Blog Post

Should Your Business Invest in Search Advertising?

  • By W. Gray
  • •
  • 30 Jul, 2019
  • •
Pay per click (PPC) advertising is a powerful way to drive traffic to your website through web searches. PPC works by a search engine (Google or Bing) hosting your advertisement and charging you only when users click through to view your site after finding it through a search. 


PPC ads are sold at auctions, where bidders compete for various keyword and the ad spaces featured when those keywords are searched by the average user. The site with the highest bid gets the privilege of hosting their ad in a prime Google or Bing search space, which in turn generates a higher number of hits to their site when users search for that keyword.  

Pay per click is not only an effective way to market your site to your target audience, but an effective way to track how well your online campaigns work to bring in money. Because of the direct charge levied when a user clicks on your ad through a Google or Bing search, you can tell exactly how many customers are clicking through from your ad. This gives your marketing team a lot of information about which ads are effective at generating site visits and which could use improvement. 

 Google Ads is a particularly popular PPC channel and offers a lot of support for managing your campaign and reporting metrics to monitor its success. Adwords and other major PPC campaign programs offer helpful information for setting up your ads and ensuring their success. 

 When bidding for keywords for your PPC advertising campaigns, there are a few important tips to keep in mind: 


Know Your Limit

Before engaging in auctions for the keywords you want to represent, determine your budget for each keyword you plan to purchase. Remember that the price you set for the keyword will be multiplied each time someone clicks your ad. The higher the price - even by a few pennies over your target - the more you’ll spend overall.  

 This can really add up, particularly if you run multiple ads at a time, so strategic budgeting and sticking to your budget is key. Some ad managers get hung up over a particular word or phrase that they want and spend altogether way more than they should to secure the sport. And while it may be awesome to be at the top, it’s not always so great when you have to hemorrhage your budget to get there. 

Choose Keywords Carefully

The longer and more specific your keyword, the more likely you are to nab a decent ad spot for a lower price. Instead of aiming for a highly competitive keyword like “sweater”, which many brands and businesses covet, use one that more specifically meets the needs of your target audience. A keyword like “women’s cashmere sweater small navy” is much more unique to a particular set of users and is much less likely to carry the competition or the price tag of a simpler, broader keyword. 

Consider Your Ad Campaign

Since the cost for a PPC ad can tally up rather quickly, it’s important to ensure that clicks are resulting in sales on your site. Generating a lot of traffic can be great, but that alone will not a successful website make. Racking up thousands of extra page views and converting few or none into tangible sales will cost you a lot of money, negating your purpose in purchasing your PPC ad. 

 To combat this challenge, consider running ads for a short period of time - perhaps over a weekend where you’re running a fantastic sale on one product. Use targeted, specific keywords to direct visitors to your site and to the direct product page where they can purchase that product. Approaching your PPC ads in this way will help your campaign to be much more successful and cost you relatively little when compared with other PPC campaigns. 

Going Further

There are, of course, many other ways in which PPC ads can strengthen your marketing mix, and we’ve only scratched the surface here. PPC can be tricky to manage and is a pretty expensive area to make a mistake. Thankfully, there is help for you in navigating the waters of PPC bidding and advertising. 

 A consultation targeted at improving your marketing campaign through implementation of PPC advertisements will help you to get off on the right foot. Our experienced staff can guide you through the various steps of implementing your PPC ad(s) and give you the flexibility to focus on the things you do best. 

 Proper PPC management is the difference between a successful campaign and a failure, so it’s crucial to ensure that your PPC manager is on the ball with handling everything associated with your campaign. We can be that helping set of hands and eyes that you need to help your PPC ad - and your business - succeed. 

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