Pay-per-click (PPC) is an advertising model where you pay a fee each time a user clicks on your ad. Essentially, PPC ads drive your target audience to your landing page. These ads can appear in various forms — text, images, videos, or a combination of all three — across different platforms.
In this comprehensive guide, our experts will cover everything you need to know about PPC advertising. We’ll explore how it works, its benefits, the different types, and best practices for creating a PPC ad campaign. Let’s dive in!
Key Takeaways
- PPC ads deliver results faster than SEO.
- Search ads are the most common type of PPC ad, with social media PPC ads becoming more popular.
- Including negative keywords in your PPC ads allows you to target the audience you want without spending money on unwanted clicks.
- Loading speed is a key metric for your landing pages. Google recommends an optimal loading site speed of 3 seconds.
Table of Contents
How Does PPC Advertising Work?
Understanding PPC advertising by definition is simple, but how does it work? Whichever platform you choose, the procedure is similar:
- Create a business account on the advertising platform and sign in.
- Design ad campaigns and create ads, targeting the right audience and relevant keywords.
- Set your maximal CPC, so your ads get the best possible placement on the search engine results page.
- The advertising platform will charge you the price you specified every time someone clicks on your ad.
PPC Ads: Key Terms Explained
Before we dive in, let’s explain some frequently used terms and acronyms so that you can easily follow the topic:
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Every digital marketing activity, paid or unpaid, conducted on search engines is considered search engine marketing (SEM). Specialized SEM agencies know how to use SEM strategies in the best way to get the best results. PPC advertisement is one of them.
- Cost-per-Click (CPC): The entire amount you pay every time a visitor clicks on your ad is called cost-per-click. The CPC you set determines the placement of your ad. To calculate it, use this formula: (Competitor’s Ad Rank / Your Quality Score) + 0.01 = Actual CPC.
- Ad Rank: Ad rank determines your ad's position on search engine results pages. The formula to calculate it is: Maximum Bid x Quality Score = Ad Rank
- Quality Score: Search engines evaluate your ad based on your click-through rate (CTR), comparing it to the average CTR for your placement. The rating you are getting is a quality score.
- Maximum Bid: The maximum bid is the highest price you are willing to pay for an ad click.
- Cost-per-Mille (CPM): The cost per one thousand impressions is also called cost-per-mille (CPM). This metric is mainly used for social media and display ads.
PPC Advertising Benefits
PPC ads bring many benefits; here are some of the most prominent:
- You can target ideal customers
- You’ll see results quickly
- PPC ads are cost-effective
- You can use PPC ads for retargeting
- PPC boosts your SEO strategy
- PPC brings great ROI
- Algorithm changes don't affect PPC ads
1. You Can Target Ideal Customers
The first benefit you can get from PPC is precise audience targeting, ensuring ads reach the right people at the right time. PPC ads offer many targeting options; besides keywords, you can target users based on their demographics and online behavior.
Thanks to this type of detail-oriented targeting, you can promote your products or services to prospects ready to purchase.
2. You’ll See Results Quickly
Another benefit of PPC is that it offers immediate visibility. This means it can quickly drive targeted traffic to websites, making it ideal for businesses seeking fast results.
Ranking organically is great, but with the increasing competitiveness of the market, it’s becoming a hard task. PPC ads can boost your organic ranking strategies and bring in more customers.
This benefit is why many companies turn most of their budgets toward PPC instead of SEO. Unlike SEO strategies, once your PPC ad goes live, you’ll see increased traffic on your website in only a few hours.
3. PPC Ads Are Cost-Effective
As mentioned before, PPC is a model where you pay only when someone clicks your ad. This cost control is a huge advantage. When you choose to conduct a PPC strategy, you bid for the ad, meaning you set the cost-per-click — no hidden costs, just the price you’re willing to pay.
But that’s not the only place where you save money. Once the ad goes live, you only pay the CPC once someone clicks on the ad itself. Hence, if the campaign doesn’t generate any traffic, there won’t be any clicks, i.e., nothing to pay for — and vice versa.
