What is PPC Management? The Official Handbook

If you are interested in finding ways to expand your company, you have undoubtedly heard of PPC (pay per click). PPC is an online advertising model in which marketers and business owners pay customers to click on their ad, fill out a form, make a purchase on their website, or take another planned, important business-related action.

In a world where 8.5 million searches are made on Google every day and where 62% of the population uses some form of social media, business owners who aren’t leveraging digital media to grow are missing out on serious opportunity (and ultimate revenue).

Yet, too many businesses aren’t taking advantage of this powerful model of marketing. They treat advertising as the equivalent of a billboard or TV spot. You spend money to run the spot, but after that, your money goes into a black hole, right? Sure, you might see a few more calls in the near future, but how can you tell if you’re actually getting a meaningful ROI (return on investment)? These operators think I’m already doing well. Why risk unnecessary expenses?

In truth, this kind of thinking is one of the biggest mistakes business owners make today. Because not only does PPC provide more visibility into ROI than any other form of marketing, it’s also extremely low-risk when done correctly.

We’re here to help you clear up some of these common misconceptions. We’ll tell you what PPC management really is, explain the different PPC channels and why you should prioritise one over another, and most importantly, explain why investing in this method of advertising can completely change your business (for the better).

What is PPC Management?

PPC management refers to the management of your PPC campaigns, either in-house (by yourself or a member of your team) or by an external consultant or agency. As we mentioned, PPC advertising is a technique in which advertisers pay for each click. This means that you, as the marketer or business owner, only pay when a qualified customer clicks on your ad or takes any other action you desire.

If you’re running a PPC campaign on one of Google’s networks—for example, a search advertising campaign—you also have the exciting opportunity to set goals based on the following metrics and actions:

• Sales: Increase sales or conversions by online, in-app, phone or in-store
• Leads: Encourage potential customers to show interest in your goods or services by providing their contact details or subscribing to your newsletter.
• Website traffic: Drive potential customers to visit your website.
• Brand awareness: Introduce customers to your offering when releasing a new product or expanding your business into a new region.
• App promotion: Increase app installs and engagement with an automated campaign that shows ads on the Google Search Network, Display Network, Google Play, other apps, and YouTube.

This diversity is fantastic for business owners. It means that no matter what your vertical or purpose, platforms like Google allow you to add the kind of value that can help you grow significantly.

How does PPC work?

Generally, although each channel has its own mode of operation, PPC campaigns work similarly across all platforms.

The process is as follows:

• Keeping your goals (described above) in mind, choose the type of campaign you want to run.
• Refine your settings and targeting (audience, device, location, schedule, etc.).
• Provide your budget and bidding strategy.
• Enter your destination URL (landing page).
• Create your ad.

Google’s algorithms dynamically decide the cost per click and ad rank of your ad when it’s launched. These algorithms take into account variables including your bid, budget, campaign parameters, and the quality and relevance of your ad.

In the quest to maintain user satisfaction, PPC platforms prioritise advertisers who create relevant and reliable campaigns by providing higher ad placements at lower costs. Therefore, to maximise your PPC profits, it is important to understand the intricacies of effective implementation on each platform.

PPC Channels and How They Work

When it comes to PPC management, there’s more than one game in town. There are tips and strategies you can use to make each platform work properly for your business, and depending on your goals, you’ll be more attracted to some than others.

The following are three of the most popular (and successful) PPC channels:

Search Advertising

Search advertising involves running PPC campaigns on Google, Microsoft, and similar platforms. This method of advertising is extremely powerful and profitable, but especially for service and local businesses whose customers are actively searching for their products and services. Do you want your roofing business to be one of the first to show up whenever someone searches for “roof replacement” in your area? Then you need to take advantage of search advertising.

Are you worried that you’re wasting money on Google ads? Find out with a free, instant audit. Google Ads Performance Grader

Social Media Advertising

Social media advertising takes place on platforms such as Facebook (now Meta), LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter) and Snapchat. Social media is an inherently more visual style of advertising, and because of this, it has long been a favourite of direct-to-consumer brands. Additionally, it is a more restrained form of promotion.

Instead of bidding on keywords that customers are actively searching for, marketers create audiences based on people’s preferences, their actions, and the actions they’ve already taken or not taken on their website and show ads to these audiences while they’re passively browsing social media.

Due to its passive and visual nature, social media advertising can be an amazing tool for brand awareness. Yet, you can make amazing profits on these platforms with the right strategy.

Display Advertising

Display advertising involves running visual ads on a network of sites like the Google Display Network. Any site (from CNN and Fox News to your local blog) that has signed up for Google’s AdSense programme can earn money by advertising your business on their site. This means that with great creativity, targeting, and the right messaging, you can put your business in front of highly relevant prospects who are browsing their favourite sites.

The key here, just like social media advertising, comes down to targeting. By targeting demographics, interests, locations, and placements that overlap with your target audience, you can get the most bang for your buck on the Display Network.

Display advertising, like social media advertising, is a more passive form of marketing. So, it can be more challenging to generate direct revenue here than on Google Search. However, by using the Display Network, you can get your brand in front of lots of relevant prospects with a relatively low ad spend.

