Understanding the Different PPC Campaigns
Paid search has evolved into an incredibly precise way to spend your digital marketing budget. But for new small business owners and Marketing Directors, paid ads can feel daunting at first. Search ads come in many shapes and sizes, so let’s break down the basics.
A PPC campaign only charges you when someone clicks on your ad. No more paying for impressions that aren’t interested in becoming leads or customers. Let’s compare that to an organic campaign that could take MONTHS to see any movement in rankings. With ads, you can be positioned at the top of page one within hours of signing up for a campaign.
We’ll dig deeper into managing your Google Ads PPC campaign below, but first, understand that it works by auctioning off space on the search engine results page, or news feed. When someone types in a keyword that matches your campaign, YOUR BRAND has the opportunity to appear in front of a target audience at the exact moment they are searching for a solution, product, or service.
Types of PPC ads
Paid advertising comes in many forms. Where you are in the buying cycle determines the type of ad you need to reach your users.
Not every business will need every ad format, but it’s important to understand which type correlates to which of your marketing goals when you’re planning your PPC campaign strategy.
- Search Ads
- Display Ads
- Native Ads
- Video Ads
- Shopping Ads
- Remarketing Ads
Search Ads
Search ads are something we all see every day as we browse the internet. When you’re searching on Google or Bing, the blue links at the top and bottom of the page are search ads. These ads are powerful because they target users exhibiting “pull” intent: You can trust that these users want something you’re offering.
Display Ads
Display ads are shown across what’s called a “partner network.” When you visit most websites, there are banners or images that populate the top, middle, and bottom of the page. These are display ads. Search can be thought of as targeting existing demand, where display is the creation of demand.
Native Ads
Native ads look like “recommended reading” or articles that you would normally see on a news site. They are less intrusive than a traditional display banner and can help tell a story to your prospect.
Video Ads
YouTube is owned by Google, so the majority of video ads you see will be through this channel. Video allows you to add sight and sound to your advertisements. You can tell your story in 15 seconds.
Shopping Ads
Retail brands absolutely love Shopping ads. When someone is searching for a product online, Shopping ads will show a picture of the product, price, and store name. Everything they need to know to make a purchase decision is right there on page one.
Remarketing Ads
These types of ads are great “follow-up” machines. When someone visits your website but doesn’t leave a phone number or fill out a lead generation form, you can still market to them while they browse the internet! Look at it as staying top-of-mind until they’re ready to call you.
Benefits of PPC Advertising
Immediate Results
This is the best part about this channel. Sure, Search Engine Optimization is important, but it can take months to see momentum in your rankings. PPC Ads allow you to turn on a faucet of traffic at any time. Need a campaign for a seasonal promotion? Set it and forget it. Got a new product launching? Start building your audience now and ramp up ads when you go live. Just starting a business? Use PPC while you wait for your organic rankings to catch up.
Budget Guardrails
Want to spend $50 a day in advertising? You can do that. PPC allows you to set maximum thresholds so you’re not stuck waking up to an empty bank account.
Transparent Data
Seeing exactly where your money is going is a huge win for small business owners. Every dollar you spend on PPC can be tracked back to a keyword that either gave you a phone call or bounced immediately. There is so much data behind every campaign that **PPC ad campaign management** becomes a cyclical process of testing and tuning.
Quick Check | Is Your PPC Campaign Ready?
- Do you know your end goal? (Sales: Search/Shopping, Awareness: Display/Video)
- Set your budget guardrails. You can always add more later, but you can’t take money back once spent.
- Does your landing page actually answer the user’s question? If not, put your ad on pause.
- Do you have conversion tracking set up to track phone calls or form submissions?
Tips To Optimize Your PPC Campaigns
If you’ve read this far, you know there’s more to managing a PPC campaign than just setting your budget and walking away. It’s a constant process of testing and improving.
Here are some quick tips to help your ads run better!
- Negative Keywords: These are words that you never want to trigger your ad. If your company sells high-end watches, you may want to add the words “free” or “cheap” as negative keywords. This keeps you from paying for clicks that will never convert.
- A/B Testing: Run two versions of the same ad with one variation. You might change the call to action or rewrite a headline. Over time, these small tests will drop your cost per click significantly and improve conversions.
- Quality Score: Take a minute to look up “What is Quality Score in Google Ads?” You’ll notice Google rewards publishers with relevant keywords, high-quality landing pages, and a higher predicted CTR. You can actually lower your costs by improving this score!
Connect with Dallas SEO Dogs | Dallas SEO Dogs | PPC Ad Campaign Management
Every small business owner should now have access to data that was only available to professionals years ago. But between bidding wars, seemingly constant search engine algorithm updates, and putting out daily fires many owners simply don’t have the time to maximize their advertising budget.
Hiring a PPC agency to manage your campaigns allows you to aim for actionable budgets at a particular KPI. For example, if your objective is to beat your competition in local search, you’d allocate money to Ads. Once that budget is set, Dallas SEO Dogs can deploy technical expertise and creative strategy to drive leads to customers.
Managed incorrectly, you might see yourself burning through money in advertising tricks that yield little to no return. Our PPC experts can guide your PPC marketing strategy and show you what a high-performing PPC campaign can do for your bottom line.
Ready to see results? Give the Dallas SEO Dogs a call!
