Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Pay-per-click (PPC) is a digital advertising model in which advertisers pay each time a user clicks on one of their ads. Essentially, it’s a way of buying visits to a website instead of earning them organically through search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. PPC ads can appear on search engines, social media platforms, and other websites that have agreed to display ads.

In a PPC campaign, advertisers bid on specific keywords or phrases that are relevant to their target audience. When a user types in those keywords, the ad may appear at the top or bottom of the search engine results page (SERP) or on other websites that display ads. Advertisers only pay when a user clicks on their ad, hence the term “pay per click.” The cost per click (CPC) varies depending on the competition for the keywords and the quality of the ad.

PPC advertising can be an effective way of driving traffic to a website, increasing brand awareness, and generating leads or sales. However, it requires careful planning, research, and ongoing optimization to be successful. Advertisers need to identify their target audience, choose keywords carefully, create compelling ad copy, and continually track and adjust their campaigns to improve performance.

The Basics

PPC is used for all types of campaign goals, including:

• Increasing sales
• Generating leads 
• Promoting brands awareness 

PPC is all about relevance. Users are searching for specific products, services, and information at any given time. Advertisers have the ability to show a targeted ad at the exact moment this search is occurring. 

Working on the PPC Model

Keywords form the backbone of the PPC model. When a customer searches for a product or feeds a specific keyword in the search bar, online ads start appearing. When these ads are clicked by the customer, the advertiser pays the fees to the ad platform. Now since keywords form a crucial part of the entire PPC model, the organizations that use PPC  create optimized ads with the right keywords.

An ideal keyword to include in your ad is the one that ranks higher and so on. There is a separate model  that caters to this process of keyword optimization known as SEO (Search Engine Optimization), which is covered in our blogs on SEO Tools and guides to SEO optimization.

The PPC model works wonders for digital marketers and advertisers as it offers them to reach more customers, draw more attention, enhance visibility, and increased footfalls on the website. While creating a Digital Marketing   strategy, organizations include PPC as one of the priority digital marketing tools, because it has been known to give higher rates of returns on marketing investments.

The amount invested in PPC has been proven to fetch profitable customers and increased revenue for organizations.

Best Pay-Per-Click Platforms

There are many PPC platforms available, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Here are some of the most popular PPC platforms:

• Google Ads: Google Ads is the most popular PPC platform, allowing advertisers to display ads on Google’s search engine results pages and other Google properties, including YouTube and Gmail. Google Ads uses a pay-per-click model, where advertisers only pay when someone clicks on their ad.
• Bing Ads: Bing Ads is a PPC platform that allows advertisers to display ads on Bing search results pages as well as on the Yahoo! search engine. Bing Ads uses a pay-per-click model, where advertisers only pay when someone clicks on their ad.
• Facebook Ads: Facebook Ads is a PPC platform that allows advertisers to display ads on Facebook, Instagram, and other Facebook-owned properties. Facebook Ads uses a pay-per-click model, where advertisers only pay when someone clicks on their ad.
• Twitter Ads: Twitter Ads is a PPC platform that allows advertisers to display ads on Twitter. Twitter Ads uses a pay-per-click model, where advertisers only pay when someone clicks on their ad.
• LinkedIn Ads: LinkedIn Ads is a PPC platform that allows advertisers to display ads on LinkedIn. LinkedIn Ads uses a pay-per-click model, where advertisers only pay when someone clicks on their ad.
• Amazon Advertising: Amazon Advertising is a PPC platform that allows advertisers to display ads on Amazon’s website and mobile app. Amazon Advertising uses a pay-per-click model, where advertisers only pay when someone clicks on their ad.

Each of these platforms has its own unique features and benefits, so it’s important to choose the platform that best fits your advertising goals and target audience.

Why use PPC?

Even though it is paid marketing, PPC has many advantages of its own. Some of the major reasons why PPC should b used are:

• Pay Per Click is considered to be cost-effective as the number of fees paid for one click is greater than the profit and value the customer brings to the organization.
• The platforms offer the first result page display for your ad because you are paying for clicks. It’s a mutual benefit model.
• PPC helps in building brand image and visibility at a faster pace and at a greater reach. Your ads get more exposure than unpaid marketing and free Digital Marketing tools available.
• PPC helps in increasing the traffic to your website.
• PPC allows multiple ad campaigns for a single keyword.
• At optimized PPC leads to increased click-through rates (CTR).
• The results offered by PPC are at a fast pace.

Types of PPC Ads

Throughout the blog so far, we have discussed ads multiple times. Now let us understand what are the various types of ads in PPC:

1. Display Ads: Display Ads refer to those ads which are displayed to those customers or users who have already visited a website before. These ads are displayed to include the purchasing desire of the customer. Display ads appear to those customers who have shown interest in the same products as the industry the advertiser is in.
2. Search Ads: Search Ads are that appear through a keyword typed in the search bar. It is the most common form of PPC advertising. It is know to have helped almost every organization get maximum reach and enhanced visibility. These ads focus on only the target groups as they appear only when the relevant keywords are searched by the customers. So basically, if a person does not have any intention to buy or search for a product, he/she will most likely not be seeing search ads cropping up.
3. In-stream Ads: In-stream Ads are played in between a video that the customer is seeing. Mostly these types of ads are common on platforms such as YouTube and Facebook where customers watch videos at least once a day.  In-stream ads may sometimes become annoying to customers if played multiple times and this may lead to negative marketing, leading the customer to lose interest in the product. One of the benefits is that the ads remain in the memory of the customers but again, the frequency of ads is very important.
4. Social Ads: As the name itself suggests, Social Ads are the ads that are put up on social media marketing platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Social media platforms are the next in line when it comes to advertising after search engines. Since people, these days are glued to social media apps, digital marketers and advertisers post Social Ads on these apps so as to increase their reach.
5. Google Shopping Ads: These ads mostly pertain to shopping website and e-commerce companies. If a customer has already purchased from the shopping website or is even new, the ad is displayed on top of a Google search result page. The ad content includes new offers from the e-commerce company, product details, discounts, etc. to attract the customers into clicking on the ad. This is also considered one of the top revenue sources for the Google Ad platform.

