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PPC for Beginners: A Guide How to Start Pay-Per-Click Advertising
January 31, 2023
11 min
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is on the list of the most effective and widely-used digital marketing tools. 79% of marketers state that PPC is highly beneficial for their business.
At the same time, approximately 65% of customers click on PPC ads. If you are still not receiving PPC benefits, then it’s high time to do it.
We have prepared a PPC tutorial for beginners, answering all questions you may have to start your paid advertising. On top of that, Promodo’s PPC experts give you powerful practical recommendations to succeed in pay-per-click advertising.
PPC or pay-per-click is a type of internet marketing that involves advertisers paying a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. In such a way, using the PPC campaign, you pay a publisher every time your audience clicks on the advertisement link.
You may choose any form, share, and size for your PPC campaign. For instance, it can be made up of text, images, videos, or their combination. They also provide you with a wide range of places to display your advertising, including search engines, websites, social media platforms, etc.
Undoubtedly, the major benefit of PPC for beginners is its cost-effectiveness. Since you pay only when the user clicks on the link to your landing page or website with a high chance of conversion, your budget is used properly. What is more, you have full control of the amount of money you are willing to spend.
Even though the organic traffic is free and not less important, it may take months before your SEO content strategy pays you back with satisfying results. On the contrary, you start receiving qualitative leads from your pay-per-click advertising right after its implementation.
“While using different digital marketing tools, we still receive the largest registration share from paid channels”. Nikita Korchevskyi, Claspo CEO.
Find more comments from Mr. Korchevskyi on the SaaS business development with the PPC campaigns in our article.
Competing online has become extremely complicated for businesses with low domain ratings. PPC can be a magic stick that brings you to the top of the search engine results page even with a low domain rating. Try it!
The list of PPC benefits also includes an easy opportunity for performance tracking.
You may use Google Ads and see impressions, clicks, conversions, and other metrics in Google Analytics.
Per-per-click advertising provides an opportunity to target directly your warm audience that is ready to purchase your goods or services. Besides using keywords for targeting, you may also consider geographic location, demographic data, or part of the audience’s online activity. Such targeting would definitely have high results.
So, pay-per-click is an essential digital marketing tool to understand and apply. So, let’s dive into more details of “PPC for Beginners”!
You may launch your first paid advertising campaign in different places, including a website, search engine, social media, or their combination, depending on which audience you plan to address.
Search advertising is a digital marketing tool that enables the placement of a paid ad inside search engine results. It’s one of the most widely-used and effective types of PPC.
For example, the PPC campaign, which also included the ad search, allowed us to increase Vodafone’s conversions by 127%.
Display ads appear on external websites in the form of images, videos, or text elements. You may launch the Display campaign through Google Display Network or other ad networks.
You’ve probably seen social ads on different social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Likewise, you may also pay to appear in your target audience’s feed.
Look at Facebook paid ad which was implemented by Promodo for The Place Group.
“Attractive and qualitative creative is one of the key success factors of the entire advertising campaign. It should not only be attractive but also interesting for the target audience, respond to their main requests, and emphasize the product’s or service’s benefits”. Anastasiia Ilchenko, Senior PPC Specialist
Remarketing is a highly-effective PPC tool that allows targeting the audience that has engaged with your brand before. They may have visited your website, read your blog, or fill in the registration form. You will use cookies or the list of contacts to launch the remarketing campaign. Below is an example of a remarketing ad implemented by Promodo for Premium Sound.
“As a senior PPC specialist at Promodo that helps advertising beginners to grow, I always pay attention to one important point. Before launching an ad, you should ask yourself several questions: What result do I want to get? What is my goal? These questions can help you choose the right tools and, as a result, a high PPC effectiveness, as you keep your goal in mind and understand what to improve in order to achieve it. Adhering to your strategy and taking into account the current circumstances is the key to success in advertising”. Anastasiia Ilchenko, Senior PPC Specialist
Every successful digital marketing campaign starts with the analysis of your target audience. You’ll need to create a customer profile, which visualizes your perfect consumer, including their demographics, needs, and pain points. In addition, investigate their buyer’s journey to understand which PPC tool to implement at each stage.
Find how to apply customer journey mapping for PPC campaign implementation in our article.
