As you drive down the street, you quickly realize you are approached by enticement efforts upon every single corner you take. The billboard stating the presence of the McDonald’s at the next exit and the next exit after that, the guy doing spiralling helicopter maneuvers with the arrow-shaped sign directed at the adjacent insurance office, and the recently vacated lazer tag arena that is looking for a new business to rent the space (we could only hope another lazer tag arena) are all ways that we are exposed to advertising on a day to day basis. The same way that we see visual advertisements in our physical life, this also applies with respect to e-commerce. Upon any search query that you submit to a search engine, you will find virtual billboards with the same goal in mind, to attract people to your business in hopes to convert browsers to satisfied paying customers. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) functions give companies the opportunity to promote online amidst the sea of search results that are already generated from a search query. Similar to our nature of considering advertised products for our use as a passerby in the physical world, these same principles bear great utility for your online presence.
Much of our online web usage begins with a quick search query as we all may know. Although the space in which both search results produced by SEO and PPC advertisements fall is very close in proximity and in principle, there are some distinct differences in the way these links came to land on this page and what can be expected from each of them. Last week, Rave Retailer outlined search engine optimization as a common tool in gaining attention for businesses via their websites and the way all linked information and content was configured to maximize this practice. SEO, as previously mentioned, is gained through practices, not payment, in order to achieve higher rankings in search query returns. PPC is advertising that is paid for in bidding for a slot, essentially like your billboard analogy, and then additionally paying every time your links are clicked through. When examining a future plan for your business and its online presence, it is important to consider these two options and see what your business needs, whether it be solely SEO or SEO in conjunction with PPC advertising. Although both are effective methods, to have PPC means you are not waiting for traffic to come your way, but instead, traffic is the service that you are ultimately paying for since you are bound to get browser attention from your ads (Entrepreneuer). To pay for this advertising, means assuring visitors to your website.
Even considering the difference between SEO and PPC, there is one strong common thread in between how the two operate. The words that we type into the search engine make all the difference yet again. Keywords are ultimately the driving force behind a search, as they bear the meaning behind a browser’s need in order to seek out solutions for that need. To choose the proper keywords to correspond with your PPC campaign, there is a lot to consider both in the meaning of words and phrases, but also in the worth or value of those keywords as well. The keywords themselves have to be approached correctly. One wants to ensure that the terms are general enough to make sure that they cover an entire industry and don’t pigeonhole themselves into one aspect of that industry, but also don’t want to be so vague that your product is irrelevant from the get-go due to a bad call on a keyword for your campaign (Metric Theory). You don’t want to assume that your very specific keywords will generate the audience you want if it could carry an alternate meaning, such as ‘board’ where it can apply to anything from extreme sports, to family-fun games, to housing materials, but also don’t want to be undefined, as that will lose what you find your products’ strongest attributes to be (Metric Theory).
Now it is time to bid on those keywords. This process is dual-pronged in that in order to claim your advertising space given a certain keyword, it requires an initial bidding price and a CPC (Cost Per Click, as done by people perusing the web). The ways to select the keywords for your PPC campaign does not simply stop at the consideration of what words are optimally relevant to your business’s work, as each keyword or phrase comes with a different industry, which translates to varying levels of application in the lives of the vast majority, ultimately translating to differing utilitarian value, and thus, a differing price tag. While many keywords can hover in smaller numbers per click, some keywords that hold additional weight in more people’s lives and pose a market that nobody can help but be involved in can have significantly higher CPCs. For instance, in Google Adwords, the most expensive keyword is ‘insurance’ at $54.91 as it is highly lucrative, and highly accordant with the lives of the mass population (WordStream). For that reason, budgeting for this comes into play that way your PPC campaigns can cover as much ground as possible relative to your needs. If fewer words with greater clout are deemed appropriate to get your campaign rolling and your business can financially afford to make the move, then great! If your company is not in a market with expensive corresponding keywords and can manage getting good traffic with multiple keyword campaigns for their budget, then more power to them as well! The approaches to shaping your PPC campaign’s keywords is all at your discretion as a business owner.
