Paid advertising is an ever-growing tool for every digital marketer. Whether that may be social media advertising, display ads or paid search ads, what we know is that investing in advertising works. Every company wants their website to be found, to be found on social media and, more importantly, to be found on the top of search engines such as Google. There are two ways to accomplish that objective, either by Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or through paid search advertising. While SEO is extremely important, it does take a lot longer and more work to rank on the first page of search engines and it is even more difficult for more popular search terms and keywords.
Therefore, paid search ads provide instant results, allowing companies to display themselves at the top and bottom of Google’s first page, a quicker approach than waiting on SEO.
What is Paid Search Advertising?
Paid search advertising involves the process of Pay-Per-Click (PPC), you advertise using an auction-based model. Your digital ads are shown and placed on search engines in certain positions dependent on factors such as your bid and the quality score of your ad.
Quality score is affected by three core factors:
- Expected Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
- Ad Relevance
- Landing Page Experience
What is the Format of a Paid Search Ad?
You have most likely (if not, most definitely) come across an ad on Google, where you clicked on it or not, when you search for terms, there will be ads at the top with a certain structure to be identified. Search engine ads consist of three key features (but not limited to):
- Headline
- URL
- Descriptive Text
Ad Headline
The ad headline is the large title text that you see at the top of the ad (just below the ad URL). This text will most likely contain a keyword from your search term on your search engine, hence why it was shown to you. Your headline is an important feature as it needs to be engaging and appealing to the user, making them click on it to find out more about your company, product or services.
Ad URL
The ad ULR is the destination of where the user will go to if they click on the advertisement. The URL sits on top of the ad headline with a small ad text next to it (indicating that you are clicking on an ad and not an organic search result). The final destination is important for your ad quality score, if it provides a good user experience, which can be measured in bounce rates, duration, conversions and more, then you will likely receive a higher quality score, which leads to a better ad placement on the search engine.
Descriptive Ad Text
This section allows you to elaborate on your ad, on your company, product or service that you are offering. It can contain keywords, engaging text and more. Different search engines will provide various descriptive ad text lengths, so you need to make sure to abide by those limitations.
Ad Extensions
This add-on feature can help make your ads that more appealing and stand out from the rest. Digital marketers can utilise this ad feature to provide more information, more Call-To-Actions (CTAs) and more descriptive methods to be clicked on by a user. You can even have phone numbers that lead directly to calling the company or showcase reviews to enforce the social proof of your business. Using ad extensions can increase your ad visibility and, according to Google, increase your CTR.
Benefits of Using Paid Search Marketing
1. Instant Results
When you invest in PPC advertising, you can expect to see instant results, whereby, if you search for a term that you have configured an ad for, you can see your ad displayed on the search engine’s first page. This is great, which means potential customers and users will also find you very easily.
Paid search advertising can help companies in saturated markets, no matter how much competition or how new your company is, your ads can be seen and outshine competitors. Additionally, you are not limiting yourself to existing followers or users, but branching out to a whole new target audience, your reached in drastically increased, allowing you to find new users. Luckily, this is also all tracked and measured for you to analyse, which brings us on to our next benefit.
2. Enhanced Analytics
From start to finish, your ad campaign is tracked, monitored and measured, you can see who is clicking on what, how many conversions and users you are getting, how long they spend on your website and even demographics about the user, where they are from, what time of day they clicked on your ad and a lot more.
Using a paid search marketing channel, you are in control. You can optimise your ads and use data-driven results to increase performance, track and measure over time. There is no limitation to your analysis and testing and, through review, you can fully optimise the perfect advertising campaign for the users you wish to reach. By being in control of your paid search advertising campaigns you can better optimise your budget and manage cashflow, understanding your return-on-investment (ROI) and much more.
3. Control
Running ad campaigns on search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo, you are given the tools and the platform to be fully in control of your campaigns. From the keywords to budgeting, destination, text and more. You set the perimeters you wish to work in, choose how to target and how limited you wish to be.
Tools such as Google Ads can help businesses customise campaigns to the fullest, sending out specific, targeted and detailed ads to people that are looking for your company. By being in control of your campaign’s budget you can also set restrictions to align with your cashflow, which helps small, medium and large businesses alike. Moreover, if your ads are in need of further optimisation, you can easily make text changes, keyword changes, bidding variations and more, all of which contribute to the success of your campaign. Changes are easy to make and can be highly effective, so you are always in control, from start to finish.
4. Organic Growth
One of the most important benefits of running pay-per-click ad campaigns, and also one of the least talked about, is how using paid search can help benefit your organic growth as a company. Each ad campaign delivers numerous amounts of specific data, specific to your company, your products and your services. This data can be transferred to your organic marketing efforts that can help with your SEO, marketing and more.
The vast amount of data you collect from advertising can help you know what your customer is looking for, what they like and disklike and show common characteristics of your target audience. You may notice a specific time of day that people are interested in your ads, so you know when to push organic marketing, or a certain gender, age group location and a whole lot more. All of this data will contribute to the overall organic growth of your business.
5. Higher Traffic
Especially helpful for newer companies, for example, a coffee shop, by running paid search advertising campaigns, you will receive a lot more traffic than you are typically used to. This will spread your brand name, products and services, helping you grow from the beginning. Also, by sending more traffic to your website, you can get a greater idea of your website’s user experience (UX), what your users like and dislike, and you can look to optimise it for an even better UX.
For companies that already experience high traffic, running PPC ads will support new focuses, if you are launching a new product or a new service, or if you wish to shed light on something specific, your ad campaign will provide a lot of traffic directed exactly where you want it, helping you to be found by the right people.
To Summarise
PPC ad campaigns are beneficial on a multitude of levels and even extends to the support of your organic growth. Whether you are a new company or not, B2B, B2C, non-profit or more, paid search advertising will be able to help your objectives. Paid search is a valuable strategy to gain brand awareness, conversions and traffic. The 5 aforementioned benefits can help your company get to where it needs to go, no matter the type of business or industry you are in.
