Web traffic is the core of any online business. You need traffic in order to get people to check out your products and buy them. Traffic also helps grow your audience and ad revenue for your website.
PPC ads are one of the many tools that can help you balance a marketing budget while also increasing traffic flow to your website. They’re digital ads that appear as banners and pop-ups, and they have some unique properties. Here are some of the basics of PPC ads and why they’re so important.
What is PPC?
To be able to get a good perspective on the various benefits that PCC provides your business, you need to be familiar with PPC advertising in general. PPC, or Pay Per Click, is a form of digital advertising which
utilizes banners, pop-up ads, and similar formats which are featured on websites. PPC differs from traditional forms of advertisements by the way it’s funded.
Instead of being paid for upfront, PPC ad prices are measured by the success of the ad itself. As the name insinuates, these ads are only paid for as long as users click on them. The number of clicks that the ad generates will determine the amount of money paid for the ad. They are very closely related to keywords, which means they have a lot in common with modern SEO strategies.
PPC advertisements provide businesses with some interesting opportunities to optimize their marketing strategy and maximize their ROI. Here are some of the many benefits of PPC ads for businesses large and small.
Quick results
Results aren’t easy to come by with regular forms of advertising. The effectiveness of a traditional marketing strategy needs to be measured over time, and even then, it’s hard to determine how much a subset of ads has influenced it. With PPC advertising, the measure of an ad’s success is pretty clear. As long as it’s getting more clicks than its predecessor, the ad has been successfully improved on and users are noticing your products.
The quick flow of information goes both ways, however. Businesses are able to share important information through their ads and see if users are being adequately informed. It’s possible to announce sales, events, and limited-edition products through your advertisements, all the while checking if these ads are getting enough clicks to matter. This can be especially useful for small businesses, which rely on every single announcement and ad to create efficient marketing.
Connecting with a target audience
Very few forms of marketing can target audiences with such precision as PPC advertising. Through the use of keywords, demographics, location, and timing data, you can connect with relevant audiences that would be interested in your business. This helps increase the chances of a targeted advertisement working, while also filtering out users that aren’t likely to become customers.
This can be especially beneficial for small and medium-sized businesses, as they often depend on their location for the most customer traffic. Having advertisements that can be more localized would help increase their effectiveness.
Cost-effectiveness
Small businesses are often able to drastically improve their ROI with the help of PPC advertisements, as long as these ads are properly applied. This is because every aspect of PPC can be measured with the help of reporting tools and conversion metrics. Businesses can examine what aspect of their marketing campaign is working and which isn’t before making the decision to increase funding. This can drive down costs and make the strategies more effective.
When campaigns turn out to be profitable, increasing costs to specific areas is much easier when you’re given more accurate information regarding their effectiveness. Search terms with high rankings are more easily added to campaigns and keywords are more accurate. Having this kind of control over marketing can be very beneficial to small businesses with limited budgets.
Increased brand awareness
Small businesses are rarely known outside their consumer audience. If a consumer is in need of a product, they aren’t likely to search your business by name to find it. Instead, they will look for key products online, and stumble upon a bunch of relevant businesses. Related keyword searches bring up PPC ads in their feeds, which might be helpful in diverting them towards your company and its products.
The more these ads show to audiences, the more people will start remembering your company’s brand and logo. They might not click the ads the first time around, but your brand will stay in their subconscious. This will increase your brand awareness and people will slowly start to associate your brand with specific products. Later on, they’ll be tempted to click the ads that appear, out of familiarity for the brand.
For these ads to be effective, your business needs to utilize proper PPC management for its marketing strategy. Using the right keywords and phrases will increase the chances of your ads and pages appearing first during searches.
Competitiveness
The combined spending from businesses on PPC is in the tens of billions of dollars. They’re used across different industries and they cover a wide variety of products. This means it’s likely that at least some of your competition uses PPC ads in their marketing campaign. This might give them the upper hand when it comes to visibility and reach, which is why it’s crucial that you stay competitive in the industry.
Businesses that haven’t yet started to apply PPC ads in their strategy are not staying competitive. It’s a missed opportunity for great potential in increased traffic. Using similar strategies to your competition can help, especially when you’re certain that your content and products measure up.
Conclusion
There are countless benefits that come with using PPC advertisements in marketing campaigns. As long as you properly apply SEO strategies and utilize these ads, you’re going to find that your campaigns are going to be a lot more effective. The potential ROI of PPC ads is enormous and this is why businesses are scrambling to implement them in their own marketing strategies.
Author’s Bio
Stella Ryne is an art historian, social media manager, conscious consumer and a proud mother. When she is not trying to improve the things around her (and herself, for that matter), she likes to lose herself in a good book. Stay in touch with Stella via Twitter and Facebook.
