Creating, Running, and Managing PPC Search Ads
What is the best thing to focus your digital marketing budget on when you need leads for your business – and you need them now?
So many digital marketing strategies focus on building your lead pipeline and brand awareness for the long term, with sustained leads from SEO and content marketing and social media activities. And those activities are all critical – you want to set your business up for success a year from now, and three years from now, and beyond.
But what do you do right now when you have bills to pay?
You can’t wait around for a year. You need leads now, and they need to be high-quality leads likely to convert to customers.
That means you need to invest in quick leads – and the best way to do that is to set up a strategic, smart PPC ad campaign.
Search, Display Network
Search
Social Ads
Social Ads
Social Ads, Sponsored InMailWhat is PPC Advertising?
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is one of the most common forms of advertising on the internet. It’s a part of search engine marketing. And it means you pay for the ad only when a lead interacts with your ad by clicking on it. That also means that you pay only for people who are very likely to become customers – they’ve shown interest and purchase intent with that click. PPC helps you bring in leads who are very likely to convert.
PPC is a form of quick leads – a way to get new leads for your business fast, but for a cost.
Organic Content vs. Paid Leads
The other way of getting leads through search engine marketing is by creating content that ranks organically in search engine results. An organic content strategy creates content that matches what your ideal audience is searching for and reading, and makes sure it’s easy for both search engines like Google and search engine users to find and understand your site. These users become your sustained leads when your content strategy is effective, eventually entering your sales funnel and making a purchase.
These sustained leads are effective for building your business over the long term, but SEO takes a significant amount of time to pay off. New content usually takes at least a year to 18 months to get results from bringing in those sustained leads, because it takes a while for less-established sites to rank in Google and other search engines.
And with the huge growth of content marketing and SEO, the organic content game is getting more and more competitive. Platforms that already have a lot of organic content are increasingly monetizing their own platforms by decreasing organic reach and pushing ad content instead – that means you are likely to need to pay to get your content seen, which wasn’t true a few years ago.
All of this doesn’t mean you can ignore sustained lead strategies – you definitely can’t afford to do that. But many businesses also can’t afford to go a year or more without bringing in leads. You just need a lead generation strategy that complements your long-term growth plan.
PPC and Quick Leads
If you need leads fast, quick leads like PPC campaigns are your best bet.
PPC campaigns are most often found on search engines, like Google search ads. They can also be used on social channels, but these use CPM (a measure of impressions rather than clicks) more. PPC also uses ad networks like Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) to provide display ads when appropriate.
Instead of waiting months to a year for your content to fight its way to the top of the search engine results pages, you can invest your marketing dollars in paid ads that land you there right away. That means your content gets clicks immediately, and your business has leads rolling in from the start.
How can you begin to benefit from your PPC ad campaigns? Let’s take a look at the most common kind – ads on the Google Search results pages.
Google Search Ads
Google is the world’s most visited web site – with searches numbering in the billions every day. That’s why it’s such a powerful place to advertise your business. Ranking in organic search results in Google takes time and a lot of SEO expertise. But paid Google Search ads is one of the most effective methods of online advertising available, and results can be almost instant.
What Are Google Search Ads?
Google Ads (formerly known as Google AdWords) is a paid search ad platform that’s a form of pay-per-click (PPC) marketing. You pay per click or per impression on the ad. It’s an effective way of driving leads who are searching for exactly what you’re selling to your website.
Why You Need to Use Google Search Ads
Why are Google search ads so effective? Because they allow you to show up on the search results page (SERP) right when your target audience is searching for products and services like yours. Their intent to buy is high – that’s why they’re usually conducting the search – and you can appear at the very top of the page.
And the benefits don’t stop there. Google Ads will also let you analyze how your ads are performing. And it allows you to make tweaks to make them even more effective. You can also control your spending to fit your budget easily – to set a monthly cap on spending and pause your ads at any time.
How Google Search Ads Work
Google search ads use a bidding system to display ads. This means you select a maximum bid amount you want to pay per click on your ad. The higher the bid amount, the higher your placement on the search results page.
Bid strategies for your Google search ads can be manual – where you set the limit you want to spend – or automatic – where Google sets your bids based on your competitors. Manual bidding is a good place to start if your business – and your marketing budget – is very small. But you may find, especially if you’re in a highly competitive field, that you need to allow Google to bid for you to actually get results.
Something critical to remember when you’re selecting a bidding strategy – you can actually waste more money by bidding too low. Say your daily ad budget is $10. If you’re getting 1 lead a day on that spend, but 3 leads a day when you spend $20, adjust your strategy. It’s better to spend $20 for half the month and get three times the leads for the same monthly budget.
Don’t be afraid to play around and experiment to see what works best for your campaign and your goals.
GoogleAds has other PPC options for ads campaigns, like the Google Display network which places ads on other sites, but we’re strictly covering search ads in this article.
GoogleAds offers ad extensions too. These allow you to add more information on your location, offers, or site pages onto your ad. Adding these is especially critical for local businesses, and will increase your ad effectiveness. It makes it easier for your potential customers to find out more info on your business without clicking away from Google, and that effortlessness can lead to more conversions.
Using Paid Search to Power Organic Search
Remember how we talked earlier about creating content that will rank in organic search, so you’ll be bringing in free sustained leads over time? There’s a strategy that you can use to create organic content that’s highly effective, using your paid ads results.
