A Guide to PPC Marketing For Beginners

If you’re new to digital marketing, there are plenty of acronyms you’re going to encounter that will soon become daily jargon. PPC is one of the most common forms of online marketing you’ll encounter, and it stands for Pay Per Click.

Read on to learn more about the basics of PPC marketing, including how to start your first PPC campaign and measure your success.

What is Pay Per Click Management?

Pay Per Click Management, commonly referred to as PPC Management, is a form of online marketing where advertisers pay for each click on their advertisement. Rather than trying to steer people toward your site organically through high-ranking content, you pay to have people visit your site by placing an ad at the top of search results.

Whenever your ad is clicked, you pay a small fee. Ultimately, money takes the backseat in terms of success with this type of marketing because the real value comes from the visit. If someone lands on a page that provides high value and has strong calls to action, they’re highly probable to become a new lead.

How to Start PPC Marketing

You can start your first PPC campaign by researching your market and selecting keywords. These keywords should be relevant to your content as well as your target audience’s search query. What are they looking for, and what words and order are they most likely to use to find it?

The more relevant your content to your keywords, the more clicks you’ll receive.

Once you’ve got a good idea of what words you want to target and the type of content you’ll advertise, it’s time to set up a campaign.

The most popular PPC platform is Google Ads. With a Google Ads PPC campaign, you can target Google, the world’s most popular search engine, and create ads that appear in their search results.

How to Track PPC Campaigns

You can link Google AdWords to Google Analytics and measure the success of your campaign. Simply add the account you use for Ads as an admin on your Analytics account, then return to Google Ads, click the Analytics tab, and select, “I already have a Google Analytics account.”

Once you select your account in AdWords, you’ll have full access to your campaign analytics. All of the data generated by your Ads campaigns will be seamlessly integrated into your Analytics report.

A few of the most important PPC metrics to keep track of are:

• Impressions – The number of times your ad has been viewed.
• Clicks – The number of engagements with your ad.
• CTR – The click-through-rate, which measures the percentage of people who clicked on your ad.
• Average CPC – The average cost-per-click, which can help you adjust your budget.
• Average position – The position on the search engine results page. Higher positions have greater visibility, which yield better results.
• Conversions – The number of people who performed a conversion action. You can set actions to track in your account.

Is PPC the same as SEM or SEO?

No, PPC is its own form of marketing that should be given individual attention. However, PPC is just one piece of the puzzle. In order to have a successful social marketing strategy, you’ll need to combine PPC with other forms of marketing that are relevant for your business and suitable for your audience.