4. You Can Use PPC Ads for Retargeting
A helpful benefit from PPC is that you receive analytics you can use to get insights into users’ online behavior and refine marketing strategies. You can use these results to retarget leads. For example, you can see which users interacted with your brand but left right away. Or users who reached the check-out stage but didn’t finalize the purchase.
In these cases, you can learn from their behavior and shift your strategy. You can start using relevant display ads all over the web to make them come back and make a purchase. Or consider changing the approach the PPC ad has by working on the copy or other elements. Sometimes, a little nudge is all it takes for leads to convert.
5. PPC Boosts Your SEO Strategy
Although PPC and SEO have some differences, PPC doesn’t replace SEO — it complements it. Combining these two digital marketing strategies can help you achieve long-lasting results.
As we said, PPC ads provide a great chance to quickly evaluate a keyword's performance in front of a target audience and gain results. Although SEO takes time, using PPC advertising as part of your company’s overall SEO strategy gives a leg up, boosting organic and paid traffic, as well as profits.
6. PPC Brings Great ROI
A PPC benefit we must include is its flexibility. PPC advertising permits real-time adjustments, enabling optimization for better ROI. Even Google assumes that with Google Ads for every $1 you get $2 in return — double the return.
Moreover, you can measure and analyze PPC results to determine which ads work best. This way, you can focus more of your budget on those campaigns, raising your ROI.
7. Algorithm Changes Don't Affect PPC Ads
One of the major benefits of PPC advertising is its immunity to search engine algorithm changes. While SEO is a great way to achieve long-lasting rankings and attract organic traffic, it’s subject to more than 200 Google ranking factors.
With PPC, you don’t have to worry about algorithms. Instead, you can focus on creating compelling PPC campaigns that convert.
How To Create a PPC Ads Campaign in 5 Steps
Follow these steps to create an effective PPC campaign:
- Step #1: Create a plan
- Step #2: Set goals and track progress
- Step #3: Choose the ad type
- Step #4: Research keywords
- Step #5: Track PPC campaign results
Step #1: Create a Plan
Successful PPC campaigns require a strategic approach and a lot of planning. Without it, your ads will never reach their full potential.
In creating a plan, consider the following questions:
- Who is your target audience?
- What do you want them to do after seeing your ad?
- What is the focal point of your ad campaign?
- How will you measure results?
Step #2: Set Goals and Track Progress
Before you start, choose your PPC campaign goals. Some of the most common goals of a PPC marketing campaign are:
- Increased brand awareness: PPC can help spread the word about your brand among the target audience. Measure social media engagement and website traffic to track the progress of brand awareness.
- More traffic: Getting more traffic is an excellent goal if your landing page has quality content that will keep visitors occupied and interest them for conversion. Measure website traffic using simple SEO tools like Google Analytics.
- Lead generation: You’ll generate leads directly from running PPC ads. Track this metric by using UTM parameters.
- Promoting products or services: PPC advertisements are great for promotions and announcements.
- Sales: Paid ads can boost sales. To check yours, use marketing attribution.
Step #3: Choose the Ad Type
Next, choose the type of advertising campaign that suits you the most. You can use any of the following types of PPC ads:
- Search ads
- Display ads
- Social Media ads
- Remarketing ads
- Google Shopping ads
- Video ads
Step #4: Research Keywords
The most important step is to research your keywords. Keywords are essential for pay-per-click advertisements since they signal search engines when and whom to show your ads.
Choose between one to five short- and long-term keywords for every ad group and ensure they're relevant to your offering. Then, monitor how they’re performing. If they bring traffic and conversion, increase the bids on these keywords. If they don’t, change them until you find the right ones.
Step #5: Track PPC Campaign Results
Finally, track how your campaign is doing. Use Google Analytics to get helpful insights about website performance and user behavior. You can use this free tool externally or install Google Analytics 4 Property (GA4) on your website or app.
