What is Pay-per-click (PPC) Advertising?

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is an essential component of any effective digital marketing strategy. With the right PPC campaigns, you can drive qualified traffic, leads, and sales for your Uk business. This ultimate guide will equip you with the knowledge and best practices you need to succeed with PPC.

PPC advertising enables you to place text, display, and video ads on search engine results pages and partner websites. You only pay when someone clicks your ad, making it a cost-effective way to reach new audiences and scale your campaigns.

We will cover everything you need to know, from PPC basics and platform options to optimising campaigns and maximising ROI. Whether you’re new to paid search or looking to improve existing efforts, you’ll find actionable tips and strategies here.

Before diving into specifics, let’s review some PPC fundamentals.

PPC stands for pay-per-click, a model of internet marketing where advertisers pay a fee each time someone clicks on their ad. It allows you to:

Display ads to people searching for specific keywords or terms

Show ads on websites through display advertising networks

Reach your target audience when they are most likely to convert

With PPC, you can tailor your budget and only pay when your ad drives traffic or leads. It provides more control compared to other forms of digital advertising.

Here are some of the key benefits that make PPC an essential marketing channel:

Cost-effective: You can set daily budgets aligned with your goals and scale up or down based on performance.

Measurable results: PPC provides data like impressions, clicks, conversions, and costs that inform your strategy.

Targeted reach: You can target users by location, interests, search terms, pages visited, and more.

Flexibility: Launch and pause campaigns rapidly based on market conditions.

Boosts SEO: PPC and SEO work together to increase visibility and traffic.

According to Lunio “PPC provides the rocket fuel to power your marketing efforts and deliver targeted, measurable results to impact the bottom line.“

With the right approach, PPC can generate a high return on investment (ROI) by connecting you to audiences likely to do business with you.

As a PPC beginner, these are some of the common terms you’ll encounter:

SEM: Search Engine Marketing encompasses activities that increase visibility in search engines like paid search and SEO.

CPC: Cost-Per-Click is the amount you pay each time someone clicks your ad.

CPM: Cost-Per-Mille or Cost-Per-Thousand is the cost per 1000 impressions. Used for display ads.

Keywords: These trigger your ads and help target relevant searchers. For example, “PPC ad campaign management“.

Ad Rank: The position where your ad appears depends on its ad rank. Higher bids and quality score means better rank.

Landing Page: The page a user reaches after clicking your ad.

Quality Score: Google’s rating system for the quality of your ads, keywords and landing page.

We’ll delve into these concepts more throughout this guide.

Google Ads is the most widely used PPC platform, making up 40% of global digital ad revenue. Here’s an introduction to get started:

Google Ads is Google’s advertising program that allows businesses to show ads across the Google Search Network and Display Network.

With Google Ads, you can create text, image, video and app install ads to appear on:

Google Search – ads next to search results

Google Display Network – over 2 million websites, videos and apps

Google Shopping – product listings

YouTube videos

You only pay when someone engages with your ad, making it a cost-effective form of advertising.

Google offers free tools and resources for PPC beginners:

Google Ads Starter Guide – Covers account setup, competitive keyword research, bidding and more.

Google Skillshop – Free online courses on Google Ads.

Google Ads Certification – Earn a Google Ads certification.

Google Ads Experiments – Case studies and insights.

Leveraging these resources can help master the basics and achieve PPC success.

Here is an overview of the key steps to running Google Ads campaigns:

Set up your Google Ads account and billing information.

Define your goal, budget, schedule, bidding, targeting options and placements.

Create ad groups around keywords and products.

Write compelling ad text and landing pages.

Monitor performance and optimise for conversions and ROI.

We’ll explore these in more detail throughout this guide.

While Google Ads leads among PPC platforms, other options also exist:

Google Ads – works best for search network campaigns.

Bing Ads – PPC advertising within Bing, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines.

Facebook Ads – enable advertising on Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network.

AdRoll – focuses on retargeting across devices through display, social and video ads.

RevContent – is a content recommendation network for sponsored links across publishers.

Evaluate each platform based on your goals, budget and target audience to determine the right mix.

Now let’s look at why PPC should be part of your digital marketing strategy.

PPC delivers results fast, unlike Search Engine Optimisation which can take months to reflect in rankings. Here are some compelling benefits of PPC:

With PPC, you can start with small daily budgets as low as £25 and increase gradually as you scale. Budget caps and bidding allow control over advertising costs.

PPC provides data on clicks, conversions, impressions and more to evaluate ROI. You can tweak bids and targeting to optimise success metrics.

Launch new ads in minutes and pause or edit underperforming ads with little effect on overall results. Easily adapt to new products or initiatives.

Target users based on demographics, geography, context, search terms, interests and other criteria for highly relevant reach.

PPC positions your brand in front of users at the precise moment they search for related keywords and topics.

By understanding these benefits, you can understand how PPC can accelerate results when done right.

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s go through the steps to create an effective PPC campaign.

