Generate Leads with PPC advertising.

Google Ads is what often comes to mind when talking about PPC advertising, and for good reason–Google retains roughly 93% of the global search engine market share. Google Ads is Google’s platform for pay-per-click advertising, but you are able to advertise on other search engines as well, like Yahoo or Bing. Unlike SEO, which helps get your website higher on the list of organic search results, PPC advertising is a paid solution that pushes your content to the top of SERPs. 

The best PPC management agencies partner with you to understand key search terms associated with your business and leverage those to craft effective search marketing campaigns that get you more clicks and conversions. 

All pay-per-click ads are subject to the Ad Auction that search engines use to determine the relevance of ads in relation to keywords. The Ad Auction is a bidding system in which users bid on search terms they want to trigger their ads being shown.

You can expect fast, tangible results from PPC advertising, which is markedly different from many traditional advertising methods. For example, putting up a billboard may be effective, but there’s no real way to measure that—unless you’re willing to ask every customer how they found you and expect them to remember seeing your billboard while driving on the highway.

PPC advertising is completely trackable, and we use that tracking to generate a report for you detailing the results of your campaigns. The report might include metrics like:

• Cost-per-click
• Cost-per-conversion
• Conversion rate
• Quality score (for Google ads)

For any pay-per-click campaigns we create and manage at Sanctuary, we always aim for:

• A high click through rate (CTR) - This means that your ad is being clicked on often by searchers.
• A low cost per click (CPC) - This means that you’re getting a better ROI on your PPC investment.
• A high quality score - This means that your ads and corresponding landing pages are relevant to the keywords you’ve selected.

Although they are sometimes used interchangeably, SEO and SEM are two very different tactics—but have a common goal of reaching a target audience on search engines such as Google or Bing.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of optimizing your website content in an effort to improve your ranking in organic search results. The organic search results are those that are not sponsored (and appear underneath the results that are). SEO is a non-paid tactic that continues to give back over time, in comparison to paid efforts that stop once your budget runs out.

SEM, or search engine marketing, is the process of allocating budget, crafting messages, selecting keywords and getting your content shown on search engine results pages (SERPs) as sponsored ads that appear at the very top, above all the organic results.

Ideally, your PPC ads should be directing users to a dedicated, conversion-based landing page with the sole purpose of inciting people to take action (convert). When you run PPC ads on the Google Ads platform, your ads get a quality score that is in part determined by how relevant your landing page is to your ad messaging. 

The more specific and tailored your landing page is to the message you’re promoting, the better your quality score will be. For example, if you’re running an ad about PPC services, you wouldn’t want to direct people to a general page on digital marketing because they’re looking for PPC services specifically. Instead, you have the opportunity to create a dedicated page about PPC services that’s intentionally crafted to get conversions.

A conversion-based landing page should have the following:

• A strong, benefit-focused headline
• A prominent CTA—whether it’s a form or a button—that’s above the fold of the page
• Supporting content that’s rich with the keywords you’re targeting
• An easy-to-consume and enticing design

PPC ads appear on search engine results pages (SERPs) at the very top, above local and organic results. These ads are distinguishable from organic search results in that the word “ad” appears beside them. 

PPC ads will appear for a user based on the terms they’re searching for. When you set up a PPC campaign, you will be prompted to enter keywords and negative keywords that relate to whatever product or service you’re promoting.

If you can spend at least $200–$500 a month on PPC ads, that’s a great way to test out the marketplace and get a better sense of the potential that’s out there. You’ll find that what you could be spending on PPC is usually always more than you’re actually able to, but that’s why it presents such great opportunities for future growth!

PPC services typically also require a management fee when you’re working with a PPC company or digital marketing company for managing your ads account. Regular monitoring and management will allow you to tweak your messaging along the way, maximizing your campaigns to get the best results.