What is PPC? Learn the Basics of Pay-Per-Click Marketing in 2023

What is PPC? Have you ever heard or encountered that term before? Well, if you’re new to the business and you’ve somehow heard it once or twice, it simply means that it is relevant. So, should you need help in understanding what it is – you’ve come to the right guide!

We will be walking you through all the important notes about PPC starting from what it is so you get a better sense on what needs to be done, how you can use it for your benefit, and many more!

What is PPC?

PPC, short for pay-per-click, is one of the many advertising models where the advertiser settles for a payment every time their ad is clicked, hence the term “pay-per-click.”

The overall goal of this model is to direct targeted traffic to a specific spot in the worldwide web; it can be through a blog, an app, a website, or a landing page.

PPC has been – and is still considered to be an effective advertising strategy as it allows advertisers to only pay for actual clicks and not impressions, When executed correctly, the cost of each click is outweighed by the benefit gained from it.

To cite an example, if, we say that a $5 click generates a $550 sale, then, what do you think of this return? It would certainly be considered a good return on investment because it took about 10 clicks to generate that kind of profit.

PPC ads can be presented in various formats such as text, images, videos, or a combination of these, which can be found on many different platforms such as social media, websites, apps, game development sites, search engines, and more.

Search Engine Advertising and PPC

The correlation between these two (2) are among the many difficulties users and newbies experience thinking that they are the same. When, in reality, they are not.

Search Engine Advertising (SEA) is a form of digital advertising that allows advertisers to place their ads on search engine results pages (SERPs) when certain keywords are searched for.

Because of how this business model has been made, it has become a way for businesses to promote their products or services to users who are actively searching for related information.

Advertisers typically bid on keywords they believe their target audience will search for, and so, if their bid is successful, their ad will appear at the top or bottom of the SERP when that particular keyword is looked for.

How Does the Pay-Per-Click Idea Work?

The PPC model is based on keywords – that’s it. It is a type of business model where it utilizes keywords in order to give people what they need – what they’re looking for.

For instance, when it comes to search engines, the better and more relevant content is, the higher it will rank in the Search Engine Results Page or SERP. Meaning, the more people it can invite to their website, resulting in more people they convert. People who search for something, a keyword in particular, would see products or services related to their search – the same concept applies in pay-per-click.

That being said, businesses and companies that use pay-per-click models would analyze and research keywords that are the most applicable to the products and services they’re advertising.

Who PPC Benefits

Ideally speaking, the PPC model is known and considered to be best for both the publishers and advertisers. Why? Because it is like a two-way street of benefit for both parties.

Publishers can consider pay-per-click a stable and regular income stream from the advertisers or the people who need and want their services. Advertisers can pay fees per click and it’s something that can bring in revenue or income. Furthermore, companies online or websites can use this to monetize anything that’s free but still gain revenue using the PPC model.

Advertisers, on the other hand, also benefit from this and consider it beneficial or advantageous because it gives a downright opportunity for them to advertise services or products to a particular audience who are searching for content similar or related to it. Not to mention the fact that a well-structured PPC campaign gives advertisers a chance to save because as the value of clicks from a customer exceeds the cost of the paid click to the publisher.

It’s a two-way street as it benefits the parties involved – and it also brings relevant information to the users and readers looking for resources!

The Two  Models of Pay-Per Click

Now, we don’t want to confuse you because pay-per-click has many different strategies and businesses that can ride along with it. There are, however, two (2) of the most basic and most used models – the bid-based model and flat-rate model.

Bid-Based Model

This model is when a contract signed by advertisers to take part with other advertisers using a private auction or bidding. Usually, a publisher or an owner of a campaign would host this. For your advertisement to come up or appear, advertisers will let the host know about the highest amount he wants to pay per click that they get – just like when you are bidding for something.

Therefore, every time a visitor or a user clicks on the advertisement, the publisher will get the payment from the advertiser.

You will find instances where publishers or hosts charge the bid winner slightly more than what was agreed upon. For instance, a dime compared to the next bidder of the total amount, whatsoever is lower.

NOTE: In today’s setup, relevance is also a crucial factor in winning a bid or an auction. Meaning, whatever the publisher’s or host’s contents are, whichever the related industry or niche is, that will be considered.

Flat-Rate Model

The next type of model is the flat-rate model or when advertisers and ad publishers agree on a particular payment every click – like 1 cent per click, for example. Usually, hosts or publishers would already create rates for a specific spot or website.

Like in bid-based PPC models, the relevance or the content is important and is considered to be one of the most crucial factors as they will attract more users, appear more relevant and important, and will be closely related to what the publisher has.

There are instances where publishers agree to lower the fixed price for longer-term contracts. However, these instances are scarce and are considered rare in the industry.

So, these are the two (2) pay-per-click models that are currently being jammed up in the industry. Whichever model works best for you MUST be to your liking. Study and research about PPC and all its components for you to be able to get the exact tool you’ll need for it.

