How Can PPC Help Out a Small Business?

PPC, or pay-per-click advertising, is one of the most popular forms of online advertising, and for good reason. PPC campaigns help small businesses reach more people, target specific audiences, and save money. What’s more, the power of PPC advertising for small businesses is just as tangible today in 2021 as it’s ever been. In fact, because more and more businesses have shifted to online models, PPC may be more important now than ever.

Simple keywords and ads are the foundation of Search Engine Advertising. Your ads will appear for certain keywords you select. That is what Search Engine Advertising is all about. Essentially, you want your ad to show up every time someone types in, let’s say, the word plumber on Google.

You need to increase your brand awareness as a small business to succeed. If you want your customers to love your website, you must put effort into creating it. Finding your target customers is the most crucial part of this effort. With PPC advertising, you can do just that.

Comrade has a team of digital marketing experts that helps businesses create effective ads and initiate a streamlined PPC campaign. Let’s look at the ins and outs of PPC, as well as what we do here in-house, to help our clients.

What Exactly is PPC and Why Does Everyone Use It?

PPC, or pay-per-click, is advertising that helps drive traffic to your website in a cost-effective manner. With this method, you only pay for a PPC advertisement when a viewer clicks through your site, saving money on those who may visit your site but aren’t truly engaging with it.

But why is PPC for small business marketing strategies so great? There are a lot of advantages to pay-per-click advertising. Keep reading to see our top reasons to incorporate a PPC campaign into your small business.

PPC is Cost-Effective

Since you only pay for PPC ads when a searcher interacts with your website, this technique is a quick way to save money, allowing you to better budget your ad spend. So, instead of wasting money on ads that no one is interacting with, you ensure you’re only paying for true impressions.

PPC is Easily Tracked and Adjusted to Your Needs

A PPC campaign allows you to measure an ad’s effectiveness so your team knows exactly what the return on investment is, without wasting extra money. Additionally, you can directly target the audience of your choosing based on a whole host of demographics for a super customized result.

But the perks don’t end there. Even once you’ve begun a PPC campaign, you can still make changes to improve the campaign as it goes.

In the traditional advertisement, once you submit your finalized product, you cannot make any changes to it. The moment you decide where and when the ad runs, it’s done. You must let the ad run until the end. The messages can’t be tested or optimized while they’re running.

If clicks aren’t converting into users, PPC campaigns allow you to make a swift decision or change. By making changes quickly and quickly, you’re also able to measure which ads work better than others.

PPC lets you easily find the optimal formula for your small business by allowing you to test different formats.

PPC Provides Fast Results

If you’re looking for fast, tangible results, PPC is the way to go. You will be able to see the impact of these campaigns nearly instantaneously and can boost results with good SEO practices.

Push and Pull Marketing

PPC ads also make good use of a thing called push and pull marketing. This technique opens them to a huge field of possibilities when it comes to PPC and search engines.

Push Marketing is a technique using which you send a message to a consumer. Your offer may not necessarily be the one they are seeking, but you still reach out to them.

In contrast, pull marketing occurs when consumers actively search for what you offer and you pull them towards that solution. Though they know they need your type of service, they hadn’t yet determined who to choose.

You always get the right potential customers

When it comes to PPC campaigns, you can target your most appropriate audience and create tailor-made campaigns to maximize your results.

A local store, for example, selling office supplies, would tailor their campaign specifically for their local area. In addition, if your store only opens in the morning, you can also only run your ads during that time, ensuring no customers waste their time in the shop.

Simply put, if your audience searches for you, then PPC can help them find you.

PPC and SEO work very well together

Having an integrated approach is beneficial in many areas of marketing. PPC and SEO can be used together as well.

• A PPC campaign may inform your SEO strategy and vice versa

You will receive consistent traffic to your website when SEO is done correctly. However, despite common belief, the changes do not occur overnight. In order to contribute meaningfully to PPC campaigns, it takes months to gather enough data. You can, however, create long-tail keywords in AdWords once you have enough data about search queries.

This can also be done using Google AdWords, which allows you to see results sooner.

• Brand Awareness

Earlier this year, Econsultancy asked an expert panel about how PPC impacts SEO. Their conclusion was that PPC makes your brand more visible to your customers.

Creating awareness of your brand will result in more searches for your brand and eventually for the brand + keyword.

• Recurring Visitors

The purpose of PPC is to attract visitors to your site and to show them what you have to offer. Customers are more likely to revisit your website once they become familiar with it and your services.

What Is the Right Small Business PPC Strategy?

Now that we understand why PPC is so beneficial to small businesses, it’s time to think about strategy. To get the most out of your budget, you will want to consider these PPC optimization options to ensure you take advantage of this marketing strategy. Here are our tips.

Get the Sufficient Budget

Ask yourself these questions first when choosing a budget for your industry: Where do you want your campaign to run?

