What Is Pay Per Click Marketing?

Pay per click marketing is a type of digital advertising on search engines like Google and Bing where you only pay when someone clicks on your ad, hence the name. The biggest market for PPC is on Google however Bing has been growing its market share over the last few years.PPC is also known as Paid Search.When you make a search on Google (or others) you will get results like below, the top of the page will be paid ads and the organic listings will be below those.Benefits:

• The audience has already declared intent by telling you what they are searching for
• Advertisers control the message people are seeing
• Advertisers control the ad position through bidding
• Highly trackable and gives insight into audience behavior
• Highly targetable

As this area of digital marketing has grown so too have the options of how and where you can advertise. Below is a list of the different areas of PPC advertising:

• Search
• Display
• Shopping
• YouTube ads

Search

• The most used form of PPC advertising and also the one that shows the greatest intent and control over the targeting options
• You bid on keywords that relate to your business to show ads to people you believe will make a conversion on your business
• You have complete control on the messaging displayed and control what you spend

Display

• Display ads are the visual ads you see on the sides (and top and bottom) of some websites
• These visual ads are placed based on specific websites or on interest categories based on the interests of your target audience
• See below for an example ad

Shopping

• Shopping campaigns are where you provide Google with a feed from your website on your products you wish to be included in the shopping results
• You provide the details of your products so that they can appear for searches
• Include lots of detail in your product title for better results. For example instead of “mens shoes” add more detail like “mens blue sneaker shoes” so that you can appear for more searches due to the extra detail
• You can also include detail like price and availability, so consumers have more information to make an informed decision

Youtube

• These are the (usually) video ads you see before videos on YouTube
• They allow you to connect to your audience using targeting related to topics or keywords you specify
• Due to the nature of these ads they can be disliked and skipped and so getting your message across in the first 6 seconds is vital

Summary

• PPC allows you to be highly targeted with your advertising. Not only with who you reach but also what you tell them
• Many different forms from text to image to video
• Use only one type or a combination them all
• 90%+ of Google’s revenue comes from these types of advertising so there is a lot of money used on this type of marketing