PPC Terms: Glossary of Terms to Take Note Of

We can’t spell marketing without a few acronyms, jargons, and easier words to spit out, right? We’ve anticipated that and you’re lucky because we will be enumerating some of the most common terminologies and jargons that have been used (and are still being used) in the industry today!

Without further ado, here are some of the terms and definitions you would want to find out before you go on and start your journey in PPC!

Ad Group

It’s a group of ads that have one or more advertisement material that have the same or similar targets. For instance, if you sell beverages on your website, then you can have 4 advertisements that target one variant of your beverage.

Ad Rank

Ad rank simply is the value that’s used for determining the relevance of advertisements relative to the other ads. This metric is always recalculated every time that your ad appears.

AdSense

AdSense or Google AdSense is a program that’s put up by Google to offer advertisers the chance to display their advertisements alongside online content. All of these ads are advertised, maintained, assessed, and sorted all by Google to ensure that it’s kept relevant.

Ad Text

It is the form of marketing communication that advertisers use in promoting their service or product within the Google Network. They are what marketers use as text links, promoting the product, service, or brand.

Campaign

Marketing campaigns are strategic steps, sequences, or activities promoting the product or service of your company. Campaigns are actually created with a particular goal or end result in mind.

CPC

CPC, short for cost per click, is the revenue model that websites or publishers use in billing advertisers. It is the dollar value per click of a user on the ad that is displayed by the publisher.

Google Ads

Google Ads is the online advertising product used for a variety of things – selling products, improving and promoting your brand, increasing awareness, and developing traffic to your website.

Keywords

Keywords are the list of words that are targeted, defining what your content is about. They can be a single word, a phrase, or a group of words that are used together.

Landing Page

A landing page is a website’s section that a user gets redirected to when they click on a link on another location. Whether it is from an email, a text, a part of a website, social media profiles, etc.

Website

Websites are sets of related pages that are kept and stored under one  domain name. They are usually produced by one person or an organization.

Search Engine Marketing or SEM

SEM or Search Engine Marketing is the type of marketing that involves website promotions through increasing visibility in the Search Engine Results Page or SERP. Primarily, it would be via paid advertising and sometimes, using techniques like SEO.

Pros of Pay-Per-Click Advertising

• Cost-effective because you’ll only pay per click
• It is targeted and specific to a particular audience
• Resources are unlimited – you can get as much resources to learn, improve, and develop it faster
• Results are fast and often real-time
• It is customizable depending on how you want your ads to show up

These are the pros and advantages of PPC or pay-per-click advertising. It is a fast and efficient way to gain more traction and engagement on your website, landing page, or your social media account. Others use it to generate sales, but it would need other resources aside from PPC.

Cons of Pay-Per-Click Advertising

• It’s cost-effective but the costs can add up, leading you to pay more than what you’re expecting
• You need to allot time to set it up and to arrange everything in the process
• It requires skills and LOTS of training
• Clicks don’t always mean sales – it can be a mistake, a misclick, and sometimes just someone who wants to snoop in what you are up to

So, these are the cons or drawbacks of PPC advertising. You might think of it as something that could weigh the entire plan down, but no, it never outweighs the pros.

SEO vs. PPC

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is another technique that can drive traffic to your website, webpage, or landing page using a set and subset of strategies to develop, improve, and optimize the content of what you own to your liking.

PPC, on the other hand, is the paid version of it. It will drive traffic based on the advertisements that have been set up. Advertisers would have to pay publishers for the number of users “per click.”

You can think of it as SEO using natural strategies with a mix of search engine rules and link building in order to appear better and more relevant in the Search Engine Results Page or SERP, whereas PPC would need a budget for the advertisements to run.

For you to understand it clearer and better, here’s a brief and simple table of the comparison between PPC and SEO.

	Search Engine Optimization (SEO)	Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Pros	Boosts Brand Awareness High Conversion Rates
	Higher traffic share compared to Search Engine Marketing or SEM	Highly efficient and effective results
	Long-term results	Excellent audience and market targeting options
	Page optimization	Easier tracking of results and terms – more direct and straightforward than SEO
	Search Engine Optimization (SEO)	Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Cons	Needs technical expertise Expensive and costly to maintain
	Results are delayed and they do not appear real-time	The results can decay and be ineffective fast when the funds run out
	Tracking can be difficult, especially since they’re results-based	Mistakes can happen, too, especially if the data is wrong
	Would need constant checking and maintenance

These are the points of similarities and differences of PPC and SEO. Both of them are great tools to improve the number of conversions or sales you will have, but the angles of where you’ll take it from will entirely be different.

How to Start Your First PPC Advertising Campaign

So, you’re all set and all you need to do now is to start your campaign – where do you start? What do you do first? What are some of the things that require your attention?

