Whenever it comes to PPC, the first thing that pops up in most people’s minds is “Google Ads,” but actually, PPC refers to any form of advertising where you pay per click when someone interacts with your business online. Of course, this includes Paid Social as well.
When applied in Search Marketing, the most valuable PPC benefit is that it enables you to target users when they are actively looking for goods and services online. SEM’s reach is huge, and its conversion rate is one of the highest you can get online precisely because you do not disturb with your advertising, but on the contrary: you come up with solutions when people need them.
PPC is useful in so many areas . You can successfully leverage it in e-commerce, but you can also use it for lead generation in B2B campaigns.
Even if you generally accept that with PPC, you pay when a person who clicks on your ad is sent to your website, this is not always true. There are situations in which you pay for CPM (cost per 1000 views) or CPV (cost per view). CPM usually applies to image ads, while CPV gets associated with video formats. In addition, some payment systems include paying when you receive a lead or a sale.
However, most platforms and websites keep using the cost-per-click model.
As mentioned in the beginning, PPC covers a wide spectrum of channels. You can run the programs on both search and display networks. You can also opt for Paid Social or choose a mix of Search and Display advertising. We’ll shortly go through each option and clarify how things work.
This is definitely the most relevant of all. In this model, you pick a keyword, and when people’s search intent matches it, your ad will be displayed, and users will eventually click on it.
The second most common PPC channel is paid social. In Facebook , Twitter , Instagram , and other social networks, the main advertising method is PPC. However, these systems also use additional advertising options like InMail or CPM.
This type of advertising extends the classic PPC program and works perfectly for remarketing purposes or contextual advertising .
Lastly, there are hybrid systems that combine Search and Display. They are common across Reddit, Quora, and many other sites alike. For instance, Amazon has ad options that range from sponsored products to paid search placements.
When you combine Search and Display together, you can reach almost every internet user with PPC targeting.
You can focus not only on reaching new prospects but also on getting in touch with your website’s prior visitors. This is possible through remarketing , which means that you show ads to users based on their previous actions on your site, such as abandoning your shop cart or filling in a particular form.
Whereas PPC is usually known for its ability to reach people when they actively search for something online, it can also be highly targeted through the use of a variety of filters such as:
Things can be so specific that you can decide to reach only those located in Bucharest, who have visited your site and abandoned your shopping cart, showing them ads on Friday morning between 9:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m., while they are on their mobiles reading the news section of a specific site.
PPC is often handled differently in various business types. For example, some companies may want to leverage it to build brand awareness, while others may want to focus on ROAS related goals. Some may wish to consider a specific CPA, while different ones may be busy generating a particular number of leads.
In PPC for e-commerce, each search query can go to a unique page. This means that you can send product-based queries to a specific product page that fits best. You can also send items to category pages on your website if you consider this to be a more relevant solution.
In this situation, the goal of PPC is to have the ads focused on getting the lead by convincing the user to take action. This can involve filling a form, sending a contact request, or initiating a phone conversation.
Therefore you may need to integrate strong CTAs in your ads or even use a feature enabling the potential customer to call you directly from the ad.
In local businesses, the focus of PPC is on the actual locations in the ads. You may want to opt for features that allow you to add your address and phone number to your ad. The user can then click to go to your website or get directions to reach you at your actual premises. The ads can be targeted to a specific location or multiple locations simultaneously, depending on what you want to achieve.
You can also choose to display individual sets of ads for each location in part.
In B2B, using ad extensions will allow you to display additional information in your ads and drive traffic specifically to the adequate page that best responds to a customer’s particular needs.
Using advanced targeting options, you can even change your ad completely based on where the user is in the buying cycle and guide him forward to the next natural step.
The online search process’s elementary goal is to discover answers to our questions. People think in concepts and translate them into words when searching for things on the internet. If someone conducts a search and does not find the content according to their expectations, they will refine it and reformulate it until getting the appropriate answer. On the contrary, if they find the teaser useful, they will tend to examine the result and look for more details by clicking on your ad and landing on your site. If the landing page is not related to the search query and the ad, the user most probably decides to leave it.
Therefore it’s crucial to maintain the scent between your keyword ad and the landing page to ensure the user has a seamless experience.
Search is not interruptive marketing.
The user asks for information actively, and your ad helps him find what he is looking for. In this case, unlike what’s happening on TV or radio, your approach is not viewed as disturbing advertising but as useful content that helps someone make a decision. If your ad serves the question, you may end up acquiring a new client.
What’s new?
On occasion, if you track how often you really find something when looking for it online, you may be surprised to realize that the percentage of successful searches is lower today than it used to be years ago. This is because many more irrelevant websites show up in the SERP since Google tries to use its machine learning system to figure out your terms' intent instead of just showing you what you searched for. Since the intent matching can sometimes be so bad, you get many junk suggestions. As Google continues to hide data and forces your account to show irrelevant impressions, you may have to use other channels and find new ways to ensure you are properly adding new terms, audiences, and negative keywords to your lists to maintain your account as healthy as possible.
So long cookies
Google’s found a new way to maintain your privacy. Data suggests that advertisers can anticipate seeing at least 95% of the conversions per dollar spent compared to cookie-based advertising.
The fresh fix comes nearly a year after Google introduced the Privacy Sandbox - an initiative to fund tracking mechanisms like third-party cookies. Now they’re honing in on efforts to eliminate third-party cookies by replacing them with practical, privacy-first alternatives.
Improvements made with the Federated Learning of Cohorts (or FLoC) will offer businesses a new way to reach people via targeted ads. It’ll cluster large groups with similar interests so that people can “hide in the crowd,” keeping a person’s browser history private.
There’s talk that Chrome intends to make these new changes available to the public with its next release in 2021. Stay tuned!
Share