Most people ignore search results beyond the first page. Paid search allows you to appear at the top of search results instantly, rather than waiting for you to get organic search rankings. For many new businesses, it’s a better use of resources to go with paid search over organic search.
All you have to do is select some search terms, create advertisements, and wait for people to click. The hard part is getting the right people to click your ads, getting them to the correct page, and not wasting money on clicks that are never going to convert.
Getting the Setup Right
Generally, Setup gets under-appreciated. A poorly structured campaign can waste your money. Wrong keyword match types, missing negative keywords, or ads that direct users to pages that are not optimised can spend your budget quickly. We want to get the structure right from the start, as it sets the precedent for everything that follows.
This involves conversion tracking from the beginning as well. Without this, there is no way to determine if the campaign is successful. We track the information that drives your business, such as calls, form submissions, and purchases, so that rather than reporting the total number of ad clicks, reporting tells you the information that matters.
Ongoing Management
Campaigns have a tendency to drift when left to run unmanaged. Search behaviors change and so do competition behaviors and ad fatigue. The only thing that can make a campaign better over time is paint and that comes with looking after it day in day out.
We manage campaigns for businesses that want results but do not want to handle the time consuming learning that goes along with it.
Budget
There isn’t a strict minimum, but there are costs that are too low to optimise data collection. Each market is unique and the competitive landscape can drastically change cost per click, so deciding on a specific market may require some research. We will provide our honest recommendation on what we think is an appropriate starting budget before coming to an agreement.
How It Works Alongside SEO
When it comes to search marketing, PPC and SEO work together. While you lay the groundwork for organic rankings, you go ahead and run a PPC campaign to drive traffic. Additionally, the data from paid search campaigns can help direct your efforts for SEO. In competitive markets, showing up in both the paid and organic results often performs better than either channel in isolation.
For a beginning digital marketer, PPC is a great opportunity to test different messages and offers before committing to an extended content and SEO strategy. You can measure fairly quickly what messages perform.
Who It Tends to Work For
PPC is ideal for businesses that want to see results in weeks rather than months. It can also help businesses that experience seasonal fluctuations in demand and where being visible at certain times of the year can be meaningful. PPC can help businesses in slow organic markets as well, including new businesses that are just starting to offer new services with new physical locations.
Getting your business started with PPC requires a low budget and a short-term contract. More importantly, it requires understanding how your business measures success (conversion). You must have the flexibility to let new data drive new decisions. Of course, any new campaign always requires an element of trial and error.