PPC Strategies – How to Promote Your Brand Effectively

Pay-Per-Click advertising is getting bigger every day, and, like in most cases, if you are not jumping on the bandwagon, you will probably stay behind. With Meta and Google having almost 50% of the US digital advertising market, it’s no surprise that more and more businesses are getting into PPC with many successes.

And who can blame them? This system is risk-free and optimized for benefit, the conversion funnel is astonishing, and the results are almost immediate. It would be foolish not to use this tool to promote your business in any way, shape, or form.

But it’s not as easy as it seems. Plenty of strategies can be utilized to drive traffic; some are better, and some are worse, like in all cases.

In this article, we will review the most efficient ones you can use to target people online. Whether that means going through search engines or social platforms, this guide will help you get your clicks efficiently. Of course, you will have to update this information with your particular situation, but if you want to increase conversions to your site, we are here to help. So, without further ado, let’s dive in!

What Is PPC?

Pay-Per-Click, PPC in short, is an advertising model becoming increasingly popular in the digital era. In essence, it utilizes search engines, social media pages, or other networks as modern-day billboards. If the user clicks on the PPC ads, they will be transferred to the landing page of the company that bought the ad; hence – the company will have to pay an ad fee. 

The most popular way of creating a PPC ad, which you have seen multiple times, is the Google Ads system. This search engine marketing creates a “bidding war” of sorts between different companies who bid on specific related (and negative) keywords to make their ad copy shown to specific ad groups and appear in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). 

For example, if you put “game shop” in Google, you will get many results from different game shops near your location. The advertisers who bid on the game shop keyword would have their ads presented on the search engine results page. Depending on how much they paid for this particular ad and the quality of the ad itself, their ad placement would be higher or lower.

The bidding strategy differs based on the PPC marketing goals. Sometimes, you will have a lot of target keywords that you bid on and spread your funds equally among those. Still, sometimes you may be interested in a particular one, especially with local search ads, that can be useful for your specific PPC campaign.

What Are PPC Benefits?

PPC advertising is great for increasing your site’s visibility in the Google search or social media pages, as well as being a part of the broader digital marketing strategy. Paid ads have the advantage of being quick and direct when bringing results, so you can expect traffic/interactions almost instantly. Additionally, by using relevant keywords, you can create a cost-effective strategy with a targeted audience of your type, lead generation, and overall – better business performance. With that in mind, let’s review some of the significant benefits of PPC.

Instant Results 

As we have mentioned, instant results are one of the most critical benefits of PPC campaigns. If you have a good PPC campaign, you can see it working after a few minutes. The paid ad will be shown to the people almost immediately, and if they click on your ad, you will have to pay the fee. It’s great to have a targeted campaign for a particular time or to spread the word around fast.

Audience Targeting

Speaking of the audiences, the PPC campaign will also allow you to target specific audiences. Whether those are particular keywords that you are using, demographics, interests, and even locations, you can target custom audiences to ensure your PPC success. And, if you target customers who can be more likely to invest in your business, you will be able to generate leads and ad clicks in no time, so your conversion rate will skyrocket.

Budget Efficient

Additionally, using the right PPC tools will allow you to control the cost-per-click (CPC) ratio and not overpay for something. Paid search can be expensive; with this tool, you will pay only for the people interested in your campaign. If the ad appears in the customer’s vicinity, and they click on it, they are at least somewhat interested in your product. It’s much more cost-efficient than billboards on the street or a page in a newspaper.

Traceable Results

Additionally, you will have measurable and traceable results. Everyone who clicked on your ad, all the PPC visitors who came to your PPC landing page, will be paid for, ergo – you can see what you are paying for. Thanks to this data-driven approach, you can create even better ad campaigns in the future for search engines and your social media platforms.

Flexible

Next, if you do not appear in the search queries, you can change your PPC campaign almost instantly. You can experiment with different landing page quality; maybe advertisers bid a little too low so you can outbid them; you can find the most relevant keywords on the market, all of the PPC efforts you can think of. Bidding strategies are all based on an effective combination of the abovementioned elements, so be sure to keep that in mind.

