PPC Marketing Campaign

Start a Successful PPC Marketing Campaign with These Steps

Marketing Tips 6 Mins Read May 17, 2023 Posted by Soumava Goswami

Last Updated on: December 19th, 2024

Digital marketing has become a go-to strategy for business-to-customer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) companies to promote products and services. Under its umbrella is PPC marketing. Generally, it is cost-effective and produces quicker results than a search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. 

Learn more about how to launch a successful PPC marketing campaign below. But first, it’s a must to know the definition of PPC marketing to understand better how it works. Hence, to learn more, read on to the end of the article. 

What Is PPC Marketing?

digital marketing add

PPC is the acronym for pay-per-click, an indispensable tool to bring more traffic to your site.  This type of marketing entices prospects to click on an ad, increasing the likelihood of a successful product purchase. The product ads and links you come across when visiting websites are part of a PPC marketing campaign.

Advertisers pay the publisher (website owner) a fee every time online users click on their ad placements. Digital marketing agencies like Caffeine can help business owners kickstart their PPC marketing campaigns.

How Does PPC Marketing Work? 

With PPC Marketing, you get the chance to bid on specific keywords and search phrases. These are the keywords for which you want your ads to appear in search engine results. For instance, if a user searches for one such keyword, your ad will appear on top of the results page. Then, you have to pay a fee every time someone clicks on your ad. 

In general, as an advertiser, your goal is to target specific demographics, locations, and interests. Hence, with PPC Marketing, you must set a maximum bid for the keywords that you want to target. 

Then, the search engine will use its algorithm to find out which ads to show as well as its order. Basically, the following are the factors that the algorithm considers: 

  • Bidding amount. 
  • Advertisement relevance with the Keyword 
  • Advertisement quality 
  • PPC Marketing strategy and the plan of the campaign 

On the other hand, you can also do this form of advertising with social media platforms, like Facebook or Instagram.

Steps to Perform PPC Marketing 

Here’s how you can launch a successful PPC marketing campaign: 

1. Set Your PPC Goals And KPIs

The first step in launching a successful PPC marketing campaign is setting your goals and key performance indicators. By doing so, you have a basis and idea of the results you want to achieve, plus they allow you to create criteria to help you measure your campaign’s success. This step can also help you set the right budget.

The most common PPC goals and KPIs include the following:

  • Cost per click (CPC) is the average amount of money paid for each clicked ad
  • Click-through rate (CTR) or the percentage of online users who clicked on your PPC ad
  • Cost per acquisition (CPA) is the average amount paid for each conversion or desired user action.
  • Return on ad spend (ROAS) is the ratio of ad-generated revenue to the cost of PPC ads.

Set your PPC goals and KPIs depending on your ultimate advertising needs. For instance, if your goal is to acquire more subscribers to your website, you must monitor KPIs around new subscriber acquisition. Hence, you must choose the right keywords, like ‘Subscribe now!’ and links to entice online users to sign up for your website.

2. Target The Right Audience With Intent Keywords

Determining intent-based keywords is the most effective way to target the right audience. These keywords are what online searchers use in running search engine queries, demonstrating their search intention or motive.  

Moreover, the keywords you bid for and the ads you display should match the position of your prospects on the sales funnel. This will ensure the success of your PPC marketing campaign. 

The main types of intent keywords include the following:

  • Transactional keywords, such as ‘buy smartphone,’ are intent keywords used by searchers who want to make a purchase.
  • Informational keywords like ‘latest smartphone features’ are intent keywords searchers use to learn more about something.
  • Navigational keywords like ‘Amazon checkout page’ are intent keywords that searchers use to get to a certain resource or page.

It’s not good to target all these intent keywords for PPC ads. The best intent keyword for your business depends on your niche, products, and other digital marketing strategies. This tip makes sense, worth applying to your PPC campaign.

For example, a law firm, dental clinic, Caffeine company, or any other service-based company can have a more successful PPC campaign using informational keywords. It’s because most online users look for information about a legal case, a tooth problem, or a plumbing troubleshooting tip before deciding to hire professional services.

3. Place PPC Ads On Relevant Landing Pages

Will you buy an organic makeup kit endorsed on an automotive website? Not at all. So, the landing page and PPC ad must be relevant. Otherwise, everything else fails. Search engines want to ensure that they serve online users excellently by providing them with the best answers when they run a query.

For instance, if your home appliance ad is shown on a skincare web page, there is a huge disconnection. On the one hand, how can you expect people interested in skincare to click on a home appliance ad? As a result, your PPC campaign will fail, and your ad’s ranking will also be negatively affected.

4. Regularly Monitor Bid Activity And Other PPC Metrics

One of the key elements of PPC marketing is bid management. Monitor your bid activity to ensure a reliable cost-per-acquisition (CPA). As already mentioned, CPA is a vital PPC metric that refers to the amount of money you should allocate for the campaign to make a desired action and convert the lead or prospect to a paying customer. The desired action to boost conversion could be making a purchase, filling out a form, signing up for a newsletter, or other valuable action you set up your PPC campaign for.

Here, the desired action to boost conversion could be making a purchase. Apart from that, it can also be: filling out a form, signing up for a newsletter, or other valuable action you set up your PPC campaign for.

Key Factors that Help You Track PPC Marketing Progress 

However, developing a bid strategy can be time-consuming and complex, especially if you handle multiple keywords, campaigns, and channels. With a robust analytics tool, you can quickly monitor your bid activity and other relevant PPC metrics and key factors, such as the following: 

Competitor Activity

Optimize your PPC marketing campaign for higher CTR, conversion rate, and ROAS by also monitoring competitor activity. Identifying the changes in your competitors? Keywords, copies, landing pages, and bids can affect your PPC marketing performance. 

Impression Share 

This PPC metric measures the percentage of impressions your PPC ad received from the overall impressions it’s qualified for. Impression share demonstrates your ad’s performance in comparison with other ads.  

In fact, it is nice to have at least 90-95% impression share for unique and unbranded keywords. However, if you have a tight marketing budget or aim for more popular keywords, a 60% impression share is a good benchmark.

Quality Score 

This 1 to 10 rating shows how useful and relevant your PPC ads and landing page are to online users’ queries. It’s considered good if you scored 8 to 10.

What are the Benefits of PPC Marketing?

The following are the major advantages of PPC Marketing that you will benefit from: 

  • No matter what your budget is, you can curate your ad accordingly. 
  • You have to pay for your ads only when someone clicks them. 
  • It is possible to promote your company through PPC Marketing even if your site does not rank well in SERPs. 
  • You have the chance to experiment with different types of ads. This way, you can cater to a large number of audiences. 
  • PPC ads show up frequently. Hence, you will have more chances to reach out to your target audiences. 
  • It is simple to launch a PPC marketing campaign. 

PPC Marketing: The Way Forward

There’s no definite way to launch a successful PPC marketing campaign. But by following the tips above, you’ll have a higher chance of success. So, make sure to set the right goals and KPIs, master the techniques, innovate, and regularly monitor your bid activity.

Do you have more suggestions on how to run a PPC marketing campaign? Please share your ideas and opinions in the comments section below. 

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Inspired by The Social Network, Soumava loves to find ways to make small businesses successful – he spends most of his time analyzing case studies of successful small businesses. With 5+ years of experience in flourishing with a small MarTech company, he knows countless tricks that work in favor of small businesses. His keen interest in finance is what fuels his passion for giving the best advice for small business operations. He loves to invest his time familiarizing himself with the latest business trends and brainstorming ways to apply them. From handling customer feedback to making the right business decisions, you’ll find all the answers with him!

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