Online advertising is exactly what it sounds like – advertising in the digital world. With a large portion of today’s business being done online, it only makes sense to get in on this valuable marketing strategy. One useful way to advertise online is with a method know as pay-per-click, or commonly called ppc.
By using pay-per-click campaigns, an advertiser drives traffic to a site by placing ads and paying for every user click on that ad. There are two major platforms for pay-per-click advertising.
Search Engine PPC
One of the most popular forms of advertising around, search engine advertising, is centered on keyword placement. Advertisers bid for ad placement in the sponsored links section commonly found on a search engine results page. This section is premium real estate since it’s usually at the top of the page. The ad appears when someone searches for the specific keyword up for bid. Every time your ad is clicked, which would take users to your website, a fee is paid to the search engine. The fee is minimal and if a campaign is planned correctly, the value of the traffic to your website supersedes the cost of the click, especially if that visit ends in a sale.
Social Media PPC
The second type of pay-per-click advertising is social media ppc. With this marketing strategy, instead of bidding on keywords, advertisers create promotions to appear on people’s social media feeds or timelines. They can either pay per click on the ad or pay per impression, which is how many times the ad is seen. These types of campaigns are usually based off demographics or topics of interest. As with search engine advertising, the value of the traffic to your site can be much greater than the cost of the ad.
Whether you’re using search engine or social media advertising for you ppc marketing, be sure to set a budget and do research to help you know your audience. Setting goals and knowing how much you can afford to spend on those goals is an important step for any ad initiative. Equally as important is defining who your target audience is and what is the best way to reach them. From there you can design and execute the type of online advertising campaign which will best suit your marketing needs. Don’t forget that both search engine social media sites have built in tools to help you measure your success and plan an even better digital advertising run in the future.