If you'd rather focus on other operational tasks, you can hire one of the top PPC agencies and have them create a PPC ads campaign for you.
6 Types of PPC Ads
Here are the main types of PPC ads in detail:
1. Search Ads
Among the various types of PPC ads, search advertising is the most common with a relatively cheaper ad spend. It’s also a very effective type of paid advertising since it’s based on what users explicitly search for on search engines.
Basically, you can choose which keywords you want your ads to show in search engine results, what ad copy will be shown, and the maximum amount you’re willing to pay if your ad is clicked. Dynamic search ads can be a great addition to search ads.
2. Display Ads
This type of online advertising is great for building brand awareness because they have a wider reach. Display ads are images, banners, texts, or videos that appear on third-party sites to market your brand, products, or services.
For example, you can run banner ads on other websites to bring awareness to your business. These ads contain a link to your website.
3. Social Media Ads
With over half of the world’s population using social media, it’s a powerful platform for advertising. Leverage social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and X (previously Twitter) to reach your target audience.
All you need is an account on these platforms to run ads and showcase your product or service to your target audience.
4. Remarketing Ads
When users visit your website and fail to convert, remarketing ads can help you turn those leads into customers by putting your ads in front of them, persuading them to go back to your site. A huge percentage of your website visitors will not purchase anything during their first visit, so having remarketing ads in place can help you increase your conversion rates.
5. Google Shopping Ads
Formerly known as Google Product Search, Google Shopping is a great search engine marketing technique for eCommerce sites to market their products or services.
If you list your product on Google Shopping, it will appear as an ad on regular searches on Google. The image of your product will be featured along with the price and product details at the top of the search engine results pages.
Although there’s no fee to apply for a Google Shopping account, you can still run paid Google Shopping ads, similar to other top PPC platforms like Google Ads.
6. Video Ads
There is an increased demand for video content in 2024, with 91% of businesses using videos as a marketing tool.
Video ads are a form of display ads that use video content as the medium. They can appear within video streams — at the beginning, middle, or end — or as standalone ads.
5 Essential Elements of a PPC Ad
Every PPC needs to have these five elements:
- Ad Campaign: A strategy to deliver your message through various platforms to your target audience, so it generates leads and boosts conversions.
- Ad Groups: Your audience consists of different individuals, but you target them as one. Therefore, make a series of ad groups with highly relevant keywords and run them under the same ad campaign.
- Ad Keywords: Signals for search engines to display your ad.
- Ad Text: Text that communicates your ad campaign and promotes your products and services.
- Landing Page: When users click on your ad, the landing page is where they end up. Your ad URL is usually the same as the landing page’s URL.
PPC Best Practices
Here are some key PPC best practices:
- Focus on keywords: The key part of every PPC campaign is the keywords. The keywords with the best volume have a high bid and are harder to rank for. Hence, detailed keyword research can show you some potential words that won’t have too much competition.
- Use negative keywords: These keywords can help navigate your ads toward the wanted target group. That way, you save money since you won’t have to pay for clicks from irrelevant audiences.
- Work on your ad copy: Having a compelling ad copy is relevant to the keywords you're targeting. Highlight your unique selling points and include a clear call to action to encourage clicks. Don’t forget to include keywords in the URL and metadata, as well as optimize all other sections of your landing pages.
- Conduct A/B testing: A/B tests help determine which ad performs better by comparing different versions. You don’t have to test the entire ad. Instead, you can test individual elements such as the URL, headlines, descriptions, etc.
- Conduct competitor analysis: Check what your competition is doing and adapt strategies that are working for them. This helps you discover new keywords, and ways to improve your landing pages, CTAs, etc.
- Optimize loading speed: Customers today expect websites to load quickly. The longer they wait, the more likely they are to leave. Google still recommends an optimal loading time of three seconds or less.