The next step is to analyze the cost per click in that particular area after you have established where you want your ads to appear. Google AdWords Keyword Planner is one such tool that can assist you with this. As a rule of thumb, you’ll want to allocate at least ten clicks per day to your budget. As a result, your campaigns will accrue enough data for efficient optimization.

Start Small and Plan on Growing Slowly

Rome wasn’t built in a day. It’s important for small businesses in 2021 to take the time to implement their PPC strategies in a slow, measured way. PPC takes a bit of trial and error, so start small as you will surely adjust your keywords and additional PPC metrics over a short period of time to perfect your ads and yield greater ROI.

When it comes to PPC optimization and your budget, you want to spend as little on your clicks as possible. This means you’ll get more clicks for your budget, but you’ll also get a better return on your ad spend.

For searches on Google, advertisers are required to pay based on a metric called Quality Score. Advertising campaigns that are more relevant and optimized are less expensive than those that are not. Organizing your ad campaigns into the right ad groups and directing them to the appropriate landing pages is the way to make the most of your monthly ad budget. You will be saving a lot of money from the savings in the long run, even if it means producing ten new landing pages for each ad group.

Use the Right Keywords for PPC Optimization

When beginning a PPC campaign, selecting the right keywords can be a cumbersome task, but it’s important to get it right.

Many small businesses that don’t have previous PPC experience will lean on broad keywords that make it challenging to target their potential customers. Instead, PPC for small business strategies should rely on specific keywords that directly correlate to your business. Are you a small bakery in Chicago? While “bakery in Chicago” will garner a ton of results, “bakery in Lakeview East” will get down to the specifics, making you a top search result.

Additionally, instead of spending endless hours figuring out the best keywords for your site, rely on tools like Google’s Keywords planner, SpyFu, or AdPlexity to see what your biggest competitors are using for keywords.

Consider your own site, services, and even your competitors when doing keyword research. Tools such as SEMrush, Spyfu, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Ahrefs can help. If you want to come up with variations of content keywords, you can use various tools, including the Keyword Planner in Google AdWords or MergeWords.

Keep in mind the specificity of your keywords when selecting them. If you use too broad a keyword, you’ll receive unwanted queries. If you use too specific a keyword, no one will search for it.

Be Assertive in the Language You Use

Be bold in all of your PPC ad copy. Small businesses often make the mistake of shying away from their positive attributes, thinking they can’t compete boldly with larger competition. Always be confident and assertive in the language you use for your PPC ad copy. The confidence will come across positively to your prospective customers or clients.

Localize Your PPC Advertisement

Working with a small budget when implementing PPC ads for your small business? Don’t worry, geo-targeting is the perfect solution.

Instead of setting yourself up for broad search results, focus on keywords that are specific to your area so locals easily find your business. As we said before, using “Chicago” in a keyword may feel like a great way to draw customers from far and wide, but zeroing in on your specific neighborhood will make a world of difference.

This method for optimizing a PPC campaign isn’t that challenging, either. Google AdWords allows you to focus on your geographic area, targeting the customers you are most likely to serve.

Focus on a Call to Action

PPC ads are a great place to implement your call to action! Realistically, you have a specific action you’re hoping customers will take when implementing your PPC advertisement, and with a clear call to action, you can make sure they do just that.

This is quite simple. Consider what that call to action is and implement it with the ad, sharing just one simple action that makes it clear to customers what they should do next. Don’t overcomplicate it!

PPC Advertising is Fast and Effective

PPC is quicker than many other kinds of advertising and digital marketing. Search engine optimization (SEO) is hugely effective but can take weeks or longer to become effective as it depends on Google and other search engine algorithms to update. With PPC, you can buy ad space, and it goes up. It’s as simple as that.

It’s super effective, too.

Never Leave Your PPC Campaign on its Own

Since a PPC advertisement can remain in place for an extended period, it’s important to continually monitor it to ensure you still get the best results.

Without supervision, a PPC campaign can have a drop in effectiveness, so continually adapting and improving is a must. To do this, remain up to date on the latest analytics so you can make any necessary adjustments as you go. Revising campaigns will not only improve your ads but help them be more effective in generating premium results for your small business.

PPC Campaigns is Better for New Products

PPC is best if you have new products. If you’re trying to reach people with something exciting and fresh, there’s more chance people will click. Get the pitch right on your ad, and you’ll be reaching a whole new audience very quickly.

You Only Pay for Action Taken

Finally, remember that you only pay for the ads when people click on them. PPC for websites and businesses is popular because it costs less and delivers quick results.

Consider Hiring a Professional

If you aren’t quite ready to handle the implementation of PPC campaigns for your small business, a professional (like our team at Comrade Digital Marketing Agency!) can help. With extensive experience optimizing PPC for small business campaigns, our experts can ensure you get the most out of your pay-per-click strategy for a premium, cost-effective return on investment.

To get started with your PPC campaign, give us a call at 312-265-0580 today!