Once you’ve set up and started running your Google search ads, take note of which keywords are especially effective for your business. That means looking at conversion rates, not just clicks – what keywords are really working to attract and convert visitors to customers?
These are the keywords you want to start creating organic content around as well. You already know they bring in the right kind of leads – so it’s time to build a content strategy around those keywords. Once they start ranking and bringing in leads, you can decrease your ad spend and still get that highly effective traffic.
Set Your Google Ads Up for Success
To create a successful Google search ads campaign for your business, you must start with a compelling headline and ad copy. Remember, you want to address exactly what your ideal customers are searching for with each target keyword. If you are creating an ad for the keyword “how to make pizza dough” with an ad that tells the user how to make bread dough, you’re not addressing what they need. You’ll be overlooked and over budget, too.
You also need to be sure your whole conversion process is on target, not just the ad copy. That means a well-written landing page users encounter after they click through your ad that drives them to a purchase. It also means a customized thank you page for the next step. Creating a seamless experience is key to getting those leads to make a sales decision and spending your ad budget wisely.
Creating and managing a Google Ads campaign is a lot of work – and a big investment of time and money for your business. If you’re wondering how to get it all done yourself and run your business at the same time, you don’t need to panic. Just read on to see how you can get assistance handling your pay-per-click ad campaigns and free up your valuable time.
PPC Management
PPC, or pay-per-click, advertising is a powerful way to target your ideal audience and get them to purchase your product or service. It’s a critical part of your digital marketing strategy. PPC helps you reach people likely to become customers and get them onto your website. But this can be a confusing process to master, and mistakes can be costly.
That’s where a strong PPC management plan is needed to optimize your advertising strategy and grow your business.
What is PPC Management?
PPC management involves a wide range of activities, including creating and adjusting goals, introducing new keywords, optimizing conversion paths, split testing, and modifying plans to reach your goals.
Managing your PPC ads requires looking at both your ad strategy and your ad spend. This means you need to keep iterating on your plan to optimize the effectiveness of your keywords. After all, keywords are subject to trends, so they rise or fall in search volume and difficulty. PPC management also means deciding how to allocate budget and ads to specific keywords, and how to adjust those resources to maximize your return on investment.
A thorough PPC management strategy also requires paying attention to the ad providers like search engines, ad networks, and social channels to stay on top of updates and changes that will impact your ad campaigns.
Why Do You Need a PPC Management Service?
PPC ads like Google Search ads are an incredibly effective way of growing your business. It’s getting harder to get your content to rank organically on sites like Google and Bing. Keywords are becoming more competitive as more and more businesses discover how important SEO and content marketing are to the success of their brands.
Avoid Expensive Mistakes
But when PPC ads are done wrong? They’ll cost you twice – once in the lost business you’re failing to bring in, and again in the money you’re paying for ads that don’t work. Paid ads are especially important in a competitive or crowded market. They help you stand out fast from the rest of your competition. And they bring you prospects who otherwise wouldn’t know you exist. If you’re only focusing on SEO, your content will get lost in the search pages below all your competitors’ ads and high-ranking content.
Monitor Your Results Regularly
Paid advertising like PPC ads isn’t something you can set up once and forget about. It requires constant fine-tuning, regular deep dives into analytics, keyword research, tracking, and constantly monitoring ads. And you can’t forget about the details of creating a seamless user experience for the people who click on your ads – setting up landing pages that convert those clicks to customers.
Source: ipullrank
As a business owner, you already have plenty on your plate running your business. You probably don’t have time to manage your PPC campaigns too. And if you’re a small business, you don’t have a marketing guru on staff to do it either.
Saves You Time and Effort
PPC management services take care of all those details for you. PPC management services don’t just create ads for you. They will usually provide copywriting for maximum ad impact, optimize your bidding strategies, conduct competitor and industry research, and analyze your results.
PPC management is a big undertaking. But it has huge benefits for your business when it’s done right. The investment in a PPC management service can pay off in a big way for a growing business.
What to Do if You Want Leads Now!
In the digital world, if you need a steady growing stream of leads, your primary choice is through the most authoritative search, display, and social platforms. We identify the best platforms based on target market, reach, budget, and overall volume. We create the complete Google Ads strategy that delivers the results your business needs, and we can provide ongoing PPC management as well so you know your campaigns are always working for you.
What We Deliver:
Initial Analysis, Strategy, and Setup to:
- Understand your business and target markets
- Review website and consult continuously for success
- Set initial expectations and specific goals
- Design and build proper campaigns for all PPC efforts
- Perform comprehensive keyword research and selection
Ongoing Account Management:
- Ongoing keyword performance analysis, additions, and deletions
- Ongoing ad copy analysis and testing
- Continued conversion tracking analysis
- Detailed PPC reporting and analysis
- Proprietary Artificial Intelligence Algorithms to dynamically adapt the campaigns
BUILD NEW CONTACTS, LEADS, AND SALES QUICKLY
There’s never been a better time to increase your reach and recognition online. Getting your brand, products, and solutions in front of a new and growing audience is the best way to increase opportunities for growth quickly. ContentFirst can help your quick leads become quick sales. Contact us today!
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