Pay-per-click (PPC) is a critical component of paid search advertising, one of the most highly effective tools in the advertising toolbox. Few other advertising tools like PPC allow marketers to target users based on their interests.
In this insight, our PPC specialists go in-depth on the growth strategies we implement at Madcraft via Google Ads to maximize paid advertising results.
While it’s always possible to improve your organic search strategy to secure top-ranking positions – position one or position 0, with a featured snippet – on the search engine results page (SERP), you can make significant headway with paid search and yield meaningful results with a strong PPC strategy in place.
What are paid search and PPC?
Paid search refers to all ads you can place on the results page of search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. PPC is the most popular model used in paid search advertising and is executed through Google Ads.
Paid search ads can appear above and below the results page and be identified with “Ad” or “Sponsored” in the bold text before the listing. To appear on paid search, a company pays Google through the platform Google Ads to display their ad on the SERPs.
PPC campaigns are popular because Google only charges your company when someone clicks the ad link. This makes it an affordable advertising way, allowing for greater control over the advertising budget. The return on investment (ROI) of Google Ads is so high that for every $1 a business spends, it generally receives a profit of $8.
PPC campaigns can be the following:
- Google Shopping: Includes product feed, image, display URL, headline text, description text, and price. Google shopping is interchangeable with product listing ads (PLA), which appear at the top of the results page. Up to six to seven shopping Ads can appear on the result page.
- Search text ads: Standard text ad format with a display URL, headline text, and description text, which appears below shopping ads but above organic search results. Up to four search engine text ads can appear on a result page.
- Display ads: Includes an image, video or interactive element, headline text, description text, and call-to-action button, which appears on the articles, videos, or websites that consumers browse. There are no limitations on the number of display ads that appear on a web page.
The importance of PPC
Paid search advertising strategies such as PPC offers a significant advantage in their capacity to position a company’s website prominently at the top of SERPs. The top 3 ad spots for a search query take 41% of the clicks, with PLA taking another 20% compared to 35% for organic results.
Through PPC, you can reach high-intent search prospects simply by creating highly targeted campaigns that appeal to the demographics of clients and customers you would like to attract, meeting them as they actively search for products and services like yours.
With PPC, results are received and analyzed faster than search engine optimization (SEO). Through your Google Ads dashboard, you can see instant results of increased visibility, traffic, and conversions by running PPC campaigns and adjusting accordingly.
In addition, you can optimize each component of your ads, including copy, keywords, landing pages, ad extensions, and much more. This flexibility allows you to determine what works and what does not in your campaigns.
Furthermore, PPC advertising is cost-effective, as it only charges for users that click on your ad, eliminating unnecessary expenditures for users who aren’t interested in your ad.
PPC growth strategies
With over 35% of people clicking on the first result on the SERPs, it’s time to up your game with an effective growth strategy and make smart optimizations along the way. Here are our PPC specialists’ best tips on getting clicks and maximizing results.
1) Mobile optimization
More than half of all paid search clicks come from mobile devices. Paid search is more important on mobile, where a smaller screen means increasing amounts of real estate are given to sponsored results. This is important to why you need to optimize your PPC campaigns for mobile to ensure that you are not losing out on a significant amount of traffic.
2) Understand vertical advertising restrictions
Tools to use: Google Ads policies
Vertical advertising restrictions refer to limitations or guidelines imposed by self-regulatory bodies and governments on how businesses can advertise in specific industry verticals, such as healthcare, finance, or legal services, through paid search channels.
Examples of vertical advertising restrictions include regulations around the use of specific keywords, phrases, or ad copy in advertising and requirements around disclosure of relevant information, such as potential drug side effects or the risks of an investment opportunity. Failure to comply with vertical advertising restrictions can result in penalties, fines, or legal action against the advertiser.
By clearly understanding the limitations in place, you can ensure your search advertising campaigns are ethical, effective, and legally compliant without running into any issues that may delay launch time or impact the overall performance of your ads.
