PPC Advertising: A Complete Guide

PPC Advertising is one of the most successful ways of digital marketing your business, especially when starting a new one. Marketers, if you are looking to drive instant traffic to your website then investing in a good PPC campaign is the way to go.

Unlike organic SEO, which could take months to show results, a PPC campaign puts your business in front of the potential customer instantly.

Using the right strategy, you can outperform your competitors, and reach the right audience, and that too within your budget as you only pay when someone clicks on your ads.

But, don’t make the rookie mistake of randomly bidding on keywords that you find. It is what everyone does and up to some point, it stops getting your results. PPC Ads require you to have smart planning, constant optimizations, and a deep understanding of ad platforms.

This guide will help you get the ins and outs of PPC Advertising- how it works, why it is effective, and how you can create your high-converting ad campaign. So, let’s dive in!!!

What is PPC Advertising?

Whenever you search for a keyword on Google, there are multiple website results appear, and ranking your website on it is difficult, and time-consuming. This is where PPC ads come into play. PPC Ads help you to place your website above this website and allow you a chance to appear right on the top and in return you pay whenever a user clicks on your website.

PPC Stands for Pay-per-Click and is an online advertising model where advertisers like you pay the publishers when a user clicks their ads. Advertisers bid on the value of the clicks based on the keywords and targeted audience.

PPC Advertising Glossary

There are some important terms that you have to know before proceeding with this in-depth guide on PPC Advertising. Here are some of the key terms you need to know-

Quality Score

Quality Score is a score that ad platforms give your ad based on the Click Through Rate (CTR). It is measured against the average CTR of the ads in that position. Factors like the relevance of the keywords, the quality of your landing page, and your past performance on the SERPs are taken into consideration when the quality score is calculated.

Maximum Bid

The maximum bid is the maximum amount that you are willing to pay for the click. When you set up a bid, you have two options- Manual and enhanced. When you set CPC to the manual, you determine the maximum bid amount, and when you select enhanced, it allows the search engine to adjust the bid based on your goals.

Ad Rank

Ad Rank is determined by the position of an ad on the search engine result page. The formula to calculate the ad rank is Maximum Bid x Quality Score.

CPC

CPC Stands for Cost Per Click and is the amount that you pay for each click on your ad. CPC acts as your bud in an auction determining where your ad will be placed. The higher your bid is, the better will be the placement of your ad.

CPM

CPM stands for Cost Per Mile also known as Cost per Thousand is the cost per thousand impressions. It is commonly used for social media ads or display ads.

Keywords

Keywords are the holy grail on which entire online marketing depends. It is the term that you search on Google to find something. For instance- If you are searching for a marketing course, then your keywords become Marketing Course near me or Marketing Course in [your_location], etc.

Ad Text

Ad text is the text that you use in your ads to influence users to click on your link. Quality Score is determined by how relevant your ad is and Ad Text would help you in increasing your quality score. You have to add your keywords to the ad text and your landing page.

Landing Page

A Landing page is the final destination where you want potential customers to land once they click on your PPC Ad. Although you can use any page as your landing page, it is smart to have a dedicated page for your ad campaigns as it helps you maximize ad conversions.

Types of PPC Ads

There are various PPC ads that you can choose from-

Search

Search PPC Ads are one of the most popular types of PPC Ads. It is a type of ad that appears at the top of the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) whenever a user enters a specific query you are running an ad on. These ads are text-based and are designed to only attract highly relevant users. For each click on the ad, you would have to pay hence the name pay-Per-Click.

Display

A display ad is a type of ad that appears on websites, apps, and other digital platforms in the form of banners or other graphical formats. Display ads are designed to be visually appealing and can include media like images, videos, and interactive elements.

Display ads best work if your goal is to increase brand awareness, promote products or services, or drive traffic to your website. The cost that display ads would cause is measured as Cost-Per-Impression (CPI) which simply means you would have to pay per the time the ads are displayed.

Video

As the name suggests, video ads are ads that are based on videos. These ads appear on various platforms like social media, YouTube, and websites. Video ads on YouTube can be pre-roll, mid-roll, or post-roll ads, meaning they can appear before, during, or after a video.

Video ads are usually interactive and have clickable elements such as Calls to action, links, or forms. The cost that you would have to pay is measured on a Cost-Per-View (CPV) or Cost-Per-Click (CPC) basis.

Remarketing

Remarketing is an advertising form that allows businesses to show ads to users who have previously interacted with your website or app. Remarketing ads are best to appeal to the users and showcase your brand value.

Remarketing ads can be delivered in various formats such as display ads, search ads, video ads, and social media ads. The cost that you would have to pay is based on the Cost-Per-Click or cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) basis. This type of campaign where you retarget users is effective at driving conversations and sales.

Platforms for PPC Campaigns

Platforms that are used for search usually can also have ads because the concept of running ads would make sense when people search for things. Whenever you want to find something, you would search for it on Google or Bing, etc. So, search engines usually come with their ad platforms. The following are some of the platforms that you can choose for PPC Campaigns-

Google Ads

Google is one of the most used search engines. There are people who whenever they want to find anything say the phrase “let me Google that?”. Google’s popularity is such that it has been a synonym for searching for information.

