Hi and welcome back to #TheBigMarketingBite 😃🥘😋🍳
So two weeks ago we discussed organic SEO and how it could be used to drive traffic to our website. Organic SEO involves employing various techniques to improve your sites ranking in an unpaid seach listing. Today we are going to look at the advantages of investing in paid ad campaigns (PPC or Pay Per Click).
So, like the name suggests, this form of advertising involves the website owner creating a digital ad for their company. They then pay a fee each time this ad is clicked by a potential customer.
The biggest provider of pay per click advertising is Google Ads. You set up your account and then step through a simple process to create your ad. This ad may then be displayed in a paid Google search listing or on partner websites.
Google Ads is operated in an 'auction' format. Users bid on keywords that are assosiated with their product / service. A long-tail keyword can often be better than a shorter one e.g 'Chinese Restaurant Navan' rather than just 'Restaurant'. (Its more likely that this specific phrase will result in conversions.) Users set a maxium bid on relevant keywords. This means the maximum you would be willing to pay (per click) if your ad showed as a result of this keyword search. This auction system takes place each time a search takes place.
How well the user ranks in the sponsored content is not, however, just based on their monetary bid. Ad rank is also determined by whats refered to as quality score. This encompasses factors such as the how relevant your ad would be to the user - taking into consideration the keyword /ad /website it directs to. Also considered is the performance of your previous ads.
The ads themselves can be targeted further to reach specific geographical locations. This means that they will show to people who are either currently or regularly in these areas
Benefits of using paid ad campaigns
Statistically more users will come to your site via an organic search than through clicking on paid ads. According to Hubspot data this works out at around 70% versus 30% - but it still makes sense to utilise both SEO and PPC to maximise visits to your food blog or website. Even if the user does not click on your listed ad, the displayed narritive allows some extra adverting potential and also - any ads not clicked are not paid for, so this makes it very a targeted investment. For this reason your return on investment is likely to be high. Also its worth noting that you set a maximum budget per month at the outset, so theres no danger that the costs will start to get higher than you are comfortable with.
Once you have started your paid ad campaign, you will want to know how succesful it is and how you might optimise it. You can use Google Analytics to help with this. A variety of different metrics can be explored for example you can see how your ad typicaly performs at different times of the day or which search queries resulted in your ad being shown. This allows for informed decision making and ultimetly better value for your investment.
So what are you waiting for? Head over to Google Ads and get boosting your traffic to your food based website or blog!
Let me know how you get on, or any thoughts, below!
Suzanne McCabe
Hi Suzanne, your post this week is great. Google Advertising can seem quite overwhelming, but you have explained it in this blog post in simple terms that the reader can understand, with benefits for using the tool. I think many businesses may not utilise or invest in Google Advertising because, as you have included with your hubspot statistic, that most users come to the website via organic search. Many users may not be inclined to click on the first link on Google because it is advertised, but if it is exactly what the user is searching for I agree that it is worth the investment. Great mention too about using Google Analytics to measure how successful your adverting is, as with everything in marketing, its important to measure how successful a campaign is and if it is ultimately aligning with your targets/goals.
ReplyDeleteSuzanne, what a great post! I really enjoyed your content and felt that I learnt something from it. PPC is a great tool and as you say its import to invest in them but investing in the correct way is certainly important for a business. PPC can be very effective but can be very expensive. It is amazing to thing that when you create an add that each time someone clicks on it you will be charged so it is certainly worth while in setting limits on your account. As a user I am always aware of paid ads at the top searches in google knowing that business pay for these and they may not actually be the best fit for what I am personally looking for. I'm very interested to read about how the auction works for the business. I think this is a very fair way for companies to compete and as you so can be beneficial for advertising even when the user may not necessarily click on it. Thanks again for a great read!
ReplyDeleteSuzanne this week your post was so easy to understand and was very educational on the benefits of Google Ads/Paid advertising. I especially like the way your referenced long tail keyword search and the importance of using these to have a more targeted approach. It was really clever to include this. Reading this post I felt you hit the nail on the head and made paid advertising actually make sense. If I was a small business wondering how to boost my presence I would definitely be following your post, and the steps involved to get my business ahead while I worked away on my Organic SEO. A really interesting read as usual Suzanne and I hope to tune in for your next post!
ReplyDeleteColette Breen-O'Boyle
Hi Suzanne
ReplyDeletethanks for the great post on paid marketing/google ads, it’s really informative and enlightening. Advertising spend can feel so daunting to a small business like ours so it’s great to get some clarity. Such as the speed pay per click offers in terms of getting people to your website while you work away on SEO . I will certainly look again at Paid Marketing for our business.
Caitriona