Pay per click marketing began when Google created AdWords in 2000. Over the last 14 years PPC platforms like AdWords and Bing Ads have evolved and become a cost effective inbound marketing channel. PPC allows businesses to reach potential customers when they are searching for what you they offer.
Still to this day, many small businesses are still unaware of the advantages that this marketing channel can bring to their businesses. So I took upon myself to share these benefits.
1. Keyword Targeting
Keyword targeting is the number one benefit of pay per click marketing. It allows business to target relevant keywords that their customers might use when searching for their product or service. So how do you select keywords?
Think Like a Customer: Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and consider what they would search if they were looking for your product or service. Also, to reach more customers, it is best practice to include common variations in your keyword list.
For example, customers looking for “nj plumbers” may also search “plumbers in new jersey”, “emergency plumbers in nj”, and “best plumbers nj”. It would be wise to add those keywords to the list.
Use the Keyword Planner: The Google AdWords planner is a free tool used to brainstorm keyword ideas that might be relevant to your business.
Google AdWords and Bing Ads not only let you bid on relevant keywords but they also allow you to block keywords. Adding these terms as negative keywords prevents your ads from being triggered by phrases that are irrelevant to your business.
2. Budget Control
Unlike larger companies, small businesses have a stricter marketing budget. They have to watch every dollar very carefully. Google AdWords and Bing Ads give advertisers the ability to set a daily budget that they are comfortable with. The daily budget is not set in stone and can be updated easily. So how do you set up a a daily budget? Well there are several ways of figuring that out.
Example 1: Based on Your Advertising Goals
You figured out that your average cost per click must be $1.50 and you like 100 click a day.
Using this example, here’s how you’d figure out your daily budget:
$1.50 x 100 = $150
Example 2: Based on Monthly Budget
You decided that your monthly AdWords marketing budget is $1,000. To determine your daily budget, you divide $1,000 by 30.4 and would get a daily budget of $32.
3. Location Options
The numerous location options is another great feature of Google AdWords and Bing Ads. Both platforms allow you to pick locations by countries, cities, territories, or specific radius around a location. You can also prevent your ads from showing in specific locations.
When planning your campaigns, consider targeting areas where you will find your ideal customer and where your business can serve them. If you ever need to update your locations, you can adjust at any time.
4. Conversion Tracking
Pay per click marketing is more than just getting traffic to your website. It is about converting those visitors into customers. Every PPC account should have conversion goals (leads/sales) and tracking enabled. Google AdWords has three conversion tracking tools:
Conversion Code: To track lead forms or sales, AdWords allows you to generate a code that you place on your website.
Call Tracking: Google AdWords call tracking is a new and exciting tool to measure calls from your website that occur from an ad click.
Click to Call: When call extensions are enabled, advertisers can opt into Google call forwarding for free. Their ads will be shown with a unique tracking number on desktop computers, tablets, and laptops. Ads on high-end mobile devices (such as iPhones and Android devices with full Internet browsers) will display a clickable “Call” button.
Offline Conversions: There are times when PPC doesn’t directly lead to an online sale but does start a customer down a path that will eventually lead to an offline sale. Google AdWords allows you to import offline conversions to have a complete view of your PPC efforts.
5. Reporting
Unlike traditional marketing, you can review PPC data almost insistently. Any business running PPC campaigns can view data and reports on how their ads are performing, how many new customer connected with their business, where they are coming from, and much more. With so much data at their access, business can review, test, and adjust their ads quickly.
