Ginger Digital

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has its benefits and is by no means a dying form of digital marketing. If anything, in 2022, it will prove incredibly useful for SMEs that want to increase their brand awareness, grow their business and improve quality leads and conversions. In this article, we’ll be looking at a handful of PPC best practices to help you get the most out of your marketing budget. 

Why PPC Marketing?

PPC advertising is a form of digital marketing, where advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Ostensibly, you can look at it as a way of buying site visitors. However, optimised PPC campaigns mean that the conversion that results from that click is worth more than the cost for every click (and the small fee you pay to the search engine). 

There are many benefits of running PPC ad campaigns. They can be very cost-effective, well-targeted, fast, and they complement an SEO strategy.  

Common Types of PPC Advertising

While it’s one of the most popular, Google Ads isn’t the only platform you can use for PPC marketing campaigns. There are other ways of running a PPC campaign. 

1. Search ads 

These are the most popular types of PPC ads. PPC search ads will show up at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs) and look similar to the organic search results, but will have an ‘Ad’ tag underneath to show that they’re paid content. 

2. Display ads 

Display PPC ads show at the top, on the side and in the middle of website pages. They are known for being very effective and can feature both text and images to engage an audience and personalise a brand. 

3. Remarketing ads 

PPC remarketing ads allow you to customise search campaigns to target visitors that have previously browsed your website.  

4. Social media ads 

Social ads are a rapidly-growing type of PPC advertising. Facebook ads, Twitter ads, Instagram ads, LinkedIn ads and other social media ads, are all programmed to target specific audiences based on demographics, interests, hobbies, jobs, and so much more.  

5. YouTube ads 

YouTube is a popular space for advertising, with over 2 billion monthly active users. Utilising video, you can target users based on their search history. You can create bumper ads, TrueView ads, pre-roll ads, discovery ads and more.

8 Ways of Improving your PPC Campaigns

There are other types of pay-per-click advertising, but the above list just gives you a flavour of how versatile it is as a marketing tool. How can you optimise PPC performance? Here are a few tips. 

1. Target audiences carefully 

You can target your audience in a few ways, from a person’s job title and industry on LinkedIn to a person’s marital status, education and so on. One of the best ways to benefit from PPC campaigns is to target each ad specifically to your ideal buyer. 

2. Automation  

If you have well-defined processes for your ad testing, bidding, reporting and so on, you should document them. This can be anything from scheduling PPC ads, pausing low-performing keywords, controlling budgets, bid scheduling and so on. Once they’re recorded, you can automate them.  

3. Negative keywords 

Any keywords that are underperforming or are too competitive are worth leaving out for specific PPC campaigns. Focus on the ones that are most relevant to your niche. 

4. Engaging content 

Ensure that the ad copy is engaging, utilises the relevant keywords and is well-written. 

5. Expand beyond Google and Facebook 

Facebook ads and Google Ads campaigns are not the sole sources of revenue for paid campaigns. Advertise across Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and other platforms to create a series of winning, consistent, engaging ad campaigns. 

6. Use video 

Video marketing is the future. Consumers are watching videos all the time, so utilise them suitably to your advantage. Not just in YouTube advertising, but across all social media and so on.  

7. Trust the process 

Campaigns need to be given time to work their magic truly. Don’t just give up after a month and assume that’s the best it’s going to be. The extra time to gather that data, review and optimise a campaign is worth it. That’s where a PPC agency comes into play. 

8. Get a PPC agency to optimise your campaigns 

Agencies like Ginger Digital can find low hanging fruit when reviewing a video campaign, where there are some missed opportunities. Experienced PPC specialists like us can review, optimise and, in turn, reduce your CPC (cost per click), improve conversions by tweaking campaigns, landing pages and so on.  

Don’t feel like you have to navigate a PPC minefield on your own. Ginger Digital can help. We specialise in video marketing and running paid campaigns across social media, Google and YouTube. We’d love the chance to offer you a free no-obligation review of your current performance.