PPC + SEO

Additionally, PPC works great with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts. SEO aims to improve your rankings organically with its tools, but it does not stop you from combining it with some PPC visibility and traffic boosting. Think about it like starting a fire. The SEO would be coal and wood that keeps the fire burning, and the PPC is kindling that grows the fire so that it can spread. Additionally, you can find the more relevant keywords for your SEO efforts with the correct data.

Local Campaign

Additionally, with the correct keyword list and quality score, you can display campaigns for your geographically targeted audience. It’s a great way of improving the visibility of your display ads, especially for the so-called brick-and-mortar stores or anything with a service-based operation. Those can bring customers to the company almost immediately. And, with the related keywords, your display network will flourish.

Seasonal Benefits

And finally, if you want to promote some new product or service that is only available during a set period, you can create a killer ad for PPC purposes and advance in a limited-time kind of offer. With the right Call-to-Action, you can build brand awareness of your product, get your campaign goals in order, and create a unique selling proposition during this specific time.

How Does Pay-Per-Click Advertising Work?

But how exactly does it work? Well, it’s essentially an auction. You are bidding on specific keywords that you want to use. And remember, you need to find the right keywords. You can always do automated bidding for the rest, but the keywords necessarily come from you.

Nevertheless, in the PPC world, it’s all about who will be shown at the top of the page. Whether it would mean creating the maximum bid for the particular text ads, the quality of your ad copy, or how good you are with your bid strategies – it will all influence where your ad will be shown. Here are some essential elements of this process.

Setting Up Campaign

The first thing you need to do is choose the medium to show people your ad. Whether this would mean selecting a Google Display Network, Microsoft Advertising, or anything in between – it’s your choice. At this point, you must define your objective, budget, and target audience.

Keyword Research

Next, you need to select the relevant keywords you want to promote. Of course, this step only applies if you are doing the PPC search engine campaign. For social media campaigns, this will not be necessary in most cases. Be sure to add negative keywords as well. It will help your ad not to be presented with irrelevant searches if, for example, your keyword can also be interpreted as a movie title or something like that.

Bidding Time

Now that you have your target audience and keywords (with negative keywords), you will need to bid on how much you are willing to pay for each click. This will determine where your ad will be placed and how visible it will be in the search results/social media wall. If you want to maximize conversions, you will need to bid a little more, but it’s not only about how much money you will put in. It’s the most important thing, but the quality of your ad is another. Be sure to create an ad that people will want to click on, rather than bidding high and putting out a sign – come to my game shop – with no additional information.

Ad Creation

In this part, you must determine what will be shown to your potential customers. You will need to create an ad copy that is engaging, with a headline, description, some URL, and even ad extensions in some cases. As we have mentioned before, the advertiser pays for the number of people clicking on their ad, so be sure to create something that will get the attention of the target audience. It’s a simple formula, but you must have an almost perfect ad to find your ideal customers.

Auction

The next element is the ad auction. Here, different advertisers will fight for the attention of the user. Search engine/social media pages/other mediums will create an auction between all the interested parties involved in the process to determine whose ad will be shown as the first one. The most important factors are the bid amount, quality of the ad, and keyword relevance.

Click It!

Next, if you win the auction (among probably a few other businesses), your ad will be shown to the customers, and you will be billed for them clicking on it. They will then be transferred to your landing page, where you will take care of them. Most businesses use many different ways to keep people on their site, so don’t only focus on the PPC campaign but also take care of your landing page design!

Cost-Per-Click

Every click will result in a fee, which will all be summed up in the Cost-Per-Click ratio. Every click will be deducted from your maximum CPC until it reaches zero. It’s a pretty simple way of tracking your click-through rate as well. If you don’t want to waste money, optimize your CPC ratio.

Analysis

And finally, you will always be informed about the users coming to your site by the platforms you advertise. Of course, this kind of performance data will show you the number of clicks, impressions, click-through rates, and all the myriad other factors that can be used in further optimization and analysis.

What Are the Best PPC Strategies?

So, now that we know all there is about the benefits of PPC campaigns and how wonderful of a process it is, let’s go over some of the most exciting strategies you can implement in your PPC campaigns to reach desired results. Of course, those are just some of the processes; if you have a specific type of business, you may need additional guidance. 

Still, those typically are the most efficient ways of promoting your product or service with PPC. Remember to continually refine your approach and use the many metrics you will receive from the platforms you are advertising on. With that in mind, let’s review some essential PPC strategies.

