So you’ve decided to invest in a new form of advertising -- pay-per-click advertising (PPC). Congratulations on making the decision to invest in the future of your business. PPC advertising is a form of online advertising where advertisers pay for each click that their ad receives. PPC marketing works by placing ads on search engines, websites, and other online platforms. When someone clicks on an ad, the advertiser pays a fee to the platform that displayed the ad.
Now comes the easy part, right? All you need to do is enter in credit card information, write some ad copy, and boom, you’re done! Okay, maybe PPC advertising is not so simple. For example, where do you do all of this? Are you planning on running Google Ads or perhaps Bing? Maybe you’d like to try your hand at running ads on a social network like Facebook. When it comes to running ads, the first step in this marketing strategy is deciding where to run them.
If you wanted to run ads 30 years ago, you might find yourself choosing between magazines, newspapers, television, radio, and billboards. Out of those, billboards and television ads might be considered the gold standard of their day. Billboards allow you to put an ad in the middle of a desert or in the middle of Times Square. With billboards, you can express a simple message or use a digital board to catch the eye of all who pass it. With television ads, you can run a 60-second commercial during primetime, or a 30-second ad at 2 am on Cartoon Network.
Combine these two and fast-forward to digital marketing in 2022, and you have yourself the Google Ads platform. Google Ads Run on Google, Search Partner sites, and Display Network sites, Google Ads is the largest pay-per-click platform.
There is no single platform that reaches more people in such an expansive variety of ways. Google Ads PPC campaigns allow you to advertise:
Truthfully, I could have continued that list, and you’d have to scroll to reach the bottom, but I decided to spare you.
Google Ads Pros:
Google Ads Cons:
Let’s get one thing straight, people might call it Bing Ads, but it’s really the Microsoft Ads platform, and it’s so much more than Bing.
The Microsoft Ads platform might only receive 10-15% of search traffic, but it spans the globe on sites like Yahoo, AOL, Bing, and MSN.
While the platform does not offer 100% of the ad types you can find on Google it still offers a solid selection. I really love the platform because Microsoft does not try to pretend to be a true competitor to Google Ads. In fact, they went out of their way to make their platform easy to use for those already well-versed in Google Ads. This includes an import feature that allows users to import relevant keywords, ads, campaign settings, and structures directly from Google into Microsoft. This is a time saver for anyone looking to run ads on both.
Microsoft Ads Pros:
Microsoft Ads Cons:
You might have read my blog about the Facebook dollar-a-day strategy. From the title, you should know what I will say about Facebook; when it’s done right, it’s a low-cost way to get ads in front of your target audience.
Facebook will run ads on Facebook and Instagram. Both platforms have users with accounts, so there is a fixed audience base. Luckily, that audience base is huge, with over 2.7 billion active users. When deciding between Facebook and other platforms, keep in mind that the type of buyer on a social media platform can be very different from someone using Google or Bing search engines for search. A Google user might search for exactly what they need and see your ad, whereas a social media user may have expressed interest in your services at a previous date and are now seeing your ads while completing other tasks.
Facebook Ad Pros:
Facebook Ad Cons:
Once you have decided which popular platform will work best for you, it’s important to take the time to set up your ads properly for a successful campaign. The next steps for setting up a PPC advertising campaign, include:
By following these simple steps, you can create a PPC ad campaign that will help you to reach your target audience and achieve your marketing goals. If you have any questions about your platform options or what to do next, please know that the team at SMA is more than happy to assist you.
Editor's Note: This article was originally published in December 2020 and has been updated with fresh content.
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