Is Your company about to undertake a significant inbound marketing campaign and is thinking of using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising? Are you unsure if PPC will help your company realize its goals? Do you worry it won’t provide a return on investment? Those are all good questions, and the truth is no one size fits all strategy exists regarding PPC. Every business is unique and has its own needs, goals, and budgets. It is not to say your company should not use PPC. Here are a few things that will help to determine if your company would profit from PPC.
What is PPC?
You may have some idea what PPC is but aren’t quite sure. PPC is a search engine and social media marketing strategy involving a fee being charged each time a user clicks on your ad. PPC is basically paying for possible customers to visit your company’s site instead of arriving organically.
How Does PPC Work?
PPC is actually an online auction; rather than bidding for different items, you are bidding for a customer to see your ad. This point is a crucial concept to understand before starting a PPC campaign. Take Google Ads as an example of PPC bidding. The amount your business bids determines how often it will be viewed. If you bid $2 per click, then your ad is less likely to be seen than a company paying $20 per click. PPC ads with a high enough bid will appear at the top of the search engine results page (SERP); the word “Ad” will appear beside it. You can fix a daily budget for your ad and set a maximum bid per keyword. Google determines how your ad is displayed based on two things- your maximum bid for a keyword and on the quality of the content in your ad.
So, that means your ad rank is determined by your highest bid multiplied by your ad’s quality score. If you bid $5.00 and have a quality score of 7, your ad rank will be 35 (5 x 7). Bing has a comparable system for its PPC. The rate for PPC ads with Bing is lower than Google Ads, but remember, the difference in market shares of Google and Bing are immense. Google holds 72% of the market share for search engines; Bing only holds 8% of the search engine market share. It is essential to note that you may need to do additional market research to settle on which search engine to use. Even though more searches are done on Google, your target audience may prefer Bing.
SEO or PPC?
SEO is not better than PPC, but they are different sides of the same coin. Cost is the main determinant in both methods. SEO may not demand bids per click, but hidden costs are involved in time, effort, and if an agency is used. If you are a small business and don’t have the capital for PPC ads, then you should begin with SEO. Studies have shown how SEO works and how trying various keywords and how they can improve SERP ranking. If you experiment with various keywords, you can find what works best. If your company can master how SEO works, it will be able to grow your brand organically. Conversely, if your company has a massive bank account, utilizing PPC could place your company’s ad at the top of the SERP page.
In Conclusion
If your PPC ad is frequently clicked, you can reach your goals right away; the only question is, can your company afford it. You can also try both PPC and SEO simultaneously, but it is prudent to do them separately at first to determine which is more effective for your company.
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