Knowing your buyer persona, create a list of effective keywords that they are likely to use to solve their pains. Also, consider their demographics. For instance, the “digital marketing agency” keyword may be too competitive. On the contrary, try to apply “digital marketing agency in London”. In such a way, you will avoid huge rivalry and target your audience better.
Competitor analysis is another great way to generate keyword ideas. They’re software and tools that analyze competitors’ PPC campaigns and the range of keywords they’re targeting. We recommend taking those that they have been bidding for a long time, which demonstrates that they bring traffic and satisfying results.
Another step for you is to create a unique, eye-catching ad that encourages engagement.
Also make sure that you add a catchy headline, a URL with keywords, an appealing description, and an actionable call-to-action (CTA).
Here’re some tips to write good text for your PPC advertisement:
Several words about an effective CTA. First, it needs to meet the stage of the customer in the buyer journey map. In addition, use the most appropriate words to increase engagement. For example, people are more likely to respond to “GET” rather than “CLICK” call to action.
Once your prospects click on your ad, it’s critical to convert them from leads to customers. At this point, your priority is to bring them to the conversion-focused landing page.
Your landing page structure and content need to be clear and compelling. For this matter, make the headlines short, your benefits obvious, and your value proposition specific. You should also apply different forms of content on your landing page. The text alone is good. But if you combine them with images and videos, you’ll triple your results.
Finally, make a powerful CTA. You may test different forms and places of CTA to choose the one that drives the most conversions.
The account setup is the next stage for you to take as a PPC beginner. As 92.96% of online traffic comes from Google, let’s view how to set up Google Ads for beginners. You may rest assured that the registration process is rather simple. For this matter, you need to create a Google account, head to Google Ads and sign in. Once you are prompted to confirm your business information, be careful because you’ll not be able to change this in the future. Even though the interface is rather simple, we still recommend getting acquainted with it before moving to advertising creation.
Once you have your account, landing page, and advertisement ready, it’s the right time to launch your campaign on Google Ads or any other online advertising platform. We believe that you can make it on your own, although in case you have any difficulties, feel free to ask our professionals for help.
Last but not least stage is the monitoring process. You need to know and control your major metrics to assess the effectiveness of the PPC campaign launched. Take into consideration the following PPC metrics:
However, you may choose the set of metrics that meet your business goals and objectives.
We realize that it might seem to be rather complicated to launch the first PPC campaign, so we have prepared a set of recommendations for PPC marketing for beginners. By following them, you will increase your chances to succeed in the first pay-per-click advertising experience.
Google strives for constant improvement in its work. As a result, it changes its algorithms rather often. For instance, in May 2023, Google will stop generating similar audiences and replace them with more powerful and durable automated solutions. So, follow all changes to remain the high efficiency of your paid ads.
Performance Max is a beneficial tool that can boost your PPC results significantly. For instance, at Promodo, we’ve managed to generate a +58% profit within the first month of the Performance Max implementation for our client for Eldorado.
Performance Max is a new goal-based campaign type that allows performance advertisers to access all of their Google Ads inventory from a single campaign.
There’s no unique guide to an effective PPC campaign that will fit all businesses and industries. You’ll need to test various hypotheses to check which settings and forms of advertising fit your company better. Only in such a way, you’ll be able to find the best variant for you.
The PPC implementation includes a wide range of small tasks and steps. Here’s a great “lifehack” from the Promodo PPC team.
“When launching advertising campaigns, there are always many nuances to take into account and not to forget. One of our top recommendations for our junior professionals is to have your own startup checklist. Our own version includes different sections – from USP to analytics and technical tasks, from account access to creatives. Such a document helps to keep your finger on the pulse and not miss any details that matter”. Anastasiia Ilchenko, Senior PPC Specialist
PPC is a great digital marketing tool to boost business effectiveness for both professional marketers and inexperienced beginners. We believe that by using our PPC guide for beginners, you’ll succeed with your first paid advertisement.
Team Lead of Content for promodo.com
Content marketing manager at Promodo with 7+ years of writing.
When creating valuable business content, I always seek fresh data, interesting facts, the expertise of professionals, and meaningful insights to bring relevant ideas to the audience. I believe that good content can enrich the experience of marketers, empower business owners to make data-driven decisions, and enhance companies in growth.
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