Pay per click advertising (otherwise known as PPC) is a type of paid digital marketing where advertisers pay a fee every time their advert is clicked on. This is a way of purchasing visits to your site rather than getting them organically through searching for your website.

As search engines are the most popular way for customers to find your business placing an ad on Google is a highly effective way of driving more traffic to your site. Companies can bid to place an advert on a search engine’s sponsored links section so that it comes up when someone types in a keyword relevant to their business. For example, if you search for ‘custom web development services’ an advert for Webential might be come up as the first result on Google. Pay per click advertising in London also applies to ads on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. However, for most businesses the most important to start with is Google’s Adwords function (also known as Google Ads) which boosts your adverts up the search engine rankings helping more customers find you faster.

Is PPC right for me?

It’s important to work out early on whether you think PPC advertising will work for your business and whether the cost is worth it. Custom web development services can help you manage the process or you can do it yourself through Google. Questions that you’ll need to consider include, do you have a budget for advertising or do you want to build on your organic reach? Once you’ve set aside a budget for advertising it’s worth thinking about whether you want to spend your whole budget on PPC or if you want to use other strategies. PPC is a good option if you want to reach people who are actively seeking out terms related to your business. If you want to create a PPC campaign, the amount you’ll need to spend vary according to your budget, audience, competition and the types of products or services that you’re selling.

The benefits of using Google Ads

Google’s Ad function allows businesses to be discovered by your target audience based on specific terms which are relevant to your products, brand and content. It’s important to note that before you start a campaign you should consider setting a daily budget as it can be easy to exceed this.

• Google has a free Adwords keyword tool which you can use to help you find what keywords your customers are looking for – you can then use these to design your Adwords campaigns.
• Google Adwords makes it easy to create compelling adverts which can be seen by greater numbers of people searching for your keywords than by using organic advertising.
• One of the main advantages of Adwords is its flexibility. You can target customers on whatever device they are searching on whether that’s a desktop, a mobile or a tablet.

• Another important benefit is that you can see how well your campaign is doing in real time. You can measure the success of your campaign and see how many people view your ads, the number of people who click on your ads, and the percentage of sales you’ve derived from them. This measurability takes the guess work out of advertising and means you can adjust your ads at any time. You can also adjust the timing of your campaign and pause and re-start it whenever you want, which is great if you want to take advantage of seasonal peaks.

What is Google Display Network?

The Google Display Network (GDN) is made up of over 2 million websites, videos, and apps where your Google Ads can appear. It allows you to display your advert to the right person at the right time, and on the right sections of relevant websites. While Google ads are displayed to potential customers when they search Google for keywords relating to your business, Display ads are shown when people are visiting sites across the Google Display Network. Other benefits include:

• You can choose from different types of advert from text, image, video and mobile ads which work across all platforms.
• You can carefully target your ads to reach a specific demographic. The topics targeting feature allows you to display your adverts on websites which relate to relevant topics.
• Not sure where to start? You can choose from a range of ready-made templates or you can go completely bespoke and design your own from scratch.
• The GDN is designed to maximise efficiency for you with its automatic bidding tool which sets your budget to make sure your adverts get the maximum number of clicks for the lowest price.
• With reach and frequency you can monitor how well your ad is performing and see the amount of clicks and referrals allowing you to keep up to date with the progress of your campaign.

It can be complicated navigating the ever evolving world of PPC advertising, however at Webential we offer a range of paid advertising and custom web development services.

Get in touch to find out how we can help your business grow and thrive with pay per click.