People talk about pay per click advertising a lot, but not all of us know what it means. It’s hard not to notice advertisements popping up online when you’re searching for things. This is called pay-per-click (PPC) marketing, and it’s a digital advertising model marketers use to generate business online.
I’m sure you’ve noticed that when you search for a product or service in Google or Bing, advertisements offering those services pop up.
Likewise, when you’re scrolling through social media you will see adverts targeted at you based on your browsing history in your feed.
This is because advertising online using pay per click advertising is a highly effective way to drive traffic and sales if done right.
In this article, I’m going to take you through everything you’ll need to know about what PPC is, how it works, and how roofing business owners can use it to drive more traffic and sales to their website.
What Is PPC?
The principle of pay per click advertising is very simple. You create an advert that will appear every time someone types in the keywords you want to target, then you pay every time someone clicks your advert.
Hence the name; pay-per-click.
The goal of a PPC campaign is also very simple. You want the average amount a person spends when clicking through to your site to be higher than the amount you’re spending on ads.
If you can achieve a positive ROI, you’re only limited by the number of visitors you can send to your site and the number of products and services you can offer.
Should You Use PPC?
There are a number of benefits to using PPC advertising and almost any business will profit when done right.
Here are some of the key benefits of PPC:
Quick results – There are two main ways you can build an online presence. One is through search engine optimization (SEO), and the other is through PPC.
The problem with SEO is that it takes months, even years to build a solid online presence and generate a steady flow of traffic. PPC, on the other hand, will start sending traffic immediately.
Easily measurable – Whichever platform you’re using, you’ll have a dashboard showing you clearly how your campaigns are performing.
You can even follow this through to the landing page you’re sending traffic to and track how your visitors are behaving.
This gives you all the tools you need to make improvements to your PPC campaigns. You don’t get that kind of visibility with other marketing channels.
You have complete control – Another advantage other marketing channels can’t offer is that you (or your marketing agency) have complete control when using PPC.
You can change the keywords you’re targeting, tweak your daily budget, put your campaign on hold, increase/decrease your budget – it’s the most flexible and versatile form of digital marketing.
Different PPC Channels
Now you know how powerful PPC is as a marketing channel, you’re probably wondering which platforms are best for you.
In a nutshell, you need to go where the largest number of your target audience are.
However, it’s likely you will benefit from a mix of different platforms. Or, at least by trying out some different platforms to see how they perform.
Here are the most common platforms offering PPC ad networks:
- Bing
As you can see, there are the two largest search engines and the largest social media networks.
Google is by far the most popular platform for PPC. With an estimated number of daily searches exceeding 5 billion, you’re going to find potential customers using Google Ads.
The only downside is that your industry might be competitive. This isn’t always a bad thing though, you can outbid other advertisers as I’ll explain in more detail later.
Roofing Facebook Ads is the second most popular choice. For some businesses, especially those with a Facebook business page rather than a website, it’s often the best option.
How to Run a PPC Marketing Campaign
Regardless of which platform you use, the principles behind setting up and running a PPC campaign are always very similar.
Taking Google Ads as an example, here are the steps involved in running Google PPC ads:
Step 1 – Set a Budget
Setting a daily budget means you know exactly how much you’re spending. It’s basically a way you can put a cap on the maximum you’ll spend.
Step 2 – Define Your Audience
Next, you can set some parameters to narrow down your audience such as; the geographic locations you’re targeting, where ads will display, and your keywords.
The geographic locations you want to target is an obvious one. You then have the option for your ads to show in the search results, on websites with Google Ads enabled, or both.
Finally, you need to input the keywords you’re targeting. This might be the single most important part of your campaign. It’s worth doing some research on how to find and target the right keywords for your business.
Step 3 – Set Your Bid
Google PPC works by using a bidding model. This is how they decide who’s ads will show for a keyword when there are multiple businesses targeting the same keywords.
There’s an art to setting the right bid amount. Obviously, the higher you bid the more visibility your ads will have, but if you can’t return a positive ROI it’s not sustainable.
If you bid lower than your competitors, your ads will show once they’ve used up their daily budget. So bidding lower than your competitors doesn’t always mean your ads will not be seen.
Step 4 – Write Your Ad Copy
Writing ad copy is almost, if not just as important as targeting the right keywords. This is your chance to persuade someone to click your ad with a couple of hundred characters.
When writing copy for roofing Google ads, for example, you want a headline clearly stating what your business is and how you can help. In the body of the copy, you want a call-to-action, notice of an offer, or some compelling copy explaining why they should be clicking your ad.
As long as you then follow up on your landing page with everything you’ve advertised, there is a high chance the visitors will convert into a paying customer.
Ready to learn more about how to get the most out of your Pay Per Click Campaign?
Now that you know what it takes to get the most out of your PPC campaign there is only one thing left to do. Click the button below and learn how we use our expertise to help you get the most out of your campaign.