PPC Marketing Basics for Digital Marketers [Comprehensive Guide]

You must have seen people dressed as dolls and making rhythmic movements in front of a sandwich shop or an ice cream shop. These servants of God took money from the shop owner to advertise for him and invite people (in fact, to draw them into the shop). This is a kind of advertisement just like banner or TV commercials, etc., but much cheaper and perhaps much more effective.

For that business, it is important that someone enters the store. After all, the person who comes to the ice cream shop buys something. This type of advertising and attracting customers may seem a little old-fashioned and not suitable for all businesses, especially for online businesses. Online business doesn’t have a shop to invite someone from the street to come to you.

For online businesses, everything boils down to conversion rate. That is, the user must come to the site and buy something (that is, the user becomes a customer) or do something. So they have no choice but to advertise to increase the conversion rate and profitability. Online stores and online businesses, of course, have similar possibilities for advertising, which are discussed in digital marketing.

Advertising possibilities of online businesses exist in the digital space, according to themselves. For example, it is possible that search engines (especially Google) guide the user to a certain site (invite the user inside the store). Naturally, they get paid for this. After all, this is advertising, it has a name (Pay Per Click or PPC) and rules. It is not as easy as it seems.

The subject of the article you are reading is the introduction of this type of advertisement (click advertisements) in digital marketing. If you read the article till the end, you will be well acquainted with the basics of general marketing (PPC advertising).

What is PPC or Pay Per Click Marketing?

Pay-per-click (PPC) is an advertising model that lets advertisers place ads on an advertisement platform and pay the host of the platform when their ad is clicked.

Search engines are the best advertising platforms. When a user searches for a word, site owners can buy that user’s visit to their site instead of them naturally choosing their site from the search results and entering the site. For this reason, search engines also offer advertising services (Google Ads and Microsoft Ads).

When we say the best platforms, it does not mean that no one uses PPC ads on social networks (for example, Facebook Ads). The point is that when someone wants to buy hosting, for example, he does not go to search for it on Facebook. Most of the time, just like you and me, people go to search engines.

So no digital marketer should neglect Search Engine Marketing (SEM). PPC advertising is a subset of this type of marketing.

What is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) refers to any digital marketing (paid or unpaid) done on a search engine, like Google, Yahoo, or Bing.

Based on this, SEO is also a type of digital marketing and is done with the aim of bringing the user to the site and increasing traffic and ROI. The difference here is that in SEO, website pages are optimized for specific keywords without paying search engines. It means that online store SEO actually helps in marketing and selling products.

But in Paid Search Marketing (i.e. PPC), based on a certain mechanism, when the user searches for a word among the links of sites that have that word and is supposed to pay money to the platform (if the link is clicked), some links are selected and shown to the user. It will be given.

  What is the mechanism of Paid Search Marketing or PPC?

What happens in PPC advertising? By what mechanism does the link platform select one or more specific sites (for example, only those 3 seller sites) to show to the user? Does that mean that only those 3 sites used ppc ads? No! Certainly, more hosting sellers wanted their link to be displayed first, but they were not selected. Why? Who should choose and how? Based on what criteria?

First, it is the platform that chooses and has criteria for its selection. Second, the mechanism that makes the selection possible is similar to an auction. To enter this auction, like any other auction, advertisers must register. They must have an account (user) in the advertising section of that platform (e.g. Google Ads) and it is in that account that they specify the advertising campaign for the products or services they have and other details related to each campaign. Campaigns are divided into ad groups, each group having its own keywords and related ads.

Therefore, every time a keyword is searched, an auction will be held at the same time to select those who have created an account and defined a campaign for that keyword, whoever is closest to the desired criteria of that platform.

Steps to designing a successful PPC campaign

How to design a ppc campaign? In order to have a successful campaign or in other words successful PPC advertising, you must follow the steps below. Of course, don’t forget, although all the steps below are important, keyword research is the most important step. Your PPC campaign revolves around your chosen keyword.

Define the goal of PPC advertising and the metrics to measure its success

This first step is common to all activities related to digital marketing and advertising campaigns. First of all, the digital marketer must answer the question why this advertising method? What kind of online business and what kind of products does the digital marketer want to do paid advertising for? Who are the target audience (users/customers/audiences) of advertisements? At what stage is the business and what are its goals and to what extent can these advertisements be useful for it?

For example, is it supposed to double the sales of a certain product in a certain period of time? So, the measure of campaign success is more sales. Or do you want to increase site traffic? Or is the goal of building Brand Awareness? Or an online store has organized a big auction and wants to use ppc ads for that auction?

Choose the PPC ad type that fits the goal

As mentioned earlier, there are different platforms for click ads. On each platform, you can promote the campaign with one of the types of click ads or a combination of them:

• Search Ads: The most common type of advertising is general (for example, purchases).
• Display Ads: In this type of advertising banner or advertising image is displayed on other sites. Display ads can be used well in social networks. Google Display Network is also a great option.
• Google Shopping: It is a wonderful possibility in Google for click ads of online stores.

Research to find the best keywords

Each ad group may have up to 5 keywords. The important thing is that those words must be chosen very carefully. It can be said that the most time-consuming stage in designing an advertising campaign is exactly this stage of keyword research. You should prepare a comprehensive list of the most relevant and popular keywords for the product or service you want to promote. Long tail keywords should be in that list. In that list of negative keywords (those words that you want to exclude from the campaign) should also be present.

(Look at the photo above again). You want to advertise for Samsung phones (your ad group is Samsung mobile phones). The keywords for this group (that is, what the user searches for) may be: buy a Samsung phone, buy the best Samsung phone, buy the cheapest Samsung phone, buy a Samsung model x phone, etc. Now, if some models of Samsung phones are not available on your site, you can put the names of those models in negative keywords so that if someone searches for them, the advertising platform of your site will not participate in the auction.