5 Best Pay-Per-Click Platforms
While Google Ads is often the first platform you think of for PPC advertising, it’s not the only option you have. Here’s a list of some of the best PPC platforms you can advertise on:
- Google ads (previously Google AdWords)
- Microsoft ads (previously Bing ads)
- YouTube ads (part of Google ads)
- Meta ads (previously Facebook ads)
- Instagram ads (part of Meta ads)
1. Google Ads (Previously Google AdWords)
According to an Oberlo study, Google is the most visited website and processes 136.59 billion searches monthly. With this number, Google pay-per-click ads enhance the chances your target audience will see your ad. The downside is that Google is very competitive, so you will have to spend more on CPC to get noticed.
2. Microsoft Ads (Previously Bing Ads)
Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, generates more than one billion monthly searches. Although its share is significantly smaller than Google’s, Bing is still available in 238 countries, making Bing Ads a popular PPC advertising platform.
The interface of Microsoft Ads, previously Bing Ads, very much resembles Google Ads. Therefore, many Google users export their ad campaigns to Microsoft and run them without additional settings.
3. YouTube Ads (Part of Google Ads)
Remember all those ads that come before the YouTube videos you want to watch? Those are YouTube PPC ads. They can also appear on top of YouTube search results. Video ads provide many benefits: they engage the audience and keep their attention, delivering excellent results.
4. Meta Ads (Previously Facebook Ads)
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, has over three billion active monthly users. Meta Ads use the CPM charging model more often than CPC primarily because of its unique targeting options.
Since this is an audience-oriented platform, you don’t need to target keywords. Instead, you can target audiences based on demographic characteristics such as age, gender, education, interests, income, and behavior.
Meta will naturally incorporate ads on your audience’s feed. Additionally, you can use this platform for Instagram advertising.
5. Instagram Ads (Part of Meta Ads)
Since Meta owns Instagram, these ads are the same as Facebook ads. Although it is not a separate advertising platform, you can manually set up Instagram-only advertisements.
According to Statista, Instagram counts two billion active monthly users. Considering it’s a highly visual platform, Instagram is an ideal pay-per-click advertising platform for products that are visual or digital.
PPC Campaign Management
Managing your PPC campaign ensures efficiency for a long time. Here are several tips for effective PPC management:
- Create more ad groups and target each with relevant keywords and landing pages to improve ad performance.
- Adjust landing pages for every ad group.
- Constantly research relevant keywords and use them in your PPC campaign to expand the reach and target all ad groups.
- Review expensive and underachieving keyword performance like short-tail keywords and stop using them if they don’t bring ROI.
- Use negative keywords to filter unsuitable audiences and reduce expenses.
What Are PPC Ads: Takeaways
Even top brands like Google, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, and Coca-Cola recognize the advantages of PPC ads and use them in their marketing strategies.
If your business needs a boost, PPC ads can be an effective digital marketing strategy for increasing brand visibility, driving website traffic, and boosting conversions. Combine the benefits of pay-per-click advertising with your SEO efforts to achieve long-lasting results and stand out from the competition.
PPC Ads FAQs
1. What's the difference between SEO vs. PPC?
SEO is the process of optimizing your web pages to obtain a high ranking on a search engine’s organic results. On the other hand, PPC marketing involves advertising your products and services for a fee that you pay each time a user clicks your ad.
2. What's the difference between PPC vs. CPC?
PPC marketing is a type of paid advertising where you only pay for each click users make on your ads. CPC is a term used in PPC marketing, which is the amount you pay for each click you obtain in your campaign.
3. Is PPC advertising right for my business?
The main benefits of PPC advertising include quick results and precise targeting to reach your target audience. If you want to take advantage of these benefits, then perhaps PPC marketing is right for your business.
Moreover, if you have an eCommerce site with a high cart abandonment rate, PPC advertising can help you pull those customers back to your site and increase conversion.
4. How much does PPC advertising cost?
Several factors go into PPC pricing, including which top PPC ad platforms you advertise on, your company size, and who manages your campaign. However, businesses spend an average of $2.59 per click on their campaigns.
-preview.jpg)