After you have cut the ribbon on your PPC campaign, the next thing to do is…wait. A lof of the PPC advertising process, and furthermore gaining good data on the success of your campaign will, in many instances, take some time and some patience. With some bigger companies that have already established a clientele base, have ample notoriety, and thus a large budget for PPC advertising as a result of their business success,they may be able to use more money for bigger keywords or more keywords, and therefore possibly be able to see results more quickly. But as a first time PPC campaign effort, it is safe to not expect this to be the case. It can be assumed that you may not have the buyer attention equivalent to a large company or corporation, the customer base, or the budget, so it is advised to understand that time will be a factor to compensate for the low status of the other variables. Your business will be starting at the ground level and will need to that time to progress. Look at it from the perspective of running a marathon or marathons. It is easier to keep running or running faster after you are already in the midst of your race, whereas, to start, you need to stretch, warm up, and get your initial pace, once you have the momentum and feeling down, everything beyond will improve and increase upon itself. With your PPC starting from the ground level, it will take time to for clicks-through to occur, visitors to accumulate, purchases to be make, and ultimately data to be accrued (BoomTown!).
In the end, however, all of this waiting will be seen as well worth it based on all of the resulting data of your PPC campaign. There is a lot to be gained from conducting a PPC campaign in all walks of your business. Obviously, one of the apparent results that a business will want to see based on their campaign is how all of the money that they invested into it is performing in their business’s favor. The ROI is the first piece of data one will want to survey. While the ROI itself may be tough to pinpoint, there are other numerical considerations that could point to a projected idea of what to expect from ROI. For one, you have rates of conversion, people who see your ads, click on them and then either buy or do not buy. Many sources depict 2% conversion rates are being a good average conversion rate for your advertisements, but the percentages vary higher and lower depending on the scale of your business, typically higher for bigger businesses and lower for smaller businesses. In 2016, an average of 6.5% conversion rate was depicted, very high and very hopeful in the grand scheme of PPC advertising, and these rates above 2% trace back over the last decade and then some (Hochman Consultants). The conversions relative to the CPC and overall budget of a campaign will give a fair indicator of what to expect, and oftentimes, it will be promising.
Aside from monetary tracking of progress, there is also value in external data beyond just dollars. These figures can help you decide how the direction of your campaign is going and if it is in its optimal execution, or it is should be reconfigured. Some aspects to consider are your Click-Through-Rate (CTR) and Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA). CTR will show you the effectiveness of your campaign’s general attention-getting success, as it shows how much traffic you are generating, which is essentially the initial goal of advertising (PPC Hero). CPA will give you an understanding of how much volume of advertising you are putting out, how much it is costing you, and will give you a good figure to consider side by side with your budget, aiding you in your decision to continue at the magnitude you are currently going at, increasing your advertising, or dialing back some (PPC Hero).
One final consideration is the mere fact that you are going to have to conduct in advertising one way or another, as a business owner. It is up to you how you do so, whether it be through physical means or promotional means, but to not incorporate digital methods is not in your best interest. Through PPC campaigning your material needs are simplified, you energy output is minimized, and your costs will drop in comparison to what it would be through physical means of advertising (Rave Retailer). With all of these truths in mind, PPC is the answer to your advertising needs.
In conclusion, PPC is a valuable tool for bringing attention to your business online and, through proper strategizing, pay for optimal positioning in search query rankings, which is the best way to earn business online. Understanding your market, the keywords that encapsulate your business’s work, and the costs to purchase online advertising space and visits will give you the utmost let up when initiating your PPC campaigns. Now that you have a firm grasp on the practices involved in this form of advertising, it is time to consult a professional to get your campaigns up and running. Contact Rave Retailer today to make it happen and increase your online traffic and attention!