It is essential to know that PPC advertising will look different from one platform to another. However, the basic skeletal structure of the pay-per-click advertising is as follows:

Step #1: Create an Avatar

You wouldn’t be able to run a successful PPC campaign (or any other advertising campaign) if you’re unsure of the audience or market you’re targeting. It’ll be money down the hole if you target everyone, as you’re unsure of whether they’ll convert or not.

More likely, the chances of random people converting is a lot less than having 10 targeted audiences out the window.

So, what do you do? You develop an avatar – a buyer’s identity. You need to do compelling research and find out the behavior, purchasing patterns, online habits, and other information that your ideal market has.

For instance, if you’re offering a course on “how to make money online,” you would most likely need people who:

• Watches YouTube videos about online jobs
• Looks up several resources about making money online
• Visit social media for books

This way, you will be able to narrow your list down to a few people, making them the priority on the list.

Many people believe that identifying the buyer’s identity or creating the avatar is like half of the work done. While it’s good to say it like that, it is not true. This is just step 1 – we have a ton more to go!

Step #2: Perform Keyword Research

When you’ve identified your target market, the next step would be to identify the keywords. Say your market is looking for different ways to earn money online. So, you need to do the necessary research to come up with keywords.

For the same scenario above, the keywords you can list that are adjacent or similar to the niche of what you are about to partake in could be:

• Online Jobs in 2023
• Passive Income Ideas Online
• Work From Home
• Online Businesses to Start in 2023
• Cloud Businesses

NOTE: These are just some of the examples of keywords you can target. They are, in no way, researched – we just gave you several keywords you can use as stepping stones.

If you’re not sure how to do keyword research, you can use Moz’s free keyword research tool to find the best-performing keywords in the niche you are targeting.

Step #2.1: Create a Negative Terms List

Along with your keywords, it’s also imperative to create or list keywords that should NEVER go into the search. They’re called negative terms or terms that should automatically be excluded or negated.

To cite an example, let’s say you are a virtual staffing agency and you listed “staffing agency jobs” as your negative keyword. What your negative list will do is exclude that term so people don’t get confused that you are an entity looking for staff, not jobs – you get the point.

For finding negative terms, you can use the same tool as finding keywords just to eradicate and omit words that can cause confusion and difficulty in landing the correct target audience for you.

Step #3: Finalize Your Budget

When all the research has been done, the next step is to finalize your budget. With PPC, the effectiveness and efficiency will actually be dependent on how much you’re willing to spend. As we mentioned above, some hosts give the bid-rate option where winners will actually be chosen according to their bid (one of the biggest factors).

So, be sure to have everything within budget so you don’t run out of funds right when the campaign is being run.

I recall an experience before when my ads suddenly stopped because the ads were performing and the cost continued to go up. It’s important to have a range of budget so you can be flexible both downwards and upwards.

Step #4: Write Excellent Copy

PPC is not all about the money – it requires strategy and critical thinking, too. In fact, one of the most valuable skills included in PPC is copywriting. Your copy needs to standout and to be the light among the rest.

An effective copy will ultimately turn heads and eyes towards your directed page or website!

Creating compelling copy is not something that systems and automations can do – you need to do it manually. One good way to find the best copy for your PPC campaign is to go back to your avatar or buyer’s identity – from there, try to think of terms, words, and expressions that could trigger your audience to take a look at what you have to offer.

Practice it, have fun with it – youmight not get it the first time, but doing it regularly will allow you to perfect it eventually.

Step #5: Develop Multiple CTAs

Then for the second-to-the-last step, you need a CTA. A CTA or a call-to-action, is a phrase or a group of words that you want your target audience to click on. It is something that triggers an action; it can be anything from subscribing to a newsletter, giving you their contact details, purchasing a product or a service, etc.

CTAs are actually included in the way you write copy, but it is an entirely different plain and is more so connected to how effective and how creative your words will be so that your target audience or market will be enticed or attracted to click on it!

Step #6: Track, Develop, and Sale!

 

Lastly, you want to track, trace, and look after the data that your PPC campaign will reflect. The metrics you want to look after would be:

• Click-Through Rate or CTR
• Quality Score
• Impressions
• Impression Share (%)
• Conversion Rate (%)
• Total Conversion Value

Studying it closely and adjusting to how you can make it better will bring in more visitors and users, which potentially means more conversions and more sales for you or for your business.

Like with any other type of advertising, PPC will require you to shell out money, but not too much. It is a strategy that you can learn and adapt in order for your site to gain more traction and engagement. Learn the basics and use it to your advantage!

FAQ

Conclusion

So, what is PPC? It’s more than just the acronym you think of it. It is a completely effective and efficient tool that’s used to drive sales and engagement to your product or service.Others use it to start up an engagement for something bigger and grander.

Nevertheless, PPC or pay-per-click is a digital advertising model where advertisers pay a specific fee for when their ads get a click – so, you might want to start up on it if you want to gain more traffic!