Maximize Conversions & Brand Awareness with PPC
What’s going on, guys? Mike Norris here. It’s morning here in Chicago. It’s actually great outside. The weather is amazing and I’m very excited to be filming this today, so happy Wednesday!
Pay-to-Play
Today we’re gonna talk about pay-per-click.
In the last episode, if you remember, if you follow us, we talked about SEO: Search Engine Optimization.
This is not that.
In that episode, we talked a little bit about the differences between the two and I’ll just go over that again briefly.
SEO does not use any type of advertising money whatsoever. It does involve search engines, primarily Google, and it’s really a managed service that you pay for where someone makes your website rank higher in search engines organically without any type of ads.
Pay-per-click goes off of its name: you pay per click. When someone clicks on your ad, you are charged by whoever it is that you’re advertising through—for the purposes of this episode, we’ll probably go with Google, and I’ll show you some examples here—but it’s an advertising method.
Search/Text Ads
Now, there are a variety of different ways that you can run ads on Google and, generally speaking when someone says PPC, they’re referring to a Text Ad like what you see on the left side of my screen here.
What I’ve done for this is I’ve searched for “buy flowers.” My girlfriend’s birthday is coming up so, Callie, if you’re watching this, I got you.
This is an ad right here and you know that because it says “Ad” where I’m pointing. Here’s another ad, another ad, another ad… and they all show up above the map.
Then, down here, this is where your SEO would come into play. These are organic search listings.
So, when we say PPC, we are probably talking about a Search Ad like this.
These little things here are what are known as extensions. These are sitelink extensions. They link you to different places on your website that are also relevant to the ad. Then, down here, you can see even more extensions.
When you click on an ad like this, in most cases, you’re going to be taken to a landing page. Let’s see what these people have set up. 1-800-Flowers. It’s a hell of a name.
We searched for “buy flowers,” and now here are all the different things I could buy flowers for Get Well, Sympathy, Love and Romance, Easter. This is great. If I had searched for something a little bit more in-depth, such as “buy flowers for anniversary,” I would hope they would take me to the page that this anniversary is for, so that I wouldn’t have to click around. That relevance is very important when it comes to pay-per-click ads.
Shopping Ads
I want to show you some different types of ads, too, going back to Google here. If you notice, on the right side of these listings, there are some additional ads.
Now, these are Google Shopping Ads and these are great because these pull products directly from your website. They take the pricing on your website, along with any special offers, descriptions, and everything like that, and people are able to then purchase products a little bit more quickly than if they had clicked on your Search Ad. So that’s another form of pay-per-click advertising right there.
Display Ads
Now I want to go into something a little bit different. This doesn’t use a search engine at all actually. It’s a type of Display Ad. So, for whatever reason, TMZ.com is the example I chose to pick for you here today. Along the right side of this page, there are a couple of Display Ads here.
This is actually a Display Ad of TMZ. They’re running their own here. Here is another Display Ad and here’s another Display Ad of whatever the hell that is. So, essentially, they almost look like banners. I mean, it could be a banner, it could be a pop-up as well. Google really doesn’t like pop-ups, so I don’t know if I’ll show you anything like that today, but Display Ads target people a little bit differently than a Search Ad.
I would think about these as being a sort of online billboard, whereas a Search Ad is something that’s capturing people in the moment that they’re looking. That’s an important distinction because your click-through rate on an ad like this is gonna be way lower because you’re not catching people in the moment that they’re looking for it.
They might see this ad and say, “Oh yeah, I meant to buy tickets to this. I’ll click on it.” Or they might just see this ad, gloss over it, and continue reading the article or whatever else it was that they were doing. Then later, when they go to search, they might remember that they saw this ad and that will increase the click-through rates of search. They work together pretty synergistically and they’re really good in that sense.
They can also be used for retargeting, which is really important, especially for e-commerce.
If we go back to that flower website that I was looking at previously and I had looked at a specific vase or flower combination, something like that, then I start going to different websites, I might start seeing ads for those flowers. That’s because they put a cookie on me and they’re retargeting me with that specific product. They’re telling me, “Hey, you forgot to buy this!” or, you know, “You left this in your cart, so here’s a five-percent-off coupon,” or something like that. That’s really common when it comes to display advertising and, again, you’re charged per click with this.
YouTube Ads
The last type of advertising that you can run through Google would be YouTube advertising. For those who don’t know, Google owns YouTube. They purchased them back in 2006 and you’re able to run video ads that kind of look like this on YouTube. I’m sure you’ve seen them if you’ve been to YouTube and watched a video. You can skip them after about five seconds.
This is a little bit different and it’s technically not pay-per-click. You’re paying per view, which is different. Usually, you pay about three cents per view and that only counts the views of people who have watched a hundred percent of your entire ad. If someone skips before getting to that final portion, you don’t get charged, which is great.
In Conclusion
That’s really it when it comes to pay-per-click advertising. It’s a really good tool for getting in front of a specific audience.
YouTube Ads and Display Ads are very good for the top of funnel type stuff or branding, brand recognition, all that kind of stuff.
Search and Shopping Ads are going to be good for really getting people as they’re in the moment, trying to make a purchase. Hopefully, at that time, they’ve already seen your brand, they recognize you, they’ve got that trust built up, and they’re like, “Oh yeah, 1-800-Flowers. I know that name.” Even saying it right now, I feel like I know their name and I’ve never once ordered anything from 1-800-Flowers.
So create branding there and that’s what’s a display and YouTube advertising can do for you, too.
Happy Wednesday! This is “What is PPC?” And I’m Mike Norris. Take it easy.
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