How To Do Effective Pay Per Click Advertising on FaceBook and Google Adwords

You’ve probably noticed the ads that appear at the top of Google’s search results after you have entered something in your search bar.

If so, then you’ve already been introduced to today’s topic and you can think of the aforementioned example as the starting point of traditional pay per click marketing, also referred to as PPC.

How does pay per click work, you ask?

In brief, traditional PPC advertising, also called paid search, makes it possible for businesses to drive targeted traffic to their website almost immediately by purchasing advertising space at the top of search engines, such as Google, or via other pay per click sites such as Yahoo and Bing.

Of course, there are other factors that also affect your ability to place ads at the top of Google that are more than just monetary, which we will get into.

Needless to say, targeting traffic that wants your services or goods on a major search engine can drastically improve your profitability and grow your business.

Indeed, research shows that people click on traditional PPC ads more than any other form of digital ad.

Every time someone clicks on the ad, you, the advertiser, pay the search engine a small fee. If you want to do this, your business can obtain this coveted advertising space in something similar to an auction (more on that to come shortly).

In short, paid search has been proven to result in significant conversions at a relatively low cost and that is all you need to know.

In a way, you get paid per click because you have targeted people who are in the mode to make a purchase in your specific area of business – people that would have been previously unreachable otherwise.

The benefit of PPC over SEO is that you can drive traffic to your website within hours; driving the same amount of traffic via SEO and other content marketing strategies can take months and, in some cases, even longer.

(Although SEO is certainly a very valid option for generating more traffic in the long run, especially when combined with PPC!).

Then, you can sustain those customers with Yocale’s marketing features.

Another benefit of PPC is that it’s easy to scale. It also yields one of the best ROI.

In addition to paid search, there is also social PPC, wherein you advertise not via a search engine but on social networks. The list of pay per click sites when it comes to social PPC includes Twitter, Facebook and the like.

While social PPC doesn’t target specific people looking to buy a given a product, it can still generate sales. It also has the ability to facilitate other forms of engagement, such as generating likes.

Social PPC, for the record, is ideal if you want to increase exposure to your brand. It also tends to be less expensive than traditional PPC.

Even small businesses that may be stagnating in terms of growth can benefit from even a small investment in pay per click advertising. Here is an in-depth look at the benefits of pay per click marketing in case we haven’t converted you yet.

Now that we’ve answered the question how does pay per click work, we can move on to the most important part of this article. How can you succeed at pay per click marketing?

Don’t worry – we will show you exactly how to make money with pay per click.

Indeed, many campaigns do not make it that far; they start off with lofty goals but they fail to apply the strategies that are absolutely necessary in order to see results (that will be discussed in this article).

The thing about PPC is that it can be expensive, especially in the quest to target popular keywords, and if not approached in the right way, it can lead to a net loss.

One important aside before we continue: regardless of whether you use Google Adwords or Facebook, keep the following in mind to determine whether your investment is proving valuable or not.

Neil Patel recommends that you balance your customer acquisition cost (CAC) with the customer’s lifetime value (LTV). Never allow the CAC to exceed the LTV.

How To Do Effective Pay Per Click Marketing On Google Adwords

While there is a long list of pay per click sites to advertise on, Google Adwords is the biggest of them all, capable of producing significant conversions due to the fact that you can target people who are very likely to make a purchase.

So, how does one obtain this very coveted spot at the top of Google’s search results? As we mentioned above, it all comes down to something akin to an auction. You, the advertiser, bid on a given keyword.

This action is a little different than most: the highest bidder doesn’t always win.

Google selects the advertiser on several different factors, including the advertiser’s Ad rank (this is calculated by multiplying CPC bid (i.e. the amount you bid) and Quality Score (this factors in click-through rate, relevance and the quality of your landing page).

However, Google rewards advertisers who produce good ads and the price you pay for clicks gets cheaper over time as your score improves.

Now, on to the most important part: how to do effective pay per click Google advertising on Google Adwords. Think of it as a Google Adwords tutorial.

Keep in mind that in the beginning, you want only to spend as little as a few dollars every day.

1) An Organized Structure: Campaigns, Ad Groups, Ad Text and Landing Pages

When it comes to pay-per-click advertising, a significant focus is often put on keywords. Of course, the importance of keywords should not be diminished, but there are equally important aspects to also consider – specifically the structure of your ad campaign.

Both Google and Bing, for example, look at the structure of your campaign to determine its relevancy. Moreover, a poorly organized campaign is often much more difficult to correct down the line.

So, what does this structure look like? Well, the most successful pay per click advertising campaigns have five structural aspects: the campaign itself, ad groups, keywords (this will be a section all on its own), ad text and landing pages. Here are some important things to keep in mind.

  • Ad Groups. Ideally, you would create one ad group for each product you sell.
  • Text Ad. The most important factor when it comes to text ad is that it should only contain keywords that pertain to that particular ad group. However, getting people to click on the ad also means that you have to write something click-worthy.

Much has been written on the topic of writing successful text ads, but in general, your headline and description, for starters, need to be powerfully written. Your descriptions should also include call-to-actions.

  • Landing Pages. The landing page should match up as closely as possible with your content. Stay clear from language that reads like spam. Landing pages also need to be optimized for mobile users because people are increasingly using their smartphones to search.