3) Identify seasonality trends
Tools to use: Google Trends, Google Trends Supercharged, Glimpse
Seasonality trends can display predictable patterns or cycles in consumer behavior, influenced by factors such as holidays, weather, and cultural events. Using these trends, you can optimize your advertising strategies to align with your target audience’s changing preferences and behaviors throughout the year.
Examples of utilizing trends for maximizing the impact of an ad would be an online retailer adjusting their ad copy messaging to capitalize on increased consumer demand for holiday shopping during the winter months or a travel company promoting warm-weather destinations during the summer months when people are more likely to take vacations.
By identifying trends, you can significantly reduce costs on less effective campaigns during different periods. Additionally, monitoring trends can help businesses identify emerging opportunities, adjust to significant seasonal shifts, and stay ahead of competitors who may need to be faster to adapt their marketing strategies.
4) Target specific keywords
Tools to use: Keyword planner, SEMrush, Google Search Console, Search term report.
Many advertisers like to target broad and general keywords to reach a wider audience, but that doesn’t guarantee you are targeting the quantifiable leads that will generate profitable results for your business.
Running a broad keyword match generates words or phrases people are already searching for. Your ad will appear when a user searches for this keyword, its variations, and related inquiries. Therefore, instead of broad and general keywords, think specific.
Keyword research tools like Keyword Planner and SEMrush can help you select the most appropriate search terms for your ads. When targeting specific keywords, consider targeting the make, model, specs, and color (if applicable).
You can target specific keywords with a long-tail keyword approach (LTKW) during your keyword research process. Hence, this is a cost-effective approach, especially if your advertising budget is limited and you cannot compete for high-volume/density keywords.
As part of successful growth, consider frequently reviewing your keyword strategy to ensure your keywords are relevant and up-to-date.
- Adding new keywords: Research relevant keywords and update your ad copy regularly. Utilizing the reporting tools such as Google Search Console and search term report to identify valuable keyword ideas to discover new search queries to add as possible keywords.
- Removing keywords: Analyze ad campaigns for underperforming keywords. You can check metrics such as high cost per acquisition (CPA) or no/low return on Ad spend (ROAS). Utilizing Google Search Console and the search term report, you can discover irrelevant queries and build a list of negative search keywords to reduce wasteful spending.
5) Add clear CTAs to your ad copy
One of the most effortless changes to improve your PPC campaigns is to add fun, engaging CTAs that drive action. Effective CTAs can influence the viewer to take a specific action, such as purchasing or signing up for a newsletter.
Clear and consistent CTAs create a sense of urgency that encourages customers to take action quickly, reduces confusion, improves the user experience, and creates a lasting impression on potential customers. Furthermore, a Whetsonez can enhance your paid search advertisements conversion rate and overall ROI.
6) Choosing the correct bid strategy
Manual and automated bidding options are available when choosing a bidding strategy for PPC campaigns. You should select the best bid strategy that aligns with your overall advertising goal, whether increasing visibility, traffic, conversions, etc.
You can manually adjust bids and cap them when they cost too much, meaning manual bidding is more cost-efficient than automated strategies. For example, suppose you don’t have time to review ads regularly. In that case, manual bidding is not recommended as it is time-consuming, and you have to constantly adjust the bids to ensure you are meeting the 1st-page bid to keep visibility up.
With automated bidding, Google automatically adjusts bids based on the likelihood of users clicking or converting, eliminating the time consumed managing and changing the bids manually. However, suppose you have a tight budget. In that case, automated bidding is not recommended as Google will spend as much as they see possible to reach a bid, meaning the increased bid and CPC become so high it’s beyond profitable.
7) Utilizing search assets
Search assets, formerly called search extensions, provide more information about your company and can be applied to your search ad placements. In addition to providing a better user experience, search assets can also help increase your ad’s quality score, helping your ads increase visibility and drive up more clicks and a better ROI.
Search assets we recommend you try to maximize your PPC results:
- Site links: Links to other pages on your site. Site links can drive more traffic to your site and the pages.
- Images: Makes your ad copy more visually appealing. Images are only available if your account doesn’t fall under a sensitive vertical category.
