Is PPC Still a Good Investment?

Are you wondering if PPC is still a good investment in 2020? Well, for starters, Google Ads remains the largest PPC network. It’s both used by large enterprises and especially local businesses to increase traffic to their websites. So, what makes PPC still a powerful search marketing power tool today? In short, it gives you quick results and has unlimited potential. In this article we’re going to discuss why you should still invest in PPC. 

What is PPC Marketing?

PPC is a marketing technique where advertisers pay every time their ads are clicked on. Think of it as a la carte for advertising where traffic is bought instead of earned organically. A common form of PPC advertising is search engine PPC. This method lets advertisers bid on different keywords which results in having their ad displayed if their keyword is searched. 

For example, let’s say that you run a bicycle shop in Chicago. You may want to run an ad through Google Ads where you could bid on the keywords “bicycle shops Chicago”. If you get the top bid, your ad will then be displayed to Google users who search for that exact keyword or anything relevant to it. When a visitor clicks on your ad, you will be charged a small fee. 

Although, PPC is not as easy as it looks, as there is a lot of strategy that goes into it. To have a successful PPC campaign, it involves choosing the right keywords, organizing those keywords into ad groups and campaigns, then having those ads redirect visitors to quality landing pages. When things are done correctly, search engines will reward you by charging you less per click which will result in more revenue for your business. Essentially, PPC marketing is a lot more than just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing if it sticks. 

Because of the amount of work that goes into PPC marketing, businesses opt for hiring digital marketing firms like SEO Design Chicago to run their PPC management. Having a good digital marketing firm to do all of the hard work is not only a good investment but it will also reduce costs while yielding an increase in sales or conversions. 

Google Ads

Google Ads (previously Google AdWords) is the largest platform for PPC management. It lets users create ads that would be featured in Google’s search engine result pages and other Google platforms. Ultimately, it gives you the opportunity to showcase your brand to the customers who are already looking for you. 

Chances are your companies are utilizing Google Ads and targeting potential customers that could be yours. As a matter of fact, 75% of people say that paid search ads make it easier to find the information they’re looking for through a search engine. That’s why creating ads for the right audience and actively looking for people who seek services relevant to your business is extremely important. Therefore, you could be missing out on a lot of business if you’re not running Google Ads. That’s why ad agencies like SEO Design Chicago can help you avoid making costly mistakes. 

Benefits of PPC Marketing through Google Ads

If you’re still unsure if pay-per-click marketing with Google Ads is for you, then no worries! We’ve made a list of benefits to show you how powerful Google Ads is for your business.

AdWords provides you with fast results

One thing that’s great about pay-per-click marketing Google AdWords is that it gives you instant results. Once your campaign has been approved, traffic can start pouring in within minutes. All you have to do is put in the keywords you want to target, bid on it, and you’re set! The rest of the work can be left to Google and you can watch the traffic start coming in.

Unlike other methods like SEO, you won’t have to wait for a long period of time. Other marketing strategies can take a matter of months to start seeing positive results, but not with Google Ads. Traditional marketing and advertising can also cost a lot more when under a contract, but with Google Ads, you’re free to adjust your costs by raising or lowering them.

AdWords can have limitless potential

Another great thing about AdWords is that it has numerous ways to create a marketing strategy that works specifically for you. There are millions of keywords for you to bid on and new ones are being added on a daily basis. It’s almost as if you have a never ending audience to reach out to. Also, due to the number of keywords to use, you can take advantage of adding new keywords to increase traffic from your campaign.

If your campaign is seeing positive results, you always have the option to increase your daily budget to get more clicks. Because keywords are ranked through a bidding system, paying more per click can raise your ranking. Usually the higher your ranking, the more clicks and traffic you’d get. This is why bidding more on keywords can attract more visitors.

AdWords gives you insightful analytics

AdWords provides you with a great option of analytics and charts that is featured on its software. These statistics lets businesses see the progress of their campaigns and if they should make some tweaks in order to improve it. AdWords pay-per-click stats show things like average cost per click, advert positions, and conversion rate. 

Having analytics like this at your disposal can help you make better spending decisions with your campaign. If you notice that the keyword you’re easing is yielding in high conversions then that tells you it’s best to raise your budget. 

You always have the option to start a new campaign with other keywords, but why start from scratch if you already have the favorable numbers? If you just increased your daily spending on your current campaign, your ad position will be increased, giving you more traffic. 

You have the option to end your campaign at any time

Another benefit of AdWords is that you can cancel a campaign if you’re not seeing any profit. Unlike SEO or print marketing, AdWords doesn’t require you to sign a contract and commit for several months. Essentially, you’d be saving a lot of money.

However, AdWords gives you the option to stop a campaign within seconds or even just pause it if you want to start it again in the future. This flexibility lets you control your finances more. Ultimately no contracts and no money down the drain. 

Have an advantage on your competitors

Competition will always be a burden, no matter what industry you’re in. Google AdWords gives you the opportunity to get ahead of your competition just with the right price.

The reason why your competitors might be always ahead of you is that they are probably investing tons of money into their SEO to rank #1 on Google. This can easily be beat with a pay-per-click campaign. As mentioned before, bidding the right amount on a keyword can help your business bypass the organic search results and get ahead of your competition, on top of spending significantly less money than them.

However, if your competition is also running a PPC campaign, you always have the option to outbid them. This will affect their traffic and clicks because now those visitors will be going to your website instead. 

PPC Digital Marketing Strategy

Now that you know it is beneficial to invest in PPC, you’re probably wondering what the most effective strategies are for it. However, because digital marketing trends are changing, PPC marketing strategies that worked 5 years ago are falling flat. Let’s go over a few great PPC digital marketing strategies to boost your results.

Google’s Smart Bidding Features

Google saw $32.6 billion in revenue from advertising after the second quarter of 2019. This was a 16% increase over the year. Even though it’s no surprise that a search engine mogul has generated a huge increase in revenue, it has something to do with their new advertising feature Google’s Smart Bidding.

Smart Bidding uses artificial intelligence to automatically optimize bids into conversions. 

For instance, T-Mobile experienced an increase in conversions by 22% after switching to automated bidding.

So, if you aren’t taking advantage of Smart Bidding, you should definitely try it out at least. 

However, because it’s still fairly new, there are still a few funks that marketers and Google have to overcome and requires some testing.

Use specific landing pages

Landing pages are very important for PPCs. Even though digital marketers have been using landing pages, there are still people who have ads that redirect them to category pages and homepages. That is a huge no-no. 

Not to mention that companies that have around 10 to 15 landing pages saw a 55% increase in leads. That is because people are more likely to convert to purchasing or loyal customers when they land on a page that’s relevant to what they want. 

Another thing is that Google Ads highly prefers relevance, so the more similar your ads and landing pages are, the less you pay. 

Optimize for voice search

It is estimated that 50% of consumers will be using voice shopping by 2022. What does this mean for marketers? They will have to start calibrating their PPC campaign to this shift in consumer behavior. 

There are a few ways to do this:

• Focus on long-tail keywords along with normal key terms
• Utilize natural language patterns
• Use nearby locations for local searches
• Use the local ad extensions on Google

SEO Design Chicago Can Help You with PPC Marketing

Our agency has experts that can read PPC marketing like a map. We know that as a business owner, you’re already swamped with other tasks and running a campaign can be a time consuming task. Let SEO Design Chicago create the best PPC campaign for you!