To optimize your landing pages for mobile users, ensure that your website is both responsive and snappy. Also ensure that you have the “click to call” option set up on all ads.

2) Ongoing Keyword Research

The people who experience the most success with Adwords are those who do the following things. First, keyword research must be ongoing, otherwise you could miss out on long-tail keywords, which have the potential to drive a lot of traffic to your site.

Your ongoing keyword research also needs to include negative keywords – that is, getting rid of keywords that aren’t relevant to your business.

It goes without saying, but keywords should always be closely tied to the products you sell. Secondly, they should also always pertain to their particular ad group as well.

That leads us to our next point, which is that you want to ensure that you target long-tail keywords in your search – don’t limit yourself to only the most popular keywords – and certainly not merely one very competitive keyword.

Long-tail keywords drive a significant portion of search-based traffic, which is why you should target them; they are also less expensive due to the fact that they aren’t as competitive as more popular keywords. You can even do five to seven long-tail searches for increased specificity.

3) Keeping Tabs On Your Ad Campaigns

The third aspect of a successful pay per click Google advertising is regularly managing your campaign – keeping tabs on all the important metrics.

This means that you will want to do split testing, which is the process of creating two identical ads but altering one aspect of it such as the headline, in order to test its effectiveness. This will allow you to increase your click-through rate, which is one of Google’s Adwords’ Quality Score factors.

You should also apply split testing to your landing pages.

How To Do Effective Pay Per Click Marketing On Facebook

When it comes to successful social PPC, the approach is both similar and different than paid search. Here are some tips.

1) Identify Your Target Audience

There is a different set of strategies when using social PPC on Facebook. Instead of identifying your target audience via keywords as you would on Google Adwords, you have to identify your target audience based on interests and demographic information.

Ideally, you would target ads at a Custom Audience. A custom audience is a list of your existing customers.

Before you delve into PPC, however, it is mainly a good idea if you have 1,000 or so users in your custom audience if you want to generate any significant CTR.

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to create a Custom Audience on Facebook.

To expand your reach even further, you can use your custom audience to build a lookalike audience – an audience that is based on your custom audience and yet larger. Here is how to create a lookalike audience.

When it comes to your target audience, you can also layer your targeting options.

For example, if you own a hair salon, you can target people between the ages of 25-35, but also target people based on their purchasing behaviour for even more powerful targeting. For example, you could target people who have bought shampoo for brassy hair.

This makes it more likely that they would purchase your deep conditioning product designed for colored hair.

When it comes to your target audience, however, it is a bit of a balancing act.

By that, we mean that while you certainly want to identify your target audience and create ads specifically aimed at them, you also want to avoid creating too narrow of a focus, otherwise you risk alienating potential prospects.

2) Structure Your Campaign Around Your Objective

Just like traditional PPC, structure is also very important if you want to optimize the performance of your campaign on Facebook. Facebook’s structure looks like this: campaigns, ad sets and ads.

It is imperative to structure your campaign around your particular objectives, whether you want to drive traffic to your website or you want to generate more conversions. Here is a more in-depth look at structuring a pay per click campaign on Facebook.

3) Design Your Ad Well From Start to Finish

By this, we mean a lot of different things. First of all, consider that the visual nature of your ad is equally as important as the words you use. You want to avoid a potential lead clicking on your ad only to be taken to a landing page that is not as visually pleasing as the ad itself.

A well-designed ad also means playing by Facebook’s rules as far as ad dimensions and ad copy go. Remember that Facebook’s ad dimensions continually change, so stay on top of them.

Your ad copy is very important for your Relevancy Score, which is akin to Adwords’ Quality Score. (You will pay less as your Relevance Score increases). In order to create powerful ad copy, use your leading ad copy from your traditional PPC campaigns and use it on Facebook.

Quick and dirty tip: Incorporate Facebook’s call buttons in your Facebook ads just as you should with paid search in order to eliminate the possibility of losing a potential lead on your landing page.

When it comes to landing pages, remember that they can’t serve as a sales page as they would with traditional PPC.

Instead, offer something enticing in order to obtain the individual’s email address. Once you have succeeded with that step, you can follow this up by sending them content that they will find useful before you finally make a case for your product or service.

4) Measure Your Campaign

Measuring the effectiveness of your campaign is important in all marketing endeavors, including social PPC. Here are some things to keep an eye on: return on ad spend, cost per click, reach and click-through rate.

5) Additional Things to Consider

There are two additional elements that come up in a discussion of successful paid search. The first is remarketing, which is the process of tracking people who have visited your site before but have yet to buy anything.

As they move through the web, you can show them additional targeted ads, whether on their smartphone, tablet, etc. Remarketing has proven very successful for both types of PPC, whether on Google Adwords or Facebook.

The second thing is ad extensions. For those who land a top spot at the top of Google’s search results, ensure that you are making use of ad extensions on your ads to increase click-through rates.

For example, this could be a map that identifies the location of your business or extensions for deals such as Cyber Monday.

Lastly, the spreadsheet program Excel can also prove to be a handy tool during your campaign creation. Here is a free Excel guide.

As you can see, it is possible to make money with pay per click and even earn a great ROI if you take care to plan your PPC campaign carefully.

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