PPC and critical tips for success

Anyone who has ever dabbled in digital advertising has heard the term PPC.

In the following short article, Eliad Malol, CEO of the Oasis Media advertising agency, explains what it is, and what is behind the guiding principles of sponsored promotion that brings desired results to the bottom line.

Spoiler: No, this is not about ways to make money from home or get rich quickly on the Internet.

So what?

We saw fit to create a reliable and simple Hebrew source of information on PPC even for people who are not from the field, but perhaps need to understand it for various reasons. Through short questions and answers, we will get to know this world, and we will try to simplify and break it down into its elements.

Come on?

Let's start at the beginning: what exactly is PPC?

Abbreviation of Pay Per Click, which means that the advertiser pays for each click of the surfer on his ad. If we advertise in the Google search engine, for example, every time we present an ad to the searchers and they click on it to reach the landing page or our website - we will pay for it. If you clicked on a competitor's ad (oh my) then we won't pay for it. Over time, the term became a description not only of the form of payment to the advertising platform but also synonymous with the profession of those who engage in the sponsored promotion. The men and women of the PPC.

As of 2020, there is no doubt that in most of the world Google's search engine is the most common by a considerable margin: 76% of all searches in the world via desktop and 86% via mobile devices. On the reasonable assumption that someone is interested in starting to advertise on Google - which platforms does Google offer him?

It's true, Google does control huge advertising of real estate. In addition to its search engine, where you can advertise to those looking for a particular service or product (Search Ads), the Google Ads advertising system also offers its media network (Google Display Network) through which you can display ads While the potential customers are surfing the many websites around the internet.

In addition, with the help of Google's media network, it is also possible to reach people while they are watching YouTube, checking emails in Gmail, or using various applications. Impressive, right?

All of this is right on the edge because any such field can be developed and reach a very high level of complexity. For example, you can connect the product catalog from your website to the Google advertising system and run a dynamic remarketing campaign throughout the network. What will happen if you do this is that the surfers will browse their favorite website and see the products they were exposed to on your website, which will hopefully lead to an increase in conversion rates.

Speaking of e-commerce, Google offers Shopping campaigns, which are a bit more complex to set up and maintain but provide another very effective advertising option. We will not dive into the depth of this topic here. Maybe in another special article in the future.

Let's say I'm interested in advertising some service or business. How smart would it be on my part to put my advertising budget specifically on PPC on Google, compared to, say, the advertising platforms of social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn or even Twitter? What is the rationale and relative advantage here?

The different advertising systems meet different needs - of the business and its customers. A major reason for choosing the Google search network is when the analysis of the target audience indicates that they have the intent to purchase or test the service or product. That is, the surfer has a need and is actively looking for an answer to it.

The media network works a little more like Facebook - people usually go there to scroll through their feed, and we arouse the need in the customer or bring it to the notice.

In most cases, we don't log into Facebook to search. Most of the time we just scroll through the feed.

However, Essig says that the media network can also be based on intelligent segmentation of the audience and it is possible to reach even those who have expressed a purchase intention in the past.

What do you need to start doing PPC?

Every quality advertising campaign begins with analyzing the business, the market, and the target audience and setting measurable goals and objectives.

From these, the use of the relevant platform was derived. If the Google search network meets the needs of the advertising campaign, we will start by researching the words of the field. Let's understand what the world of content is that is relevant to us:

• What are people looking for?

• What needs do they have? And what is important to them? What issues arise "from the field"?

• Which competitors operate in the field?

This is a very significant step in building the campaign, because, in fact, it will outline the allocation of the budget between the campaigns, the writing of the content for the ads, and the limits of the advertising sector.

What principles are important to adhere to in order to produce a high-quality and effective PPC campaign?

The most important principle is to understand the surfer's state of mind and how the product or service of the business I promote might help him. How does he feel when he is looking for my product - is he hungry? Does it hurt? is he excited Happy? Afraid? This will help to make the messages precise and to answer him in the most natural and human way - which will ultimately help to raise the click-through rate (CTR) because we managed to make him curious.

Beyond that, it is important to understand at what stage in the purchase process the customer is (the Funnel). Is he just at the beginning - doing a market survey and finding out about options? Or is he already locked in on the product and brand and is in the process of comparing prices, and actually already has his credit card in hand?

We will adapt different messages to surfers at different stages and emphasize different advantages of the product respectively. Beyond that, we will invest in different budgets for them. Usually, the surfers who are already very close to the purchase are the ones we would like to compete for more in order to close the deal.

Is there a way to know in advance how much the campaign will cost me per month?

When doing word research you get a certain estimate of the costs of clicking on the relevant keywords. This is not an exact index, but it does give a certain assessment of the degree of competitiveness in the field and the orders of magnitude of the budgets that must be allocated. Beyond that, the cost of the campaign depends on the goals and objectives set for the client, and we will strive for the maximum return on investment (ROI) for him.

What can be done to learn from the results and improve them as the campaign runs and accumulates more data and information?

Campaign optimization is a discipline in itself. Really, really (really) to the point, we can say that the more data there is, the better we will assess whether the performance meets the defined goals.

An interesting thing that can be done, in the context of word research and a better understanding of the target audience, is to check the terms that surfers actually searched for - Search Terms. After we have defined the keywords relevant to us and the campaign has gained enough traffic, we can get a glimpse of the intricacies of our surfers' searches! It is possible that they will give us ideas for messages that we did not think of, or maybe they will give us ideas for terms that we should exclude from our campaign, so as not to bring in irrelevant surfers and spend money in vain. After all, our payment model is PPC - payment for each click, remember?

Where do you get updated on everything that's hot in the PPC field?

Google updates, websites dealing with digital marketing, professional groups on Facebook, podcasts - there are a lot of sources! We will make a reservation and say that in order to really have your hand on the pulse, you must really live the field, therefore for the promotion of your business, it is recommended to use an advertising agency whose people follow all the news, become professional every day and gain experience from a wide variety of clients.