How PPC Management Can Grow Your Business

We’ve talked a little about what PPC management can do for your business. Now let’s look at some details. Here are the top six ways PPC management can grow your business:.

1. Increase your reach and visibility

Unless you have a large share of an existing market, a large portion of your target market may not even know your brand exists. And if you haven’t considered PPC as a viable channel yet, this is almost certainly the case.

Why? Because every day, people in the market for your products and services are actively searching for them on search engines. They’re using queries with commercial intent that show they want to buy right now. They’re browsing Instagram with that quote they got from your competitor on their mind. Or they’re reading an article on their favourite online publisher.

With a properly placed PPC ad, you can capture a large segment of your market that is browsing online right now, many of whom will be coming into contact with your brand for the first time. This kind of brand reach is irreplaceable in today’s business landscape.

2. Get qualified inbound traffic

The point here, however, is that it’s not the billboard along the highway that gets you to make a purchase. Based on keyword targeting, 100% of the time, every person you show a PPC ad to on Google is clearly in the market for your product. This is a level of consistent lead quality that doesn’t exist anywhere else in marketing.

Similarly, if you’re leveraging the Display Network, or even Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media network to advertise, you know that based on audience targeting, the people who are seeing your ad have interests that are very closely tied to your product.

Increasing your reach is one thing. But knowing that every single one of those potential customers is an actual potential customer is the real value of PPC advertising.

3. Build a List of Potential Customers

In traditional methods of advertising, potential customers who see your ad and don’t immediately call your business or buy something don’t forget that you exist. But you have no way to contact them after the fact.

In PPC, you have the ability to advertise to everyone who has clicked before via remarketing. Plus, anyone who fills out an interest form on your site but doesn’t immediately buy is recorded in your CRM (customer relationship management) platform.

You can then contact them and sell to them whenever you want. Building a list is a surefire way to keep your sales pipeline full, and that’s another big draw of PPC marketing. Nothing is ever lost!

4. Diversify your audience

The potential customer who sees your ad on nytimes.com may never have searched for your product or service on Google. And the person searching on Google may not be the same person you targeted with that great Facebook ad.

This is another big benefit of PPC: each platform has a different user profile. By experimenting with different types of PPC campaigns, you’ll be able to find people who are interested in your business who you would never have found if you stuck to traditional methods.

5. Get results you can measure

As mentioned in this essay, everything in PPC is quantitative. This means that when you run a campaign on Google, Facebook, or any other platform, you know exactly how much you’re paying for every click, lead, impression, and sale.

This is an unprecedented level of reporting, and it allows marketers managing PPC to constantly evaluate and optimise data. For the budget-conscious business owner, this is a huge draw—not a single penny is ever wasted, and if you know which levers to pull, you can dial up profit margins you might not experience anywhere else.

6. Maximise Your Budget

We mentioned that PPC gives business owners unprecedented visibility into their performance. Bidding strategies play a huge role here. Knowing exactly how much you’re paying for each click is great, but what if nothing happens after that click? Isn’t the whole purpose to drive solid revenue?

This is where automated bidding, which is available on most PPC platforms, can really pay dividends. Business owners running PPC campaigns can optimise their campaigns for things like:

• Target cost per action (CPA): Increase conversions by targeting a specific cost per action (form fillout, newsletter subscription, or other meaningful website action).
• Target return on ad spend (ROAS): If you’re an ecommerce operator and you want to optimise for conversion value, you can use target ROAS to help increase conversion value by targeting a specific return on ad spend (ROAS).

• Maximize conversions: For operators who want to optimize for conversions, but just want to spend their full budget rather than targeting a specific CPA.
• Maximise conversion value: For operators who want to optimise conversion value but just want to spend their full budget rather than targeting a specific ROAS,.
• Maximise clicks: Set your average daily budget, and the Google Ads system automatically manages your bids to get you the most clicks within your budget.

Remember when we mentioned that PPC is low-risk? It’s the ability to set daily and lifetime budgets, and not spend more money than is absolutely necessary to get the exact results you want, that makes PPC an extremely viable option for business owners looking to maximize value while staying within budget.

Better PPC management means more revenue for your business

That’s it. We’ve explained what PPC management is, how it works, some of the popular channels you can leverage, and what it can do for your business.

All of that is fine, but if you’re not a PPC professional, where do you start?

Many business owners manage their PPC accounts at home, and that’s a great strategy. But if you want to get results that can lead to solid growth while also freeing you up to focus on other areas of your business, we always recommend hiring a professional.

Whichever path you choose, know that leveraging PPC management is always a positive choice for your business.

Frequently Asked Questions About- PPC management

By understanding and implementing effective PPC management strategies, you can leverage the full potential of digital advertising and lead your business to continued growth and success.

Conclusion

PPC management is a powerful and dynamic tool that can significantly boost your business’s growth and revenue. By effectively managing your PPC campaigns, you can increase visibility, attract qualified traffic, build a list of potential customers, and diversify your audience. The scalable nature of PPC ensures that every dollar spent can be accounted for, allowing for precise adjustments and optimisation. Whether you choose to manage your PPC campaigns in-house or hire a professional, leveraging PPC management is a strategic move that promises a substantial return on investment. Start harnessing the potential of PPC management today to take your business to new heights.