- Call-outs: Add any additional information about your business that wasn’t mentioned in the ad description.
- Pricing: Displays specific items with their prices in the ad, so users are more informed of your pricing before even clicking your ad.
- Location: Lists your business address in the ad for people to quickly navigate to, allowing you to increase foot traffic into your store.
- Phone number: Display your phone number and makes it possible for searchers to call you directly from your ad with a click-to-call number instead of digging it up on the site.
- Structured snippets: Promote products or services of your business, such as types, brands, models, styles, etc.
- Promotion: Choose from a list of template promotions to advertise a limited-time offer or discount.
- Lead form: Add a form to the bottom of the ad that users to fill out with their contact information without having to do so on a landing page.
- App: Display a download link to an app in the App Store or Google Play, making it easy to download an app and track downloads based on specific keywords.
8) Leveraging paid search with an omnichannel approach
Leveraging PPC campaign data is paramount, as it holds the potential to enhance the performance of other marketing channels. Effective ways to utilize PPC data to elevate your overall marketing approach are here.
For social media marketing: Leaning into your data from PPC campaigns can help you…
- Could you form a profile of your target audience? With PPC, you can see intent insights based on the types of queries they search for thus, can help determine who and where to target across social campaigns.
- Build content around topics that interest your social media audience. With PPC data, you can identify trending and relevant keywords and phrases your audiences search for the most and create content around those search terms.
For search engine optimization: Using PPC insights, you can:
- Create a keyword strategy for SEO. With PPC, you can identify high-converting keywords and create organic content around those keywords to get your organic rankings up to the top.
- I’d like you to please understand the user intent on the website. With PPC, you can see what users are searching for to determine if they are coming to the website for a specific need of content that might not be there; thus, this will help develop a content strategy.
For email marketing: Understanding data from PPC can aid you in:
- Offering them a more tailored experience. With PPC, you can analyze the demographic and behavioral data obtained from campaigns to create personalized emails that resonate with your audience by knowing what to address when composing them.
Leveraging PPC campaign data is paramount, as it holds the potential to enhance the performance of other marketing channels. Effective ways to utilize PPC data to elevate your overall marketing approach are here.
For social media marketing: Leaning into your data from PPC campaigns can help you…
- Could you form a profile of your target audience? With PPC, you can see intent insights based on the types of queries they search for thus, can help determine who and where to target across social campaigns.
- Build content around topics that interest your social media audience. With PPC data, you can identify trending and relevant keywords and phrases your audiences search for the most and create content around those search terms.
For search engine optimization: Using PPC insights, you can:
- Create a keyword strategy for SEO. With PPC, you can identify high-converting keywords and create organic content around those keywords to get your organic rankings up to the top.
- I’d like you to please understand the user intent on the website. With PPC, you can see what users are searching for to determine if they are coming to the website for a specific need of content that might not be there; thus, this will help develop a content strategy.
For email marketing: Understanding data from PPC can aid you in:
- Offering them a more tailored experience. With PPC, you can analyze the demographic and behavioral data obtained from campaigns to create personalized emails that resonate with your audience by knowing what to address when composing them.
So what are you waiting for? Optimize your digital marketing efforts for maximum impact with Madcraft’s growth strategies. At Madcraft, we can support you in advertising on Google Search today. Contact our PPC specialists today.
Key points
- With 35% of clicks going to the first result on the SERPs, PPC campaigns are a cost-effective solution to secure a top position in results and amass increased visibility, traffic, and conversions.
- Using the Google Ads dashboard, PPC results can receive and analyzed quicker than SEO. This can give a great indication of what campaigns and elements are working and what is underperforming, meaning you can adjust accordingly.
- If your Ad is not optimized for mobile, Google will deprioritize it on SERPs for mobile-friendly ads, which can significantly reduce your visibility and reach.
- Search assets included in an Ad hugely benefit an Ad placement on the SERPs’.
- Data collected from PPC campaigns can be used to enhance other marketing channels’ performance, such as social media marketing, search engine optimization, and email marketing.