Keywords Research

First, you must do crucial keyword research to ensure your campaign’s success. Find all the relevant keywords that align with your business goals. A couple of apps can help you with that, like Moz, Ahfres, or even Google. Those keywords are crucial for making your campaign efficient. Be sure to include broad keywords, which can entail a lot of content, and long-tail keywords relevant to your situation, like – where can I buy games near 31St Street?

Ad Copy

One of the essential elements of a successful PPC campaign is to create a compelling ad copy that will resonate with the target audience. Remember to present all the benefits of choosing your product/service with an actionable CTA (call to action) and potential pain points of your customers. With that approach, you can encourage users to click on your ads and bring you money. If you spend all your time on bidding strategy, you may win the auction, but no one will click on the end, and, in the future, you will have no benefits from it whatsoever.

Segment Your Audience

You have to remember that your customers are not a monolith. It’s an audience with different desires, interests, locations, and demographics. Be sure to create separate ad groups with tailored messaging for each. If your ads are personalized, you will be able to have even better conversion rates and even greater match types. The most important thing is to define the segment of your audience and focus on differentiating between approaches for each group.

Manage Your Bids

Another critical strategy for PPC campaigns is bid management. If you have a daily budget of X, don’t just spend it on one keyword or spread it evenly on all of them. Be smart about it. If you know that people are using specific keywords for your particular products, add some value to it, and spread your budget among many different keywords. That way, you will have better results where it’s the most important. 

Optimize Your Landing Page

We have mentioned it before, but your landing page optimization is also an essential aspect of running your PPC campaign. If a website has long loading times, is not user-friendly, lacks mobile-friendliness, and does not provide clear instructions on what to do, people are likely to leave the site quickly.

Imagine if you were looking for a game shop, you got to a page with a game in the center and…well, then what? Who could have imagined that you needed to click on a button on a game control or whatever concept someone could come up with? It may look good on paper, but most people would just click away.

Ad Extensions

Ad extensions improve your ad’s visibility and give your users some information about your product or service. It can be anything from a location on Google Maps, social-media links, site links, etc. It will all depend on your platform, but if it’s possible to utilize those tools, you should give it a shot.

Negative Keywords

We mentioned it before, but it’s important to remember that negative keyword implementation can make or break many campaigns. Just think about it this way. If someone was looking for an umbrella to buy, and you had an umbrella business going on, betting on an umbrella keyword is entirely reasonable. At the same time, crossing out Rihanna from your search would be a rather good idea in that regard.

Split Testing

The following strategy you can use is split testing or A/B testing. It means that you are testing different ways of approaching the topic. It may seem silly, but even changing the color of a CTA button in one of our client’s ads got them 10% more engagement when it comes to newsletter signing. So – experiment away!

Remarket Your Product

It’s not only about marketing what you are selling. Sometimes, it’s all about remarketing. People who used to check out your site can still be reached with the right approach. Maybe you have changed this weird game concept on your landing page, and now they will know what to do when they finally get to your site. 

You can even add a 5% promotion coupon that is viable for 24 hours. There are plenty of ways to reach the customers who did not convert, by offering them some promotional products, informing them of sales, or using some other business-specific type of promotion. Whatever it is, don’t sleep on those re-engaged audiences.

Optimize!

Remember never to let go when it comes to your ad campaigns. One of the critical elements when it comes to running a successful PPC campaign is to make data-driven decisions based on the information you have gathered. That way, you will get more conversions, click-throughs, and the return on your ad spend will skyrocket! Primarily, if you use the analytics tools, the platforms will provide you with. Those are excellent for further growing your business as a whole.

Key PPC Platforms

So, now that we know what to do and what you should do, let’s go over some of the most important platforms on which you can advertise your products. Of course, those are the top of the top and will surely help out in most cases. Still, if you have some industry-specific social media platform that gathers many people from this industry, you will have a better time investing your money there. With that in mind, let’s go over some of our propositions.

Google Ads

First of all, we have the one and only – Google Ads. It’s the single most powerful advertising platform ever, with hundreds of millions of people using it daily. Additionally, it’s one of the most advanced ad platforms for data analysis and ad potential. 

