PPC, or Pay Per Click, is an advertising model that works by charging a fee to the advertiser for every click the ad receives on a publisher’s platform. For example, the links labelled “Ad” you see on Google search results are paid advertisements working on the PPC principle
Marketers prefer PPC campaigns because it enables them to:
- Target specific audience
- Run dedicated, measurable marketing campaigns (like events or seasonal sales)
- Improve ROI (Google’s PPC platform delivers an ROI of 200%)
PPC management agencies know their way around conducting such campaigns with meticulous attention to detail, bringing you the best results out of your investment – both, in the agency and in the campaign as well. Let’s look at some great benefits of PPC that a business can derive.
Top Benefits of PPC Ads
Pay Per Click ads are surprisingly easy to monitor and adjust, in addition to allowing a business entry into the online world of tough competition. It is a strategy that helps you learn quickly what your consumers want to see and buy. Furthermore, PPC bonds well with any channel of marketing and fetches a bag full of useful data in return. There are more benefits of PPC that fit the bigger picture for a business – let’s look at them now.
Achieving Business Goals
Over the course of a year, a business outlines many goals for the end of the year and for individual quarters as well. There may also be agile campaigns with their own goals. PPC advertising provides a medium for quickly deploying marketing campaigns focused on deriving results. Goals may range from gaining brand exposure to siphoning in hot leads – PPC works well in just about any scenario.
Being highly trackable and adjustable, PPC proves to be a great tool to deploy even in a rush and start counting the metrics.
You can Track PPC Well
The principle that PPC is based on is click counts; the very foundation of it is based on numbers. This makes the entirety of its aspects easily trackable. For example, running a PPC campaign on Google Ads, and jigging it up with an analytics tool helps you measure the pertaining metrics:
- How many clicks were received?
- Which time of the day were most clicks received?
- Which paid ads received the most clicks?
- How many leads actually stayed on the landing page after clicking?
Many such questions receive quantitative answers when PPC is used – which may not be possible (to this extent) with other marketing techniques.
PPC is Quick
When you compare PPC to organic SEO optimization, you observe how quick this method of marketing actually is. While organic SEO may cost you a little less, it takes time to build a foundation before conversions finally start happening. With PPC, you can launch an advertisement with Google Ads in mere minutes, and start seeing results in real-time a few more minutes later.
That is how fast PPC works. Don’t worry if you have been lagging behind in the online marketing universe – PPC can catch you right up.
PPC Gives You Control
Unlike other marketing campaigns, PPC marketing gives you full control over the advertisement. Starting from the audience and keywords you want to target, the bid limits you wish to set, the budget you allot for such campaigns, the duration for which they will run – everything is controllable.
Other marketing methods do offer some control, but once they launch (especially the organic SEO part, like building backlinks), they are pretty much on their own – you can only anticipate and draw forecasts. There is hardly any tool that helps with real-time performance.
PPC has Budget Flexibility
Pay per click campaigns work on a bidding system. Various companies eyeing an advertising spot on the publisher’s website set apart some pre-decided budgets to compete for the spot – whoever wins the bid gets to place their ad there. This method not only gives you the flexibility to adjust your spending but also measure how much budget your competitors are allotting for the same.
You can adjust the PPC spend according to the requirements of the campaign – brand visibility campaigns may not need as high a budget as lead generation campaigns. Besides, Google estimates that businesses bidding on Google Ads earn $2 for every $1 spent – this makes budgeting fairly simple.
PPC has Channel Flexibility
Accelerated digitalization has given birth to many channels and a dozen different touchpoints where brands can reach their consumers. Look at this as an opportunity to place paid advertisements anywhere – on social media, in emails, on search engine results or even on instant messaging apps – there are countless ways today where a paid ad can reach your consumers.
No matter which channel they are frequenting, your paid ad will reach them; such is the flexibility of paid ads to be embedded into any marketing channel, provided the publisher is allowing it. If you aren’t convinced already, Statista predicts that paid ad spending for social media will have risen to $173 million by the end of 2022 – a prediction that speaks volumes about expanding into other channels.
PPC Allows High-Precision Targeting
If you are willing to pilot a few PPC campaigns, you will be sitting on a mountain of data that can be used to craft a PPC campaign that is extremely focused on the kind of personas your business has its eyes on. Running text ads for the right keywords, ad reruns that build on past successes and eliminate errors is a good way to create a PPC campaign that shoots like an arrow towards its destination.
According to Google, search ads are responsible for 89% of the traffic that is not replaceable by organic traffic – which says a lot about precision marketing using PPC.
PPC is Data-Rich
As mentioned earlier, PPC gives you a lot of metrics to track and record. Data like impressions, clicks, frequency, duration, destination, intent, etc. is important to inform your next strategy to drive more leads into the funnel. Over time, you can build a data bank from these campaigns and start plotting for trends that help you forecast and prepare for the high season beforehand.
Conclusion
PPC may require setting away some budget to secure an ad spot initially; however, the benefits associated with running successful PPC campaigns far surpass the initial investment.
