What Is Pay Per Click Advertising and How Does It Impact Your Digital Marketing Strategy?

If you’re looking to drive sales on your business website, one of the best ways to do it is through pay per click advertising – also known as PPC. PPC brings paid traffic into your website – as opposed to organic, or free, traffic. The most common form of PPC is search engine advertising, which allows you to bid for placement at the top of search engine results for queries related to your business. There are also other forms of digital advertising like social media advertising as well. PPC and social media advertising are critical components of a great digital marketing strategy.

Let’s take a deep dive into the world of pay per click advertising!

How Does Pay Per Click Advertising Work?

Think of PPC as an online auction house. Every time a user enters a search, the search engine instantly runs an auction for all of the advertisers aiming for that keyword. The position your ad takes is dependent on your maximum bid for that term, along with the quality score of your ad. And while you set a maximum bid for the term, typically you end up paying less than this maximum.

Search engines like Google and Bing are pure “pay per click” programs. You end up paying whenever a user clicks on your ad and ends up on your landing page – if the user chooses a different result, you aren’t charged for the impression. This is different than social media advertising platforms like Meta – on Facebook and Instagram, you are charged for every impression your ad receives regardless of whether or not the user clicked through to your website.

We do refer to social media advertising as “social media PPC” sometimes, though it’s important to understand that technically, they are usually not running a pay per click program.

The Benefits of Pay Per Click Advertising

1. Immediate Visibility

Organic SEO and website building takes time and effort to bear fruit. And it’s certainly important to put care and focus into these methods as, long-term, free traffic will be more valuable for your business than traffic you have to pay for.

However, PPC does offer the benefit of giving your business immediate visibility. That means you can launch a brand new website and have it start appearing at the top of search engine results without waiting for months or years of SEO work to yield traffic. This is especially useful for product launches, seasonal sales, time-sensitive offers, and more.

And you can make adjustments and changes to your advertising assets and campaigns and have the changes reflected immediately.

2. Unrivaled Precision

PPC platforms are able to deliver your ads to your exact audience through the use of sophisticated targeting. You can limit your ad visibility from the country level all the way down to specific neighborhoods. You can even target a radius around specific addresses. PPC platforms also allow you to drill down your targeting to use specialized assets for different devices – you can have ad sets dedicated specifically to desktop, mobile, and tablet platforms.

You can also target audiences based on their previous interactions with your business, their interests, their demographic information, and much more. This level of precision helps to ensure that you’re not wasting any of your valuable advertising dollars on people who aren’t interested in your products.

Integrating PPC into a Digital Marketing Strategy

While you can have success with pay per click advertising separate from the rest of your digital marketing strategy, it’s much more likely to happen if you have them work together.

For example, even though PPC and SEO seem to be polar opposites, they can support each other really well. Keyword performance data from your PPC campaigns can help you identify opportunities for SEO improvement. PPC gives your business visibility and results while your SEO is under development. Remarketing campaigns help to convert users who have already completed part of the customer journey on your website. And the insights you gain from the performance of your PPC landing page can help you make better decisions with the rest of the pages on your website.

And the results of your SEO efforts can help with your PPC performance as well. Content that is performing well organically may contain messaging that you can use to increase conversion rates for your ads. And the data you get from organic can help you build out your target customer persona and refine your targeting parameters on paid.

Instead of siloing off the two programs, embrace the connection that your paid and organic campaigns can have to strengthen each other. This is the best way to increase the chances of success for each.

Key Takeaways

•         Pay per click advertising is a tool that can put your business in front of users that are very likely to convert and purchase from you.
•         Think of PPC as an auction that happens in the blink of an eye whenever a user searches for something related to your business’s target keywords.
•         Social media PPC differs from search engine PPC in that social media charges per impression (the ad appears on the timeline), while search engines charge when a user clicks through to your website.
•         PPC differs from organic SEO because PPC works immediately, while organic SEO takes time to develop. PPC also has very detailed targeting options available.
•         Despite their differences, it’s always better to combine your paid and organic marketing efforts. Take the data from one to enhance the efforts of the other.

Contact Pink Dog Digital to Get Your Pay Per Click Advertising Program Up and Running

Digital ads may be the solution to taking your business ahead of your competition. Creating an effective ads campaign and following best practices will help you improve your website’s traffic and conversion rates. 

At Pink Dog Digital, we are ready to help you get started on your digital ads journey. Our talented and experienced marketing team will work with you to create effective PPC campaigns.

Some of our services include:

• Digital advertising
• Social media management
• Content creation
• Search engine optimization
• Web design

Don’t hesitate to call us at 410-696-3305, email us at pinkdogdigital@gmail.com, or contact us via our website for more information.