PPC Services

With pay per click advertising, you only pay when a web user clicks on your ad link and visits your website. As an advertiser, you can set a maximum bid that fits your budget – this will be the cost you pay when someone clicks on your ad. If your bid is £3, the CPC won’t exceed this. However, a higher bid can improve your ad placement to get you seen, and you can always start lower and then increase your bid if your ad performs well.

PPC platforms, including Google Ads, use a quality score system which determines your ad quality compared to your competitors. The score benchmarks whether your ad and landing page are helpful in answering your audience’s search query. The higher you score, the lower your CPC.

If your competitor manages to get a higher quality score than you, your ad can become invisible and your CPC will be higher.

Your click-through rate has a big impact on your quality score. The more clicks you are able to achieve, the better your quality score and ad positio, which will lower your CPC.

Your ad relevance is also a determining factor. If it’s relevant to your targeted keyword and your prospective customers’ search query, you can lower your CPC. If your ad position is high, your CPC will be higher but this may be worthwhile as you will be more likely to drive traffic.

Competitive keywords have a higher CPC because more advertisers are bidding for them. Ad scheduling, location and device targeting, ad extensions and campaign settings also play a part in your CPC. Even the industry you work in has an impact. That’s why attention to detail and expertise is critical in your PPC campaign to ensure you achieve your goals within budget.

PPC and SEO are great digital marketing strategies which work to improve your visibility and traffic. While they both utilise keywords, they have distinct differences.

SEO is a long-term strategy whereby advertisers optimise their website to improve organic traffic. This means you don’t need to pay to rank. The payment model with PPC is the opposite where advertisers pay when a user clicks on their ad. They can set their maximum bid and be flexible with this to achieve their end goal.

Visibility also works differently. With PPC, ads are visible immediately and displayed at the top of search engines’ results pages with a clear label. With SEO, the website is displayed below PPC campaigns and it takes longer to get there.

Because PPC ads are displayed straight away, you have instant results. SEO does take longer to rank and drive traffic so you will see results over the long-term. SEO relies on an upfront investment but in the long-term, it pays for itself because of its ability to drive traffic organically. PPC is costly as each click on your website requires payment, but you can achieve a significant return on investment if done well.

You can achieve a high click-through rate with PPC as you are in charge of the content and design. With SEO, you have to rely on Google’s algorithm to rank highly and get you those clicks.

Quality score is a diagnostic tool used by search engines including Google Ads, which determines the quality and relevance of your ads compared to your competitors. It takes into account keywords and landing pages, and is the driving factor of where your ad will appear and your CPC.

The score is measured from 1 to 10 and if you achieve a high quality score, your ad will perform better at a lower CPC. This is determined by multiple factors. Your click-through rate plays a huge role in your quality score. The more clicks you achieve, the higher your score will be, so you need to ensure your content and keywords are engaging and draw in your prospective customers.

Your ad relevance also determines your quality score. If it’s relevant to your targeted keyword and your prospective customers’ search query, your score will be higher. Your landing page should also be designed to provide a great user experience, as it too plays a part in your score.

If you achieve a high quality score, your ad position will likely be higher meaning you have a greater chance of driving traffic. This means you can also reduce your CPC. You may also be eligible for ad extensions which display more information under your ad, helping it stand out and improving your chance of driving traffic.

Your quality score can be improved. You must ensure that your ad is relevant to what users are searching for and optimise your landing page so that it provides sufficient information, and a great user experience. It’s critical that your keywords are relevant and competitive, and ensure that your ad copy is engaging and drives action. Whether that’s with a simple call to action or you offer prospective buyers something unique.

Whilst keyword targeting is a fundamental aspect of Google Ads, the platform does offer alternative targeting options to help advertisers find their desired audiences. These include:

Location Targeting: Serving ads to users based around their geographical location, such as countries, cities, regions or even a unique radius targeting around a specific location – literally dropping a pin on a map!

Demographic Targeting: Allows you to target users based on demographic data, such as gender, age or parental status.

Device & Platform Targeting: You may opt to show your ads to users on specific devices (such as mobile phones, tablets or desktops) or on particular platforms (such as YouTube or the Google Display Network).

Language Targeting: Serve ads to users who speak specific languages, independently of their geographical location (for example, german speakers within the UK).

Audience Targeting: This includes Remarketing to users who have previously visited your website/app, using custom audience lists based on your own data (such as customer emails), or Similar Audiences, who have algorithmically similar characteristics to your existing customers or website visitors (often called Lookalike Audiences on other channels).

The bidding strategy you use can have a significant impact on the performance of your PPC campaigns. You should choose a bidding strategy based on your campaign goals and objectives. Some common Google Ads bidding strategies include:

Manual CPC Bidding: This allows you to set the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for a click, this will provide full control over all keyword bids individually. This is suitable for campaigns in which you want very granular control over bids, but can be very time consuming to manage and adjust, so may be unwieldy for larger campaigns.

Enhanced CPC Bidding: Similar to Manual CPC, but allows the Google algorithm a greater level of autonomy, automatically adjusting your manual bids based on the likelihood of certain clicks resulting in a conversion. This is suitable for users looking to increase conversions, whilst still maintaining more control over bids than the more algorithmically-led strategies.