Pay-Per-Click Models

There are several pay-per-click (PPC) models that advertisers can use to pay for their ads. Here are some of the most common PPC models:

1. Cost per click (CPC): In the CPC model, advertisers pay each time someone clicks on their ad. The cost per click can vary depending on the competition for the keyword and the quality of the ad.
2. Cost per impression (CPM): In the CPM model, advertisers pay for every 1,000 impressions of their ad, regardless of whether anyone clicks on it. This model is often used for brand awareness campaigns.
3. Cost per acquisition (CPA): In the CPA model, advertisers only pay when someone clicks on their ad and completes a specific action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form. This model is often used for lead generation and e-commerce campaigns.
4. Flat rate: In the flat rate model, advertisers pay a fixed amount for a specific period of time, regardless of how many clicks or impressions their ad receives. This model is often used for sponsored content or native advertising.
5. Percentage of ad spend: In the percentage of ad spend model, agencies or consultants charge a percentage of the total ad spend for managing and optimizing the PPC campaign.

PPC vs SEO

Often, businesses consider both SEO & PPC as two similar channels to help them drive traffic from the search engines.

And while there is no denying that they both involve appearing on, and getting clicks from, search engines, they are two very different channels.

• PPC involves paying per click
• SEO (organic search) clicks are free
• You can start to drive traffic with PPC from the search engines very quickly, whereas it can take time to rank organically.

But really, the two aren’t competing channels. They are both parts of a much wider digital marketing mix, and the two can, and should, work together effectively to drive success online.

Whenever possible try to avoid comparing these two channels and see both as vital parts of driving digital growth.

How to do effective PPC Keyword research

Keyword research for PPC can be incredibly time-consuming, but it is also incredibly important. Your entire PPC campaign is built around keywords, and the most successful Google Ads advertisers continuously grow and refine their PPC keyword list. If you only do keyword research once, when you create your first campaign, you are probably missing out on hundreds of thousands of valuable, long-tail, low-cost, and highly relevant keywords that could be driving traffic to your site.

You can check our full guide to keyword research here, but in short, an effective PPC keyword list should be:

• Relevant: Of course, you don’t want to be paying for clicks that aren’t going to convert. That means the keywords you bid on should be closely related to the offerings you sell.
• Exhaustive: Your keyword research should include not only the most popular and frequently searched terms in your niche, but long-tail keywords. These are more specific and less common, but they add up to account for the majority of search-driven traffic. In addition, they are less competitive, and therefore less expensive.
• Expansive: PPC is iterative. You want to constantly refine and expand your campaigns, and create an environment in which your keyword list is constantly growing and adapting.

If you want to find high-volume, industry-specific keywords to use in your PPC campaigns, check out the free tool Google Keyword Planner In Google AdWords.

Managing your PPC Campaigns

Once you’ve created your new campaigns, you’ll need to manage them regularly to make sure they continue to be effective. In fact, regular account activity is one of the best predictors of account success. You should be continuously analyzing the performance of your account and making the following adjustments to optimize your campaigns: 

• Continuously add PPC Keywords: Expand the reach of your PPC campaigns by adding keywords that are relevant to your business.
• Add negative keywords: Add non-converting terms as negative keywords to improve campaign relevancy and reduce wasted spend.
• Review costly PPC keywords: Review expensive, under-performing keywords and shut them off if necessary. 
• Refine landing pages: Modify the content and CTAs of your landing pages to align with individual search queries in order to boost conversion rates. Don’t send all your traffic to the same page.
• Split ad groups: Improve click-through rate (CTR) and Quality Score by splitting up your ad groups into smaller, more relevant ad groups, which help you create more targeted ad text and landing pages.

Pay-Per-Click Models 

So far we talked about how the PPC model works and that the advertisers need to pay a fee for each click. Now let us understand what are the different models on which the fee amount is decided. The two models followed for deciding the fee rate and structure are the Flat rate model and the Bid base model.

They are discussed below:

• Flat-Rate Model

In this type of PPC model, as the name suggests, the fee is fixed at a flat rate. The advertisers pay this fixed amount for the clicks. Usually, the rates differ based on the area of the website. The difference between the rates is decided by the ad platform providers themselves.

The majority of Digital Marketers and organizations use this model because it is cost-effective. Not only this, even the publishers, i.e. the ad platform providers are open to negotiations in cases the organizations wish to engage in long-term contracts.

• Bid-Base Model

The Bid-base model allows the advertisers to quote their maximum price in an auction. The bidding keeps on going until the publishers agrees to a bidding price using automated tools.

The bidding price is usually agreed upon based on the content quality offered in the advertisement and the rank of the advertiser. Obviously, the higher-ranked advertiser and top-quality content are preferred. 

Users of PPC

The below parties are the users of PPC and who have best benefited from it:

• Small businesses 
• Independent Digital Marketers
• Digital Marketing Agencies
• PPC Specialists
• Beginner-level sole proprietors
• In-house Digital Marketing teams of MNCs
• Social Media Campaign specialists
• Ad agencies 
• Content Creators