Did you know small businesses can have just as much online presence as big companies?
The online space does not care about the number of staff or amount of brick and mortar locations you have. Instead, it is a playing field to put your product right in front of potential users.
Although it can take time to build a large audience, the right strategies can significantly impact the growth your small business experiences.
Investing in the benefits of PPC management can be the difference between waiting for users to find your website and actively gaining traffic. If you are a small business owner, there is no reason to not be investing in the benefits of PPC management.
What Is PPC?
PPC stands for pay per click advertising, and it is basically what it sounds like.
Companies fund keywords and campaigns to generate traffic from potential users searching the web. They are only charged when users click on their ad.
The fee goes back to the search engine your user is searching on, like Google or Bing. They are considered the advertiser because they display your ad at the top of a user’s search results.
The more money you put behind an ad, the more likely it is to be displayed, provided it matches search keywords. Ads work on a bid system because there is a limit to how many come up at a time.
This balances search results between paid ads and SEO results, but paid ads always show up first.
Here Are 8 Benefits of PPC Management
1. Fast Feedback
Speed is one of the most important benefits of PPC management.
Instead of the time and patience required to build organic traffic via SEO, PPC can literally build traffic at the click of a button.
Okay, more like a few clicks. Setting up a PPC campaign still only takes a few minutes, though.
Even if you have no prior online strategy knowledge, most advertisers walk you through the set-up process step by step. Their systems have already done the research on keywords and competition, leaving you to decide which campaigns to run.
Once you have gone through the process, your ad is up and running instantly. It has the potential to generate traffic within minutes of you making your choices.
You can even go back into your campaign and make edits in real-time.
2. Specific Targeting
Specific targeting in PPC campaigns means choosing the best combination of tactics. You can decide where you want to meet your audience and at what time.
Are consumers finding you on their mobile devices or desktops? Maybe they take their tablet to meetings and do most of their searching from there.
Do they look for your services in the morning or at night? Are they actively searching in the middle of the day?
Narrow down the kind of searches you want to match. The more you understand the devices, keywords, and search times of your audience, the better your chances of being exactly what they are looking for.
You can even do this to optimize a flash sale or seasonal special, typically marketed to a low-rate consumer.
The specific benefits of PPC management allow you tweak your ad to reach this audience. In the meantime, your premium products can still run on a different campaign.
3. Build a Better Brand Recognition
Some industries, like automotive, retail, or travel are extremely saturated. There are many competitors all vying for the same kind of consumer.
One of the most overlooked benefits of PPC management is the ability to gain impressions.
Remember, your ad is only charged when a potential consumer clicks on it. Sometimes, they click on the competitor above or below you. Still, this means your brand was in front of their eyes for free.
Over time, this exposure can steer customers your way.
They have subconsciously become familiar with your ad every time they search for something within your industry. This makes them more likely to choose you, or at least know what your brand offers.
4. Reach Local or Global Audiences
Many small businesses assume the benefits of PPC management happen only in an online space. However, they can make a real difference for your brick and mortar stores.
Say you are a locally-owned, small business. You only have one location, which probably means most of your customers are locals familiar with who you are and what you do.
What about tourists or people new to town? How will your coffee shop get their business before Starbucks? Local search results. People constantly search for services in their area, and many search from their mobile phones.
Geolocations have made it easier for companies to target such searches.
They can even do it more efficiently by providing directions and contact information. This takes customers through the entire purchase cycle – from their search straight into your door.
5. Enjoy the Many Ways to Measure
Search engines use KPIs to display the benefits of PPC management. KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, give you a full insight on the performance of your campaign.
They include clicks, views, visits, and the cost of each.
This provides insight on where your money is performing its best and worst. It shows how well keywords are gaining traffic and can indicate behaviors in the market.
Say you are a dentist office. You may have more child dentistry appointments during class breaks, or when it’s time to go back to school.
Such a rise in visits and conversions can help prepare better in the future. This is because KPI trends affect executive decisions like yearly targets and budgets.
KPIs can even show you the route users took to make a purchase.
Some users will go straight to the product offering if they know exactly what they are looking for. Others will visit different landing pages on your website before buying-in.
As a result, PPC campaigns may shed light on your UI experience and internal advertising.
6. Take Advantage of Flexible Budgeting
When KPIs do not perform as well as expected, you can make changes to your campaign before it ends.
Changes can look like boosting your budget for a specific keyword. They can also be moving funds to a new device or different time of day.
You can also make your ads as flexible and specific as the days of the week.
If you are a restaurant promoting happy hour on Fridays, PPC campaigns let you place more money for ads running on this day. If the same restaurant is closed on Monday, you can stop opt to have no ads running during this time.
It is also wise for businesses to set daily limits on their PPC campaigns. Limits allow long-term advertisements to run for their intended time without running out of money.
Otherwise, ads boosted for months at a time are at risk to run out of funds within days.
This is because without a daily limit, the allocated funds are used to outbid the first keyword matches. Bids can quickly add up unless the campaign knows to spread out your funding.
7. Test Different Strategies
Do you want to start using a new social media hashtag? Are you thinking of re-structuring some of the copy on your website?
Before you start saving edits, test your options using PPC.
Set up two or three different campaigns using the copy you plan to switch to. Let them run for a few weeks to a month and analyze the results.
Which group of copy had the best click-through rate? Where did you see the most conversions?
The data will tell you which sets of copy to implement. These benefits of PPC management translate into more efficient positioning on other platforms.
Knowing how to read the numbers in search can tell you how much to boost in social, what to say on your landing pages, and more.
8. Remain Independent from SEO Algorithm Changes
The benefits of PPC management are not only instant, but almost guaranteed. You can be sure your campaign will run based on the parameters set in place without influence from search engine operations.
In other words, PPC does not change based on a new SEO Google algorithm or rank.
SEO also takes time to build an organic following. It requires aligning all kinds of content – web pages, social, blogs – to have the same messaging.
Plus, if you decide to make PPC changes you can do so on the fly. With SEO, changes would have to be a progressive shift in all your efforts.
Also, keep in mind some companies can’t afford to have everything be the same message. If you have a diverse product line, or if your users have distinct demographics, the freedom available with PPC is vital.
You need the flexibility from the benefits of PPC management. Some campaigns may target young adults, others may target settled families with children.
Claim Your Online Space
The benefits of PPC management are waiting to boost your business. From the instant effect of ad campaigns to their flexibility and insights, there is no reason to not invest in this strategy.
Contact us today to start building your traffic and get more conversions.
