PPC stands for pay-per-click and is an important aspect of any marketing plan. It essentially means that you place ads online and you only pay for them when someone clicks on them.
For example, you’ve likely seen Google Ads every time you search for something. The ads are the links and photos that appear under the word “sponsored.” Sometimes, this is the content that appears at the very top of a search results page. Other times, they appear on the right side of the page. PPC ads can also appear in videos, emails, and banners. The companies that appear in these places are only charged when someone clicks on their ad. Typically, the amount a company pays for each click (known as cost per click, or CPC) depends on the industry the business falls in.
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What’s the Difference Between PPC and SEO?
PPC ads are something businesses pay for to get their company’s content in the most visible places on a search results page. You don’t pay, however, unless a person clicks on a link.
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a free way to get your company’s content into other highly visible places on a search results page.
Your natural impulse may be to assume that the free route is better. However, it’s harder to get your company on page one of search results for free and it takes longer. If you would like to see faster results, PPC should be your first choice.
A great PPC management company, like SEO Design Chicago, will manage both strategies or just one for you.
Learning about PPC, which involves understanding how Google Ads and Bing Ads work, is something you could learn on your own. In order to do it right, you need to learn all about:
- The best keywords for your ads
- What to bid on those keywords
- How to decide what you can afford
- How to write effective ad copy
- How to interpret results
- How to move forward with new strategies based on data
You can take an online course in PPC management, read books about it, or watch tutorials. We even offer training to you or your employees. But what is your time worth? What’s the cost of each hour of your time? A great PPC management company like SEO Design Chicago will likely be a better use of your time and money.
How a Great PPC Management Company Will Maximize the Use of Your Ad Budget
When you optimize website content to rank high in search engine results (the free route to getting eyeballs on your company), you can only do so much.
You may get a lot of visitors to your website who leave right away because your content isn’t quite what they were looking for, or visitors who like what they see, but don’t actually take any actions, like:
- Making a purchase
- Reaching out for more information
- Following you on social media
- Signing up for email newsletters
In other words, you have a low conversion rate. When you implement a PPC strategy, your conversion rate will likely be higher.
The conversion rate for Google Ads varies but most recent research shows that the average clickthrough (CTR) rate is 5.06%. The reason the conversion rate is higher with PPC strategies is that you are able to better control exactly who sees your website content. For example, when you implement a PPC plan, you can target those who see links to your website based on common demographics like location, age, gender, career, interests, marital status, and more.
With PPC, you can measure who is clicking on your links. If no one does, that’s no problem – you don’t pay. If people are clicking, but then aren’t taking any actions, you know you need to do something different. A great PPC management company will help you interpret your results to get a good understanding of who is clicking on your links and what they do once they get to your site.
If you don’t like the way your ads are performing, a great PPC management company can help you redesign or rewrite your ads and website. Or, we can advise you on how to tweak your PPC strategy, so that you see better results.
The Steps a PPC Management Company Takes to Develop a PPC Plan for You
At SEO Design Chicago, we have worked with dozens of companies over the last decade to make sure their online ads pay off in the long run. We usually follow a process like this:
- First, we work with you to learn more about your target audience, including their jobs, location, needs, and more.
- Then, we work with you to figure out what your goals are. For example, more sales is the common major goal, but we’ll also include secondary goals like inquiries, putting items in a cart, signing up for email marketing, etc.
- Next, you tell us what your budget is for PPC ads. We’ll work with you to determine the most you want to pay for each click. Remember that you can change this amount at any time, pause it for a certain period of time, and more.
- We research what keywords your competitors use to attract customers to inform your strategy. We also help you identify the best times and days to run your ad to see the highest conversion rate.
- We then enter an auction on your behalf and bid on the keywords we identified together. The auction determines the order in which the ads are shown to people searching for those keywords.
- As we’ve mentioned, you only pay when someone clicks your ad.
- Lastly, we review all available data with you and suggest changes to the strategy moving forward.
What Makes a PPC Management Company Great vs Just OK?
First off, experience is a huge factor in what makes a PPC management company great. For example, SEO Design Chicago has been in business for over a decade. You can look at our Google Reviews and learn more about how we’ve helped companies manage everything from web design to SEO to PPC.
Clear pricing is another factor you should look for from a PPC management company. Always look for a company that clearly explains their prices during your first meeting with them. If the company starts to tack on last-minute surprise charges, it’s probably time to look for a different company.
Investment in continuing education for all employees will also set apart a great company from an okay one. It is extremely important for our team to stay up-to-date on the latest research and studies. Technology is always changing. Plus, the way Google and Bing manage their PPC offerings is always changing. Unless you have the time to add “tech guru” to your resume, a PPC management company is the best way to manage your digital marketing needs.
Lastly, you should look for a company with a robust staff. At SEO Design Chicago, we have over 30 content creators, designers, developers, analysts, and client relations specialists. We value every client and carefully manage our staff so that each and every client gets the attention they deserve.
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