In today’s increasingly competitive digital world, Paid Search Advertising (also referred to as PPC, ‘pay-per-click’, or CPC, ‘cost-per-click’) can make or break a business’ digital marketing strategy.  Other strategies can take time, but PPC ensures: the ideal audience is reached, it is reached before your competition (and immediately), and you never pay unless someone actually clicks your offer.  What’s better than that?

 

Pay-Per-Click: What it is and how it works

There is no one-size fits all approach when it comes to Internet marketing. Each business’ approach will vary depending on its needs and budget, although there are certain fundamentals that should be integrated into every strategy. PPC is one of them, but for businesses that don’t have the time, outsourcing PPC management is a viable option.

PPC, which stands for pay-per-click, is a kind of Internet marketing where advertisers or business owners pay a fee for every click-through their ads get online. PPC is an effective way of enabling customers to find your website as opposed to organic visits, which can take some time.

 

Google AdWords Explained

Google AdWords is the most popular PPC platform in the world. Through AdWords, businesses can create ads that will appear on the Google search engine as well as other Google-owned sites. AdWords works by having users bid on a keyword, then they pay for each time a user clicks on their ads. Whenever a user makes a search using the keyword they bid on, Google pools together all AdWords advertisers using the same keyword then chooses a set that will appear on the highly-coveted ad space atop the search results page (where over 90% of clicks take place).

Finding the right mix of Google AdWords that won’t eat into your budget can be tricky, which is where working with PPC management experts can help.

 

Facebook Marketing

Another essential element of any digital strategy is Facebook Marketing. The world’s most popular social media site is also an extremely effective marketing tool. With over 1.2 billion active users, 62% of whom login every day, it’s important to have Facebook Marketing tactics as part of your online marketing.

 

There are several ways to market your business on Facebook:

Pages: Facebook pages are profiles of businesses and organizations on the site. When users like a business page, this enables them to receive updates from the page in their news feed. The best part of all is that Facebook Pages are free, and relatively quick to setup.

Ads: Out of all the online platforms, Facebook’s advertising platform is highest-targeted, enabling advertisers to select whom their ads will appear to based on location, interests, education levels, ages, and even the kind of device being used for browsing. The powerful targeting parameters of Facebook make it extremely useful for online advertising. Additionally, Facebook lets you set a budget for your advertising campaigns (although in some cases the ads can be expensive and time-consuming to set up or monitor; hence, engaging an agency).

Groups: Facebook groups act as discussion forums, but are also built with added features that both profiles and Pages may not have. Businesses can use groups for advertising by creating and participating in groups that are relevant to your product, service, or industry as a means of reaching potential customers. Groups are free, but interaction may be time consuming.

 

PPC = High ROI

Most businesses associate PPC advertising with high marketing expenses, since you’ll have to pay for each click that the search campaign has delivered to your site. Professionally setting up a PPC campaign is a very effective way to advertise online, and with the help of PPC management experts, it can even increase your marketing ROI.

Other search engine optimization campaigns can often take months to give you results, but with PPC, traffic is driven to your website immediately. Any business can start a Google AdWords campaign, choose some keywords, and receive clicks in a matter of hours. On the other hand, organic traffic will require more time and effort in the form of content marketing and link building, but PPC will enable you to receive clicks right away.

PPC is extremely measurable, providing you with the opportunity to analyze every single aspect of the campaign. Through the data, you can isolate which factors the campaign is performing well in, and which aspects need help. You’ll be able to see which ads are receiving the most impressions and clicks; and which clicks converted.  This is another aspect that makes working with a PPC management agency’s experts attractive: ultimate accountability.

These are just some of the reasons why PPC will give you a better ROI than most marketing campaigns.

 

Case Studies

At Blue Nile Digital Marketing, we’ve seen firsthand how PPC has generated a higher ROI for our clients. In Denver, a real estate law firm invested $8,000/month in PPC campaigns. That can sound like a large investment, but the PPC ads resulted in over $36,000 additional monthly revenue because the real estate law firm gained three new clients (a net of $28,000 in revenue). If the law firm didn’t invest in PPC ads, it would have cost them around $12-18,000/month in lost business that instead went to their competitor (i.e. taking a hit to business twice over).

 

Benefits of Investing in PPC

Investing part of your marketing budget in Paid Search and PPC ads can mean the difference between operating losses, and attracting new business. Keep in mind that people are already searching for the product or services that you are offering, but without the right PPC tactics in place they won’t be able to find you (or worse, they’ll find your competition first). Remember the “90% Rule”: 90% of searches start on a search engine, and almost 90% of internet searchers only look on the first page, then click on the first few links.  Are you there?  Is your competition?

 

Let Blue Nile handle your PPC management efforts to avoid costly mistakes with AdWords and losing customers to competition.  Contact us today!