How Does Pay-Per-Click Work?

When it comes to digital marketing, one of the most important goals right now is making sure your website ranks as high as possible on Google.

There are a few different ways of going about doing this, and it’s basically a battle of the abbreviations, from the longer-term strategy of SEO to the more immediate impact of PPC.

It’s the latter that we are going to look at in more detail today, starting with exactly what PPC is and how it works.

What is PPC?

PPC is the abbreviation for ‘pay-per-click’ and to explain it in basics, it’s a form of advertising whereby you set a budget for your ads on a particular online platform and then pay for the clicks you receive on your ads.

The leading platforms include the likes of Google, Facebook and Instagram, and there are a variety of similar marketing types such as pay-per-impression or even pay-per-view. All of them tend to work by only paying for the clicks, impressions or views you receive.

When to use PPC?

Like most types of digital marketing, the key to any successful strategy is using several parts of the marketing mix.

Although using PPC on its own will yield successful results, the best performance will come when it’s a part of a longer-term strategy that includes others types of marketing such as SEO, affiliate marketing and CRM to name just a few.

Where PPC can be a particular stand out is when you have specialised, time-sensitive campaigns. Pay-per-click will help your ads to be seen almost immediately and is great if you want to directly address competitors or even break into new markets.

How Can I Get the Most Out of PPC?

For ads to appear alongside search results on search engines (aka Search Engine Results Page, or SERP), advertisers cannot just simply pay more for the privilege of appearing higher.

Instead, ads are subject to Ad Auctions, which is an automated process that Google and similar search engines use to work out the relevance and validity of ads that appear on their search pages.

To give us a bit more insight, our Head of Media, Ashlea D’Souza has given us her top five tips to making a success out of pay-per-click.

Use every ad extension

This is the number one place to start when it comes to PPC. Utilising every Google Ads extension increases your real estate on the page and pushes your competitors below the fold. This will increase your click through rates (CTR) and conversion rates fairly quickly.

Keep your quality score high

In a nutshell, your Quality Score is an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords and landing pages put together. Higher quality ads can lower prices and better your ad positions. This is why it’s key to use relevant keywords to advertise your product, service or business.

This includes not only the keywords in yours ads, but also those that you plan to use when optimising your landing pages. Doing this would significantly help to increase your overall quality score and improve your performance.

Always give campaigns time to learn

As the old saying goes, “you never stop learning” and that’s certainly the case when it comes to PPC.

Google works on an algorithm for everything in PPC, from which ads to display to what to bid for in terms of location, age and search term.

Campaigns require a certain amount of time and data to learn and perform. So, it’s important not to pause a campaign too soon or make too many significant changes. Give it time to gather learnings and there might be another saying on your mind – good things come to those who wait.

Tracking & attribution are key

Ensure you can track all elements of a customer’s journey. This gives Google more to optimise towards but also helps establish points in the journey where customers fall off.

Attribution helps give adequate recognition to each channel that was part of a customer’s journey and ultimately gives you a better impression of your customers.

Utilise Google’s automation

Switching bidding models from tCPA to tROAS allows Google to optimise towards your goals more effectively.

When using manual bids you are bidding the same across locations, demographics and keywords. Using tCPA means that Google can use multiple signals from users to determine exactly what to bid for that particular click.

Test! Test! Test!

Last, but by no means least. Ensure that you are constantly testing to improve results. The more you learn, the more you will be able to progress so don’t be afraid to change your strategies slightly if your testing tells you to try something different.

Speak with ActiveWin

If you think that PPC would be a useful marketing tool for your business or you simply want to hear more about its benefits, then our PPC team at ActiveWin are the experts that you need to hear from.

We have decades of combined experience of turning an idea or project into successful PPC and Media Buying results. Just check out our CardOne Banking case study to see the positive impact our PPC team could have on you.

We can help you refine your audience and keywords, choose the most suitable platform and create the landing pages that have proven success in converting traffic into profit.