When it comes to finding out things on the internet, Google is most people’s first choice, so if you want to promote your business effectively, this is the best chance you may have for that. With extensive targeting options, keyword research platforms, different ad formats, and many possibilities, you will not have trouble getting people interested in your product with Google Ads. 

Facebook/Instagram Ads

The other big player in the ad market is Facebook, or comprehensive – Meta Ads services. Whether this would mean targeting people on Instagram or Facebook, you can gain access to billions of users worldwide with no issues whatsoever. 

There are plenty of demographics, interests, and even behavioral options that you can choose from to optimize your campaign. The choice is astonishing. You will get many people interested in your product, mainly as Meta uses many different ad formats like video ads, image ads, carousel ads, etc., that may not be as popular with Google.

Amazon Advertising

Fortunately or unfortunately, you cannot get rid of Amazon, even when discussing different advertising platforms. With Amazon being one of the biggest stores and auction houses, in the world, you can bet that they can promote your products effectively. It’s a great option, especially for Amazon vendors already on the site who want their products to reach the top of the Amazon search. It will allow them to promote their products more efficiently and achieve higher sales.

Microsoft Ads

Next, we have Microsoft Advertising, previously known as Bing Ads. The best thing about it is that it allows you to reach your target audience at a rather good price. It’s not as popular as the Google search engine, and we can’t really say much about Microsoft’s social media platforms, but – Bing and Yahoo are not doing terribly, so if you want something like Google but cheaper – this could be a great fit for you.

Twitter Ads

Next up, we have Twitter Ads! Well, at least at the time of writing this article, Twitter seems to be going through some changes in the last few months. Why is it a good idea to promote your product or service with Twitter? Well, it’s as good as you make it to be, but what makes this particular platform useful is the real-time marketing aspect. Twitter is the “right-now” kind-of platform, so if you want to promote something current, like an event of sorts, this is probably the right platform for you. But, as we have stated before, that’s only relevant for today; tomorrow may bring a new beginning.

LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn ads is another great place for you to promote your brand. Especially considering the fact that it allows you to get directly to decisive people when it comes to B2B marketing. If you would like to create an ad that will reach the professionals and people who are making decisions at the very top – LinkedIn ads are something for you. 

The only thing that you need to remember in that regard is the fact that those are pretty expensive ads, so you will need a substantial amount of money to get started with those. Nevertheless, the results are pretty good, as you can set it up to, for example, reach the top executives of your industry so that it may be worth it.

Pinterest Ads

Pinterest Ads are something completely different, on the other hand. With those, you will be able to promote your product to a very specific audience, mostly consisting of women who are looking for some lifestyle-based inspirations. If you have a fashion brand or if you are selling designer furniture, you will fit there perfectly. Here, the only thing you will have to do is to create a visually appealing picture of your product, and you are guaranteed to get a lot of attention from women looking to change things up in their wardrobe/bedroom. 

Tik-Tok Ads

Another platform that we need to add a disclaimer to – at the moment of writing this article, when Tik-Tok is still available to use in the USA and European Union, it’s a great advertisement space for all the Gen-Z promotion. 

There are plenty of ways that you can utilize this tool, from paid campaigns between TikTok to doing something more interactive, like some backstage production videos, community-building efforts, and many other things. 

There are 3 billion users out there who consume an absurd amount of Tik-Tok content, with over 75% of people there being over the age of 18. It is sometimes ignored by many advertisers as a “kids social media,” but with such a large audience of adults, you can get a lot of attention for your more mature products as well.

PPC Strategies – Conclusion

Thanks so much for checking out this guide on the PPC strategies. Of course, there are plenty more ways you can optimize your PPC efforts, but those are some of the most effective ones. From social media through auction-based sites like Amazon, ending with search engines – the scope of PPC advertising is incredible. The effectiveness of those efforts is measurable and brings immediate success. In this day and age, it’s one of the best ways to promote your product among the online community.

There are plenty of ad options that you can choose from. Whether you prefer some video ads, more copy-style-based concepts, or just images of your products, you can do all of these things and even more for specifically targeted audiences all over the world or even locally. 

PPC campaigns are incredibly versatile, making them suitable for promoting both local products and big brands like Nike. 

We hope that this article will help you out in setting your campaign goals. If you have any questions, please feel free to let us know. You can also check out other articles on our site on various different topics; we are positive that you will find something for yourself. Have a great day!