Why Use PPC Advertising?

This article was updated January 14th, 2019

When I talk to prospective clients about online advertising, I get a lot of questions. Many business owners and marketing executives find themselves overwhelmed trying to decide if pay per click is the best option for their marketing spend.

Between all of the traditional marketing methods available, and newer online channels, it can be daunting making the decision on how to invest a marketing budget. This blog will answer your questions on why pay per click may be a good option for your company, and what you should know before launching a PPC advertising campaign.

Is PPC Advertising Right for Me?

Pay-per-click ads can offer a good return on investment when done properly. However, if you don’t understand how PPC works, you can quickly lose money without seeing an increase in traffic or sales. PPC requires a strong understanding of how Google Ads and other PPC platforms work, combined with attention to detail and a LOT of testing.

PROs

A big advantage PPC advertising has over other marketing channels is faster testing. When you launch a new campaign, you can quickly ascertain how effective (or ineffective) your website and calls-to-action are.

By purchasing traffic through PPC you’ll learn what needs to be changed or improved on your site. And if you use A/B or multivariate testing, you can obtain this data even faster, with greater accuracy.

For a lot of our clients, we recommend creating landing pages, testing those pages against each other through PPC, and constantly improving and changing the landing pages. This increases conversions and drives a higher ROI.

Do you love data? Really, really love data? If so, PPC is a great option for your company. If a campaign is set up correctly, PPC allows you to make data driven decisions, quickly, ensuring your marketing dollars are driving revenue.

Offline marketing, and even other online marketing channels, use a lot of creative hunches, and are almost impossible to determine exactly how effective they are.

Do you love speed? If you don’t like sitting at stop light, or following a slow car in the fast line, then your business and PPC may be a match made in heaven.

Other marketing channels generally require a big commitment upfront and a lot of time and patience before seeing any success.

For instance, even online marketing mediums like SEO and content marketing can require anywhere from six months to years before you see your website making significant progress rising in the search engines. PPC can drive traffic the second your campaign is launched.

Many of our clients come to us after they have spent thousands on SEO, only to lose their rankings because Google changed their algorithm.

When search engine algorithms change, sites that have been optimized can (and usually do) lose rankings and conversions almost immediately, suffering a huge decrease in visitors, conversions, and revenue.

But with a strong PPC campaign, you are assured a steady stream of visitors, no matter what changes search engines make. As long as you build out your campaign correctly and follow their guidelines, you never have to worry about being penalized by Google. This means you will no longer have nightmares about Penguins, Pandas or Hummingbirds. 

Cons

PPC can be a money pit if you don’t know what you are doing, and the bad news is, most people don’t. Even good marketing firms often go about PPC the wrong way.

Correct PPC advertising is all about testing and making decisions based on data quickly, and then using that data to constantly improve your PPC campaigns, landing pages, and websites. Most people write ads based on hunches, and do not make the changes necessary on their websites to win at the PPC game.

Google will (kind of) teach you how to build a campaign, but won’t teach what you really need to know to obtain a strong ROAS.

Conclusion

Even though working with a great firm like Disruptive Advertising can seem expensive at first, it is considerably less than making mistakes wasting money on clicks that don’t convert. And the good news is, money invested in a PPC campaign can provide a strong ROI with great data, which can help you understand your customers better.

Do you have any questions about PPC advertising? Let us know here or in the comments!