Beginner’s Guide: How to Do PPC Marketing Like a Pro

As the digital landscape continues to evolve, more and more companies are looking to specialists who can tailor a marketing strategy that reaches a targeted audience – without exceeding budgets. PPC marketing meets this need. 

It’s a scalable online marketing model that provides a cost-effective solution for businesses of all sizes. But it can only be effective if it’s done properly. 

Here’s a beginner’s PPC marketing guide for those keen to do PPC like a pro!

How do PPC ads work?

The pay-per-click (PPC) marketing model is completely online and fully scalable, which makes it a suitable option for everything from emerging businesses to established companies. PPC campaigns include various advert formats, including search and display ads, with potential customers clicking on the link and – hopefully – converting to revenue-boosting action. 

The advertisers only pay for every click on the advert, making this a quantifiable advertising method that – when done like a pro – brings the advertiser real results. Just to confuse the situation, PPC marketing is also referred to as CPC (cost-per-click) marketing or SEM (search engine marketing). 

What are PPC ad campaign types?

One of the great features of PPC marketing is that there are several campaigns from which to choose. As a PPC marketing pro, you will need to analyse the client’s business and expectations to better tailor a PPC campaign that will bring about real results. The PPC ad types include:

• Search ads: This is the most common PPC advert type which is a text advert that shows up in SERPs (search engine results pages).

• Display ads: These are generally image-based adverts that feature on other websites and social media pages. 

• Social: This is an advert that features on social media either on the audience feed or within their profile. 

• Remarketing: Also known as retargeting PPC advertising, this ad form uses cookies on users’ browsers to show them adverts specific to previous online searches. 

• Price comparison ads: This is where websites gather and display prices and special offers including comparisons between competitor sites. 

• Shopping ads: This is where your advert shows up on a carousel or search page dependent on keywords. 

• Affiliate ads: This is PPC advertising that promotes a product or service on search engines, price comparison websites, trafficked websites and more. 

What tools do you need to conduct PPC marketing?

To achieve ‘pro marketing’ status in the PPC world, you need to be employing the best software tools to conduct operations. Here’s a look at the dominant PPC marketing tools you can use. 

PPC insight tools

You want to know what your customer’s competitors are doing so that you can draw on what works, and tailor their PPC marketing campaign for more effect. Tools such as SEMRush, SpyFu and Bing Ads Intelligence provide business intelligence into competitors’ adverts and keywords. With such PPC insight tools, you can craft a marketing campaign that is relevant, timely and targeted. 

PPC build tools 

To actually create your PPC campaign, you’re going to need PPC build tools such as Adwords Editor, Unbounce, or Bing Ads Editor which are great for creating dedicated landing pages. 

Collaborative PPC tools 

Once you’ve built your PPC account, you require a collaborative tool to share all documents, images and files. Some of the most prominent collaborative tools are OneDrive, Dropbox and G Suite.

PPC project management tool

You’re going to need to keep on top of your PPC marketing campaign so that you can shift it where necessary if it’s not achieving the marketing goals. That’s why a good project management tool is vital. This should have multi-tiered features accessible to multiple users for recurring tasks. Some of the better options include Trello, Basecamp, Acquisio, and TeamworkPM. 

PPC reporting tools

In order to keep your customer updated on the progress of the PPC campaign, a dedicated PPC reporting tool can be used. You want a streamlined reporting option that gives you updated insight on the marketing success or challenges. Some of the reporting options available include Google Data Studio which connects with Google Analytics and AdWords. 

Is PPC marketing effective?

Absolutely! When you’re incorporating the best in PPC marketing tools and have put together an effective advertising campaign that achieves your PPC marketing objectives. Here’s a look at the many benefits of a functional marketing campaign. 

PPC ads can be adjusted 

You can manage the keywords in your PPC ads, ad placement, and budget. To ensure your advert is performing as it should, you can run an A/B split test with different adverts to see which brings a bigger return on investment and adjust accordingly. 

PPC ads are measurable

You create PPC adverts using reliable, consumer-driven data, making you much more likely to achieve your desired goals. The nature of PPC advertising is also inherently useful for your clients as you can measure exactly how successful the advertising campaign is and where they’re getting their value for money. 

PPC ads target ideal customers

With your PPC advert, you’re actually targeting a much more willing audience which means a much higher conversion rate. You can even bid on things such as keywords as well as analyse past online activity and target key demographics. 

PPC ads bring about fast results

Organic ranking is a great way to establish yourself as an industry leader. However, this takes time, sometimes months or years. Many companies don’t have the time or resources to wait for organic market growth.

PPC marketing fits this space perfectly. With an optimised PPC advert, you can reach audiences immediately and start seeing results in no time. 

PPC ads are budget-friendly

Your customers might not have a massive ad spend, but that doesn’t matter regarding PPC advertising. A budget-friendly PPC campaign can be customised to fit the customer’s budget and scaled up or down where necessary. (Along with a spending cap to prevent breaking the budget.)

If you want to truly do PPC marketing like a pro, you need to work with the best. ClickTrain was developed by marketers who want to grow and build a new ecosystem within the PPC space.