEO Services India”, then definitely your ad will be displayed, because the user searching for the phrase is exactly matching with the phrase used in your ad. 

Use:

o This is one of the effective measurement tools.

o Once the basics have been established, it can be used as effective campaign improvement tool.

Broad Match:

Among different strategies used by Google Adwords, broad match is one. Broad match keywords are simply entered into the Adwords system with no special formatting or characters. For ex- SEO Services 

This will show the list of ads that contains SEO and services. It will match with ‘SEO Services India’, ‘India Services SEO’ etc. It will also match with other derivatives of terms.

Use:

o It helps to amplify the number of times your ad is displayed and also helps to increase the supply of your ad impression.

o In this case the more your keyword phrase will match with the search word of the user, according to that your add exposure will increase.

Negative Match:

In this case Google Adwords keep certain restrictions for your ads. In negative match strategy your advertisements will not be displayed for certain keywords. 

For ex- SEO Services 

So for this keyword SEO Services, you can put a negative keyword against it. Here you can use ‘USA’. Suppose the user is searching for ‘SEO Services USA’, then your ad will not be displayed in the list. Generally negative match strategy is used if it is the product or services that you do not offer. You can also use negative keywords with ‘-‘symbol in front of them. 

For Ex- ‘-USA’

Suppose some one is searching for USA, then your ad will not be displayed.

Use:

It is used to remove poorly targeted customers who may be looking for unrelated topics. 

Categorise & Analyze: 

Before starting your PPC advertisements, you should keep your concentration on certain points. Analyze different types of advertisement campaigns. One of the most fundamental drivers of success using Adwords is comparing the results between different campaigns, Ad Groups, Keywords and Advertisements. In this way you can get effective results. 

When to Create a new or separate Campaign 

There are certain cases where you can go for separate advertisement campaigns. It has been discussed before that some of the ads are managed at the Campaign level. So if you are interested to know difference between different aspects of your advertising Campaigns, then you can go for a separate or new campaign. Before that you can spare your thought on different aspects of campaign level-

o To compare results between geographies, you can use separate campaigns.

o You can use different campaigns for the ads targeted at different times of the day.

Then you can compare different results and can analyze which campaign is providing better result. According to your results you can also lower your bid and can get more number of clicks for your ads.

When to create a new or separate Ad Group 

Each Ad group is associated with multiple advertisements. In each advertisement you can target for different keywords. The number of times each ad is served and the ‘Click thru Rate’ for each advertisement are recorded separately. According to this result you can measure your performance. 

Ad Groups are considered as useful technique for theme based keyword groupings. 

Supply & Demand of Ad impressions 

You can estimate your Ad impressions from your different Ad campaigns.

According to your Ad impressions you can make plan for your PPC bid value. If you are getting good response from one particular Ad campaign, although you will decrease the bid value for that Ad campaign, you will get good rank in Google’s PPC advertisement list. 

So before proceeding, you should have idea about different Ad impressions. 

Ad Impressions (Under Supply) 

You can do experiments on your advertisements to know about the supply and demand of your product and services. After observing the results for few days or weeks you can take any decision. If you are getting less response than your estimation then you can go for more keyword expansion or you can increase the bid value for more potential clicks. 

Suppose you are advertising for a particular country or region with relatively less population, in this case you can increase your bid value to get more response from limited users. 

Ad Impressions (Over Supply)

Every PPC advertiser has certain budget for each day. Users click on advertisements which are not in the top position of the search results list. But you have to measure and monitor whether your advertisements are getting good response or not. You have to check that you are getting positive Return on Investment or not. 

If you are being able to get your targeted results everyday, then it becomes more important to ensure that you have found a good position of the maximum number of user’s clicks for your daily budget. 

How to Write Effective Advertisements? 

PPC advertisements are generally text-based advertisements. Google Adwords permit certain amount of text for each advertisement. So during writing for your Adwords ads, you should keep certain points in your mind. 

o During writing for your Ad campaign, you just forget that you can give detail description about your products and services. So try to write your description within certain word length and focus on the products and services that you want to highlight in your advertisements.

o The title of your Ad campaign should be very much relevant to the theme of your products or services, so that visitors can easily fin it out.

o Real time and real world feedback is very necessary for your ad campaign. By trying different approaches and observing the results, you will quickly refine your approach. Audience remark is very necessary for every advertiser.

o Most people don’t like jargon and they respond best to simply expertise messages. So Always use wording that are appropriate to your audience.

o Before writing any message you should consider who is going to read this message. Your wording should clarify to whom you are targeting.

o Try to include those keywords in your advertisements that people are really searching for. Focus on the key features and advantages that you are going to offer.

o You can add ‘call to action’ within your advertisement. If someone will be interested to buy your product or service, they can directly go through this add click option.

o You should remember the website address or URL address that is displayed on the ad. Always try to display the top level address.

Too much or too little detail 

When you are writing for your ad campaign, it should be within certain word length, because generally customers do not spend more time to read one Ad. If customers get anything interesting then they would like to go to the deeper part. So when you are writing information about products and services of your website, try to keep it within one or two paragraph. A customers with a strong interest in purchasing a particular product or service will be willing to read a little about the key features of that product or service. 

If one customer is very much interested to buy your products or services and you have given very little information in your ad campaign, at that case you can kill a customer’s interest. So always try to keep your description within certain standard. 

First of all, you should decide what you expect from the user and how can you promote him to take the decision immediately. Always you should present the relevant information for the user to support their decision and to take action.

 

Always Home pages aren’t the best option

In your Ad campaign, generally you prefer to give link back to your home page, but it is useful only when it contains some valuable information about the products and services you have given in your ad campaign. If it contains some general information about your company, then it never be a wise decision to send the users to that particular page. 

When you send a user to one particular page of your website, your aim should to convert the visitor into regular customer. If your home contains sufficient information about your products and services, then definitely you can use it as your landing page. 

Different landing pages can be given for different Ad campaigns and you can separately measure the performance of each ad group. Finally you can understand the effectiveness of each add group in converting traffic to sale. 

General Tips on PPC Advertisement 

o If you are going to start your new PPC advertisement, just go slowly. Don’t spend more on your Google campaign.

o Check your performance in regular intervals and make your plan accordingly. If require you can change your keyword bids also.

o You can apply new methods for new Ad Groups. But if you are being able to find out techniques that work well, you just follow those techniques for development of your Ad campaign.

o As your core campaigns and Ad Groups achieve success, focus on refining those ads.

o Keep things simple and try to keep your Adwords campaign within a manageable level.

o If you have larger budget and more resource, then you can try to get the best result from it.

We hope all the important tips discussed above will be useful for your pay-per-click ad campaigns. It will definitely help you to maximize your result in Google Adword’s PPC result page. Google Adward is considering as the best advertising media where you can get feedback about user’s behaviour on your ad campaigns.