Be clear on what you want to achieve from PPC. Typical goals include:

Generate leads or sales

Increase brand awareness

Promote new products

Drive traffic to your website

Boost Engagement

Cost-per-lead (CPL)

Return on ad spend (ROAS)

Click-through rate (CTR)

Conversion rate (CVR)

Impressions and reach

These will determine how you manage and optimise your campaign.

Your daily or monthly budget will depend on factors like:

Current conversion rates and cost-per-conversion

Minimum budget requirements on the PPC platform

Seasonal variations in your business

Stage of your business – new brands may start small

Competitiveness of your niche – highly competitive spaces require larger budgets

Start modestly and increase budget over time as you assess performance.

Google Ads offers different campaign types for various goals:

Search campaigns – target users based on keywords

Display campaigns – focus on placement on websites/apps

Video campaigns – video ads on YouTube and sites

Shopping campaigns – promote products

Select the right campaign type based on your offerings, customer journey and business vertical. Most brands use a combination strategy.

Ad groups allow you to organise keywords and ads by theme, product or service.

For example, a law firm can have an “estate planning” ad group and a “family law” ad group. This lets you customise ads and landing pages.

Distinct products/services

Location

Type of customer

Stage in buyer’s journey

Well-organised ad groups lead to higher Quality Scores. Limit each group to closely related keywords.

Research keyword demand and difficulty to build your initial list. Categorise keywords such as:

Broad match – reaches more users (“dog toys”)

Phrase match – more specific phrases (“dog training toys”)

Exact match – only shows ads for that keyword (“large rubber dog training toys for aggressive chewers”)

Analyse search volume, competition and cost-per-click for the keywords. Have a mix of volume keywords and long-tail keywords in each ad group.

Create clear, compelling ad copy showcasing your offering and brand.

Test ad variations with different headlines, descriptions and formats.

Ensure your landing page answers the user’s query and prompts the desired action.

Include relevant keywords in the meta titles and descriptions.

Make the key content immediately visible without excessive scrolling.

Remove distractions to keep the user focused on converting.

Optimising your ads and landing pages is crucial for PPC success.

Log in regularly to assess metrics like clicks, conversions, cost per conversion, bounce rates and more.

Identify high performing ads, keywords and placements to optimise further. Stop low performing areas wasting budget.

Refine targeting, bids and budget allocations to improve ROI. PPC requires ongoing optimisation.

By following these steps, you can launch PPC campaigns tailored to your business goals. Now let’s look at some best practices.

Your ad copy and landing pages make a huge impact on PPC results. Here are some proven best practices:

Grab attention with emotional headlines and strong call-to-actions

Highlight your key differentiators and value proposition

Use keywords naturally without over-optimisation

Keep text concise, scannable and relevant to the searcher’s intent

Create multiple versions for A/B testing

Ensure speedy page load times – every second matters

Clearly state the offer or action you want visitors to take

Use minimalist designs – avoid clutter or distractions

Make forms short with only essential fields

Use trust factors like testimonials, security seals, and contact info

Include a focused, keyword-optimised title and meta description

Testing your PPC ads and landing pages is key to maximising conversions.

A/B testing means creating two versions to see which performs better. With PPC campaigns, you can test elements like:

Ad copy – headlines, descriptions, call-to-action

Keyword match types and bids

Landing page design, headlines and call-to-actions

Audience targeting parameters

Ad formats – responsive, image, video etc.

By making small changes and measuring results, you can optimise your PPC strategy over time. For example, test a new headline against your top performing ad.

If you are currently running Google Ads campaign, here are some steps to optimise performance:

Log into your Google Ads account and review quality score for keywords, campaigns and ad groups. Low scores negatively impact ad rank and cost per click. Identify areas for improvement.

Consolidate ad groups that share themes or separate unrelated keywords into new focused groups. Well-structured ad groups can enhance quality score.

Analyse your ideal customer profile based on previous conversions and website analytics. Update your targeting parameters accordingly, including demographics, interests, locations, remarketing lists and more.

Assess your landing pages from the perspective of PPC visitors who clicked your ad. Improve page load speed, headline and copy, call-to-action and forms based on the promised ad experience.

Sort keywords by conversion rate and disable those not meeting targets. Adding negative keywords helps too. Allocate more spend to profitable keywords.

Develop multiple versions of your top ads with different headlines, descriptions and formats. Use A/B testing to find top performers.

Use automated bid strategies or manually tweak bids based on individual keyword conversion rates, seasonality, dayparting and more to maximise ROI.

Try complementary networks like Google Display, YouTube, Shopping ads and Local ads. Diversify placements to extend your reach.

These tips will help optimise your Google Ads results. Conduct a quarterly campaign audit to identify areas of improvement.

Are you looking to improve your Google Ads performance and get expert help optimising your PPC campaigns? As a Google Partner, UTDS Optimal Choice has the experience, knowledge, and tools to take your PPC campaign results to the next level.

Whether you’re new to Google Ads or already running campaigns, our Google certified experts can help formulate a strategic paid search approach tailored to your business goals.

Let us handle the complexity of Google Ads optimisation so you can focus on bigger business goals. Get a free account audit and competitive benchmarking analysis when you partner with us today! Contact Us Now