Monitor and analyze the campaign (Google Analytics data)

Designing the campaign is one part, reviewing and analyzing its results is another part. When the campaign design work is finished and the platform for the product and certain keywords of your site is among the participants for the auction, how many times will your campaign win the auction? If he doesn’t win, what are the reasons? What should be changed?

If you win and get an entry, has the user made the purchase or not? If not why? Is there a problem with your landing page? Its product content is not well written and the user could not find the information he wanted in it? What should be changed on your site? You can use the Google Analytics tool to check user behavior on the site.

However, do not forget that PPC advertising campaigns must be constantly evaluated and modified.

Google Ads: The best platform for PPC advertising

Undoubtedly, Google Ads is the best choice for click ads and every digital marketer should know how to work with it. Because Google is a search engine in which more than 90,000 searches are performed in one second! Who can claim that ppc ads on other platforms (such as social networks, Yahoo or Bing or even SMS or e-mail click ads) can win so much?

Google Ads, formerly known as Google AdWords, is Google’s advertising platform that works based on the ppc advertising model. Google Ads gives the advertiser the possibility that his ads, in addition to Google search results and related networks; Display on different sites, mobile applications and even videos.

How to define a campaign in Google Ads? First, you need to create an account in Google Ads. (If for some reason your business doesn’t want or can’t create an account, there are companies that will do it for you.) Next, define the campaign. At this stage, you need to specify several things:

• The currency in which you want to pay the expenses, as well as the average budget you want to spend per day on this campaign.
• Specify the audience of the campaign. In this step, you can choose a specific geographical area. It is at this stage that you should introduce keywords to Google.
• You must specify a maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bid. That is, you have to tell Google that you are ready to pay a maximum of x dollars for a click to participate in the auction. (If this is your first campaign, you can ask Google to do this for you and set a maximum.)
• Write ad text. This is what will be shown to the user along with your link. This text must contain the keyword; be attractive and invite the user to click on that link; It should be linked to the landing page and finally, if possible, offer a specific price or a specific discount to the user.

Criteria for winning PPC ad auctions across platforms

When a user searches the keywords of your campaign and the auction starts, based on what criteria will the winner of the auction be determined? Platforms consider a set of similar criteria alongside each other. For example, Google says:

In general, the higher your bid and the more relevant your ads and keywords, the more likely your ad will show at a higher position on the page.

It can be said that these 3 criteria are common across platforms (here we have explained each criteria based on what is set for it in Google Ads):

1. Maximum Cost-Per-Click (CPC) Bid: As explained earlier.
2. Quality Score: It is a numerical measure between 1 and 10 that shows the relevance of the advertisement’s keywords to the user’s search. This criterion itself consists of a set of these 4 elements: the relationship between keywords and the advertisement, the relationship between keywords and the advertisement with what the user is searching for, the quality of the landing page (in almost all aspects, even UX) and the history of CTR (click-through rate) of the keywords. . The higher the QS, the lower the CPC.
3. Ad Rank: It is the value that determines the position of the ad on the search results page and is equal to Maximum Bid x Quality Score.

Advantages and benefits of ppc marketing

Why should businesses (advertisers) pay for this type of advertising? Just because your competitor has run these ads is not a good reason. Click ads have advantages that digital marketers and online businesses cannot ignore:

The unique advantage of PPC marketing is that Google (and other ad networks) don’t just reward the highest bidders for that ad space, they reward the highest-quality ads (meaning the ads that are most popular with users). Essentially, Google rewards good performance.

• PPC ads are cost-effective. That is, you pay when the user clicks and enters your site. In addition, the probability that the user will make a purchase on your site is very high.
• This type of marketing gets results fast. Site SEO is time-consuming. But when PPC ads and campaigns are done right, you’ll be on the front lines in no time. This is a great help for new startups that need to grow fast (growth hack).
• PPC ads can be easily tested and see which campaign and keyword worked better. Also, digital marketers can use A/B testing.
• In this type of marketing and by choosing the right and accurate keywords, you can exactly target and find the user/customer/audience who is looking for your product.
• With this method, the first line of your site is not affected by changes in Google algorithms or some other important factors in SEO. Newly, the analysis that is done to select keywords as well as the information obtained from the behavior of users in response to click ads will also help your site’s SEO.

Disadvantages of ppc marketing

Nothing is flawless. This marketing method also has its own disadvantages:

• The first disadvantage is being too competitive, especially in some keywords (products and services). This makes it much more difficult and expensive, especially for small businesses with limited advertising budgets.
• Some users may not have a positive view of advertisements and may not click on advertisement links at all. This should also be considered.
• If you pay for this advertisement but the content of your landing page and its design are not strong or for any reason you cannot attract the user to buy and leave your site, your ppc advertisement is useless and actually failed.
• It can be claimed that properly designing and executing ppc campaign as well as choosing the right keyword is a skill. Not every digital marketer has this skill. Various factors should be considered and extensive research should be done. There must be a reason for choosing any platform. So don’t expect your first campaign to be successful.

PPC vs. CPC

Before finishing this article, we should talk a little about the difference between PPC and Cost Per Click (CPC). Because the two may be confused (unfortunately, this has happened and some digital marketers and SEO experts use the two incorrectly).

PPC and CPC are not technically the same thing. PPC refers to a style of marketing that includes paying for advertisements. CPC, or cost-per-click, refers to the amount of money you spend on a single click on your ad.

The difference between the two can also be said that your business decides to use PPC marketing. It means to choose a platform and place a paid ad there. Now, the cost that that business has to pay within that platform and using its services is CPC (ie, how many dollars did each click cost you?)