Pay For Your Clicks: A Guide to PPC Advertising

If you're a business wanting to get ahead in the digital market, then it is vital that you know about PPC. Never heard of PPC before? PPC stands for Pay Per Click, an advertising method where advertisers pay a fee every time one of their paid ads is clicked. PPC is almost like turbocharging your marketing—whilst you may have similar content to others in your industry, PPC will buy you visits instead of earning them organically.

Understanding Search Engine Advertising

One of the most popular forms of PPC is search engine advertising, with the major player being Google Ads. Search engine advertising allows you to bid for top placement of your ad in a search engine's sponsored links. On Google, the audience is made aware of this purchase with the word 'AD' in the top left corner of the ad. Every time someone clicks through to your page using the paid link you pay the search engine a fee. If your strategy is set up correctly, the fee is miniscule compared to the value you receive—the visit should hopefully be worth more to your brand than what you've paid for it. For example, if you were to pay $1 for a click, but that visit made you $100, then you've made a considerable profit.

Building the Right Campaign

Building the right campaign can be a tricky task, but if the effort is put in then it can prove very successful. Keywords must be researched and organised into well-structured campaigns and what are called ad groups. Then your landing pages must be optimised to help the search engines match searchers to relevant and targeted campaigns. Search engines like Google charge less per click if your campaigns are assessed to be useful to the consumer, so quality and relevance are rewarded with lower costs.

How Google Ads Works

Google Ads is the advertising platform run by Google and it operates on the PPC model. When a search is conducted by a consumer, Google searches all the advertisers and decides the winners to appear at the top of the search results. Winners are chosen based on the quality and relevance of keywords and ad campaigns, and the size of the keyword bids by advertisers. In other words, the winners are chosen based on what is called an Ad Rank. An Ad Rank consists of two key factors: a Cost Per Click (CPC) Bid (the highest cost a bidder is willing to pay per click) and a Quality Score (a calculation that accounts for your click-through rates, relevance to the customer, and landing page quality).

The Google Ads Auction Process Simplified

Here's how the auction process works step by step: First, when a search is made on Google, Google searches the advertisers pool and determines whether an auction is needed. If more than one advertiser is bidding on keywords relevant to the search, an auction is triggered. These auctions usually take millions of nanoseconds or about .001 seconds. Second, advertisers enter keywords they want to bid on in Google Ads as part of their campaigns. Google then enters the most relevant keyword from your account into the auction with the maximum bid you've allotted as well as the associated ad. Third, Google uses Ad Ranks to determine which ads to promote as top searches. The Ad Rank is calculated by multiplying your CPC Bid (maximum bid you allocate to your keyword) by your Quality Score (a measure of how relevant and useful your link is to the user).

Understanding PPC Costs

You only pay Google every time your link is clicked on if successful. The amount to be paid is calculated using the following formula: Your Bid = The Ad Rank of the next highest bidder divided by your quality score + $0.01. This means that you don't necessarily pay your maximum bid—you only pay what's needed to beat the advertiser below you. This is why improving your Quality Score is so important—it can dramatically reduce your costs while maintaining or improving your ad position.

Why PPC Matters for Your Business

As you can tell by Googling just about anything, Google attracts an enormous amount of traffic. This traffic is generated by the millions of searches conducted daily, and therefore PPC advertising is often a necessary method to draw attention to your brand online. Remember, you only pay per click, so if you can create valuable assets that convert clicks to profits, then you can easily make PPC a very valuable asset for your business. The key is ensuring that your landing pages and conversion funnels are optimised to turn those clicks into customers.

PPC advertising, particularly through Google Ads, offers businesses a powerful way to reach customers at the exact moment they're searching for products or services like yours. While it requires investment and strategic planning, the returns can be substantial when campaigns are properly optimised. If you need help with your PPC advertising, please contact our digital marketing experts at Delto. We can help you create campaigns that drive real results and maximise your return on investment.