Target CPA Bidding: You set a target cost for acquiring a conversion (such as a sale or lead). Google then automatically adjusts your bids to achieve that target CPA. This can be effective for maximising your conversations at a specified cost, but may cause a decrease in visibility.

Maximise Clicks Bidding: With this strategy, Google will automatically adjust bids to get the most clicks within your budget. This is best for advertisers who want to increase website traffic without specific conversion goals.

Target ROAS Bidding: You can a target ROAS (return on ad spend), for example, 300%. Google will then automatically adjust bids to maximise your ROAS to the specified target. This is most effective for ecommerce advertisers looking to maximise revenue whilst maintaining a specific ROI.

Maximise Conversions Bidding: Here Google will automatically adjust keyword bids to get the most conversions within your budget. Effective for advertisers who want to prioritise getting as many conversions as possible, without placing strict cost constraints.

Target Impression Share: With this strategy, you will set a target impression share (e.g. 75%). Google will then automatically adjust bids in order to achieve that impression share. This is best for advertisers who want to dominate visibility for a specific set of keywords, but can be more expensive in terms of media spend.

Your PCC advertising budget will be dependent on a few factors like the cost of your keywords or your conversion rate. However, it’s important to have a benchmark figure in mind to ensure your spend isn’t higher than your return, and so that you can run your campaign well.

Before you go ahead, you need to clearly define your advertising goals and the purpose of the campaign. You may want to improve website traffic, increase sales or visibility, whatever the goal – defining it will help you keep focus and tailor your campaign to achieve it.

Calculating your costs will give you an idea of your expenses. Your average conversion rate can be calculated by dividing the number of conversions with your ad interactions, and then multiplying by 100 to receive a percentage. For example, if you have 100 conversions and 5,000 interactions, your average conversion rate will be 20%. This will give you some idea of how you’re performing and whether you need to improve.

Calculating your average CPC for your sector and chosen keywords will also be worthwhile so you know what to expect. Your monthly budget is just as important, and predicting how much you spend per day, to know your monthly expenditure will help to keep you on track.

If you’re unsure, you can set a test budget to see how your ad performs, and then adjust it accordingly. You also need to consider your margins and expected ROI to calculate whether your campaign will be profitable.

It’s important to monitor your PPC campaign and adjust it accordingly, and the same applies to your budget. If your campaign is performing well, you may want to increase your budget to continue driving sales. On the other hand, if it’s not performing well, you can bid for more competitive keywords which may have a higher cost, but can drive results.

Budget is critical to your PPC campaign and allocating funds to different keywords and campaigns based on their performance will ensure that you get the best value.

Having an accurate measure of success is vital to justifying the continued investment into your PPC campaigns. The specific metrics you track may vary depending on your campaign goals, but some common steps to judge success include:

Define clear goals ahead of launch: Common objectives include generating leads, increasing sales or web traffic, or improving brand awareness.

Track conversions: Use conversion tracking tools (such as Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager) to measure an attribute conversions to your PPC campaigns accurately. Conversions could include actions such as making a purchase, filling out a contact form or downloading a report.

Monitor Click-Through Rates (CTR): Higher CTRs indicate your ad copy is more relevant and engaging. You should gradually remove the lower CTR ads from your ad rotation and introduce new ads over time. This should result in increased performance in the medium-long term.

Assess Quality Score: Quality Score is due to factors such as keyword relevance and landing page quality. A higher quality score results in a lower CPC for your ads. When quality score is low, you should look at making changes to your ad copy and landing page experience in order to minimise the cost you’re paying per click.

Analyse Cost Per Click (CPC): Checking how much you’re paying per click for each keyword is vital for making sure you’re staying within budget. If certain keywords have a high CPC but are not resulting in conversions, it may be wise to pause them in order to place that budget into cheaper or better converting keywords instead.

Calculate ROI: Be sure to check whether your PPC campaigns are bringing in a greater value to your business than it costs to run them. This is easiest to track when working on ecommerce campaigns.

A good PPC agency should sit down with you and agree on performance metrics before any work actually begins.

At Tank, we have extensive experience running ad campaigns across social media including Meta (Facebook and Instagram), X/Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest and Reddit.

Our paid social specialists are experienced in using social media advertising to foster relationships with prospective customers, and positioning our clients’ products and services in front of targeted customers, who are interested and keen to buy. As well as creating and putting the ad out there, we deliver a measurable plan for success so you can continue flourishing.

To succeed at social media advertising, you need a robust social media strategy which outlines your objectives and the steps we’ll take to meet them. We all know that customer expectations and buying behaviour are constantly changing, so keeping ahead of trends and monitoring their activity is essential to developing your game plan.

With the vast and growing number of social media users, your presence on these platforms is key to your marketing strategy and revenue, so you need to place the same sense of importance on it as your core activities.

Luckily, our team is experienced in growing loyal communities and raising targeted brand awareness to get you seen. We’re hands on with research, getting to know the community and leveraging the latest advertising options, so you can reach those customers who may not have come across your brand or had the confidence to commit.

To find out more visit https://tank.co.uk/social-media-marketing-agency/.