This makes Google Ads as king of Advertising. Every second Google processes over 99,000 search queries giving you a huge opportunity to target keywords to your audience.

Bing Ads

Bing is the second largest search engine after Google. Bing also provides you with an ad platform where you can target keywords searched on Bing. Bing can be an amazing platform as it helps you target specific audiences with low budgets.

Facebook/Instagram Ads

As the name suggests, Facebook/Instagram Ads is an ad platform that helps you run ads on Facebook. Facebook/Instagram are social media platforms where people spend hours scrolling and when you put your ad on Facebook, you can target users based on interests, demographics, location, and behaviors.

PPC Advertising Cost Breakdown

The cost involved in PPC advertising can be broken down into two main components:

Platform (Ad Spend) Costs

PPC platform costs refer to the amount spent directly on ads across platforms like Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn. These costs vary based on bidding models such as CPC, CPM, or CPA.

Agency Fee (Campaign Management Cost)

Agency fees for PPC campaign management cover strategy, setup, and ongoing optimization. Agencies charge based on a fixed monthly fee, a percentage of ad spend, or performance-based pricing.

How to Build a PPC Ad Campaign?

Now that you understand what a PPC Ad campaign is and other important details, let’s dive deep into crafting a quality PPC Campaign using Google AdWords. You can also use these principles to run ad campaigns on other platforms as well-

Understand Target Audience

The first step in creating any marketing campaign is to understand your target audience. Running PPC Ad Campaign requires a deep understanding of what your customer needs, what is their pain points and how to make them purchase your product.

You have to build a customer perform based on based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. This gives you a direction in which you can start building your PPC Campaign.

Create Goals and Goal Metrics

Once you have a general idea of who your customers are, now you have to create a picture of what your goals are, meaning what will you call a successful campaign. You can have various goals when it comes to setting goals for PPC Campaigns, which I am going to discussing below:

Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is how well your target audience knows about your brand.

• Do they recognize your Logo?
• Do They Know what you sell?

Answering questions like these would help you in giving your ad campaign a starting point. If you want to increase brand awareness then going for display ads would help you instill a brand image. You can measure this by social engagement, surveys, and direct traffic to your website.

Lead Generation

Lead Generation is when you use a landing page to capture a lead by allowing them to fill out a form. You can use tools like Google Analytics and filled form data to track your lead’s conversations. Apart from this, you can also use the Google Ads interface via a tracking pixel, or through UTM parameters.

Site Traffic

Increasing site traffic is a common goal that helps you get more views on your page. If you have high-quality content then spending money on attracting views is a great option for you. This goal helps you build a long-term customer-centric approach to marketing which helps you as well as your audience to build a long-term relationship based on trust.

Sales

If your goal is sales then you can align your ad campaign to match that goal. Measuring this is easy, how much your product or service is sold based on paid ads can be tracked by using a content hub or with attribution reporting.

Choose Your Campaign Type

Choosing which type of campaign largely depends on your goals and since different types of campaigns garner different results, you should be considerate of both. Different types of campaigns include-

Search Ads

It is one of the most common types of PPC ads and refers to the text-based ad that is displayed on the Google SERPs.

Best for Goals:

• Driving Traffic to Website
• Lead Generation
• Sales

Display Ads

This type of ad allows you to display your ads, image-based, on other websites including social media. There are several ways to buy display ads including Google Display Network and other ad networks providing you with this service.

Best For Goal:

• Increasing Brand Awareness
• Increasing Sales
• Drive Traffic to the Website

Social Refers

Social refers ads are those ads that you can see on social media sites including Facebook, Instagram, etc. You can run an ad campaign and show up in your target audience’s feeds.

Best For Goal:

• Increasing Brand Awareness
• Increasing Sales
• Drive Traffic to the Website

Remarketing

This ad type helps you re-engage users who previously engaged with your company and left midway. Using Remarketing you can entice them back to your marketing funnel and have them complete the customer journey process.

Best For Goal:

• Increasing Brand Awareness
• Increasing Sales
• Lead Generation
• Drive Traffic to the Website

Google Shopping

It is an effective marketing ad type for e-commerce websites. Your ads with your produced image would be displayed in a carousel on the SERPs. The customer can directly click on the ad and reach your product page.

Best For Goal:

• Increasing Sales

Perform Keyword Research

Keyword research is the soul of digital marketing. You are making all these efforts but in the wrong direction. How are you going to make a successful PPC Ad Campaign then?

Each ad group that you create needs to be assigned with a set of keywords generally 1-5 keywords. These keywords should be extremely relevant because your quality score depends on it.

Keyword Research is a journey meaning you do not need to get it right 100% the first time, you need to make changes accordingly throughout the campaign to ensure you are bringing in useless leads.

Tools like Google Keyword Planner are good but you should always have a secondary tool to ensure you are fully covered.

Set Up Google Analytics for Tracking

Tracking is the second most important thing after keyword research. Google Analytics is a free to use tool which can help you in tracking your website. You can install it on your website and the tool will start providing you insights into how your website is performing.

Nebula Infotech is a digital marketing consultancy. We can help you run profitable PPC campaigns across Google, Meta, and other platforms. Contact us for a free consultation.