All About Developing Your PPC Strategy

The PPC or Pay-Per-Click is an integral element in internet marketing that powers advertisers to pay a definite fee for every time a potential customer clicks on their ads on search engines and social media sites.

As beneficial as PPC is for business, it’s hard to reap the much-raved benefits of this technique if you don’t have a strategy.

Much like everything else in digital marketing, a PPC strategy must be planned out with some considerations. So let’s talk about the how’s and what’s of PPC strategy.

What is a PPC strategy?

Getting started with a PPC strategy and launching is easy. The strategy is curated keeping platforms like Facebook and Google AdWords in mind. The reason why the platforms are made is to empower people to run ads consistently. You can create an AdWords account in a few clicks and even make it live by following the process. Facebook has more of a streamlined process which prompts in turning posts into ads.

SEM professionals as well as advertisers are often required to deliver their PPC Strategy sometime. The airtight strategy when brilliantly placed would help in meeting up with the objectives of the business. In the world driven by the rat race, curating a competitive PPC campaign strategy isn’t seamless anymore. As of now, Advertisers are coming up with several ways for targeting their audiences. Further, making Ad spend an unprecedented challenge.

How do you create a PPC strategy?

As an advertiser or SEM profession spending money on clicks but not earning more from these clicks would cost you. You need an effective Pay-Per-Click Strategy. There is an absolute need of using the strategy that way you use images, messages and tools which are provided by distinctive PPC platforms. The goal is to curate a strategy that would be seen by genuine internet users who intend to buy products or services. To make the goal come to life, you need a strategy behind the ads and steps which users have to go through in the website for conversion. Some of the common goals of PPC are:

Brand and Product Consideration.
Brand Awareness
Leads or Customers
Sales
Repeat Sales

You have to create a marketing funnel or a customer journey. The endgame here is to establish several milestones on how you reach from point A i.e., ‘Click’ to point B i.e., ‘Sale’. The hard and inescapable truth is most of the users who will be a part of your funnel or journey will make the ‘Click’ but won’t make the ‘Sale’. Hence, the milestones will aid to optimize the traffic and at the same time optimize the funnel that you’ll take users to become your customers. You can also implement the basic sales funnel if you want, be creative:

Awareness
Consideration
Purchase

Once you create a strategy, you’d also have to track and measure the entire progress of potential users through the funnel, simultaneously. The users have to take the route you put into effect to make the sale.

Why is PPC so important?

Businesses irrespective of their physical presence in a locality, or at national and international level need to grow and make profits. They expect to make a profit through expansion and having a presence on the internet could boost their sales. Some of the advantages of PPC are:

It provides instant traffic
It targets thousands of keywords.
Enlists with more data search reports.
Quick to adapt
Provides robust market research
Cross-platform device compatibility

There might be times when you’d ask: “how effective is PPC?” The answer is very much. The moment your PPC Campaign is ready, you can push to get traffic, mainly targeted traffic instantly on the landing page. There are a lot of guides that provide you with details to optimize PPC campaigns. Here we’ve streamlined in four steps.

How do you manage a PPC campaign?

1. Choose your keywords carefully

When you’re curating PPC strategy, the first thing you need to consider in determining the targeted keywords. These keywords will play an important role when users will type the keywords in a search engine to find out the information they desire. For running a successful campaign, you’ve to be aware of the technical terms for distinctive industries that people make searches for on the internet.

Make sure that the keywords are long-tailed highly-targeted keywords that suggest the intent of users. The longer keyword you use, the better it is for visibility.

2. Integrate landing pages to your campaign

Like keywords, landing pages also play a vital role in the success of a campaign. These pages are curated either to provide solutions or answers to users. While curating landing pages, you must consider curating the pages which are built in accordance with keywords providing helpful information, comprehensively.

3. Pen down your ads

Once the pages and keywords are ready you must shift your attention to writing ads. The ads must have two essential parts, Headline and Call to Action.

The headline must comprise the keyword which you’re considering to target. Headlines might also provide the company’s information like brand name or accolades. As search engines bold certain keywords, your potential customers can find you.

Once you’ve got their attention, push them into conversion by using CTA or Call-to-Action. Terms like ‘sign up now,’ ‘buy now,’ and ‘call now’ would do the trick.

4. Track your results

One of the added benefits of PPC is that the digital marketing industry is highly trackable. The platforms will provide the times your Ad appeared and times it has been clicked. It also displays who clicked your ad. You can refine your PPC campaign with the information. Additionally, use the information in refining the PPC campaign.

These above-mentioned steps are also the answer to the most common query about PPC, ‘How can I improve my paid search?”

Pay-Per-Click is not free, every time a visitor clicks on the ad it will cost you a certain amount. At the time of preparing strategies, there are always certain questions like, how much should you spend on PPC? Or, how do you calculate PPC?

While Pay-Per-Click ranges are variable, the average CPC that businesses pay to advertise in India could be anywhere from Rs 0.50 to Rs 2.50. It all depends on your budget, daily ad spend, and the goals you’re trying to accomplish.

If businesses are willing to pay, then they might be keen to know, what is PPC conversion rate? In general, the PPC conversion rate is a percentage of PPC traffic which converts users into customers. When you generate an average of 100 clicks in a month from the ads, then out of 100, only 10 visitors make the purchase. Hence, the conversation rate becomes 10%.

When it comes to calculating of PPC budget, there are two straightforward formulas:

PPC Budget = (No. of Customers / CR2) / CR1 x CPC

No of customers = (Revenue / Sales Period) / Aver. Sale Amount

After knowing the ins and outs of PPC, you must be thinking what if there is a way to boost up the performance. Technically, there are ways by which you can have a robust PPC Performance. Let’s dig into the million-dollar question of the advertisers, ‘how can I improve my PPC performance?’

Here are some tactics that will bring a paradigm shift in the PPC campaign performance:

You must have a crystal, well-defined goal to reach your desired milestones.
When it comes to incorporating keywords, incorporate the ones in the landing page as well as advertise which have high-performance or high CTR.
Keep optimizing the keyword score. The quality keyword might be the turning you need to make a PPC campaign successful.
Have a list of keywords which are negative as they will aid you to avoid unnecessary traffic.
The ad copy should be engaging.
Use the extension to the fullest that comes with SEM platforms.
The campaign should be optimized for mobile device users. They are your potential customers.
Never stop remarketing, it will help in capturing the missed opportunities.

Developing a PPC strategy that works for you is an ongoing process. You need to keep tracking your hits and misses, and work on them to optimise your results. Of course, you may not want to continue investing in PPC efforts once your organic SEO efforts take off. Or, you may want to boost your organic SEO results with PPC campaigns every once in a while. Whatever be the case, it pays to closely monitor your PPC strategy to know where you stand and where you need to head to maximise your results and returns.