In today’s crowded business landscape, there are a number of options that business owners and marketers have in order to stand out from other players.  

One staple that is as powerful as ever is pay-per-click advertising.   Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a powerful tool for businesses to achieve success and growth. 

It allows companies to display their ads on search engines, social media, and other online platforms, paying only when users click on their ads. 

But, before building out a PPC strategy or investing in a fully-fledged ad campaign it’s important to understand why PPC is important for business growth online. 

The main benefit of PPC advertising is that it’s widely considered to be one of the most successful forms of online advertising. It offers quick results and reliable returns, and it’s also one of the most ubiquitous styles of advertising. It helps businesses gain greater visibility on search engines like Google or Bing or on social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest. Moreover, PPC visitors are much more likely to convert.

The importance of PPC cannot be overstated, as it encompasses various aspects such as PPC landing page best practices,  search engine marketing, and the prevalence of social media in everyday life, as well as the overall purchasing process or growth marketing funnel. 

Additionally, we will uncover the potential of PPC search engine marketing, which enables businesses to increase their visibility and reach a highly targeted audience. 

A key part of this involves understanding how implicitly compatible PPC and SEO are especially with each other.  Knowing this allows businesses to optimize their online presence and achieve superior results. 

As well, we will help you uncover the key benefits of PPC, including increased brand visibility and awareness, driving targeted traffic and generating leads, enhancing conversion rates and return on investment (ROI), and outperforming competitors in the digital advertising landscape. 

By the end of this blog, you will have a comprehensive understanding of PPC’s critical role in driving business growth.

What is PPC

PPC is an online advertising model in which advertisers bid on specific keywords relevant to their products or services. 

When a user searches for those keywords, the search engine displays the ads in prominent positions. 

Advertisers only pay when someone clicks on their ad, hence the name “Pay-Per-Click.”

Why PPC Needs to Be An Important Part of Your Business’ Growth Marketing Framework:

PPC offers a range of benefits that contribute to the success of businesses, from boosting traffic to increasing sales; the list is comprehensive. 

Here are some of the benefits that should help you understand why PPC is almost a non-negotiable part of a solid growth-oriented marketing framework.

1. Increased Brand Visibility: PPC enables businesses to gain immediate visibility on search engine results pages. This increased exposure can enhance brand recognition and awareness among the target audience.

2. Targeted Reach: With PPC, businesses can precisely target their audience based on demographics, interests, geographic location, and search intent. This level of targeting ensures that the ads reach the right people at the right time, maximizing the chances of conversion.

3. Measurable Results: PPC provides detailed analytics and reporting tools, allowing businesses to track the performance of their campaigns. Metrics such as impressions, clicks, conversions, and ROI provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of PPC strategies.

4. Cost Control: PPC offers flexibility in budget management. Advertisers can set daily or monthly budgets, ensuring they have control over their ad spend. This allows businesses of all sizes to engage in PPC advertising, regardless of their financial resources.

5. PPC visitors are more likely to convert: Data from Unbounce shows that 50% of visitors arriving at a retailer’s website from a paid search ad are more likely to convert than those that came from an organic link.  Ultimately, the reality is that such visitors are in the market for such items or services that you offer when they click on your ads it increases the likelihood of converting off of these visitors.

How Pay-Per-Click Advertising Can Help to Trigger the Growth Marketing Funnel In Tandem With SEO

Search engine PPC marketing and search engine optimization go together well since there’s quite a lot of overlap. The importance of PPC and SEO together lies in the fact that businesses will be targeting the same keywords, on the same platforms, for the same audiences, albeit at different stages of the purchasing process.

There’s no direct link between PPC campaigns on Google/Bing and SEO rankings – however, businesses that optimize both are more likely to improve SEO. The reason why PPC is important for SEO is often because businesses that improve their site and content for a better Google Quality Score inadvertently improve their SEO ranking as well.

If you are performing the same keyword research and keyword density, then you are already halfway to completing key strategies for both SEO and PPC.  Businesses that do both often implicitly believe that PPC does help SEO. There are some indirect reasons for this that can make using PPC advertising an important additional strategy:

• Searchers who see a brand’s ad might be more likely to click on its organic listing.

• Related to the previous point, PPC ads can grow a business’s brand recognition, making an SEO conversion more likely down the road.

• Paid ad clicks can get your pages to the top of page #1 in Google where they can lead to more sharing, more mentions, and more backlinks – which means better SEO rankings.

There’s also another reason why PPC is important, which is data. Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising offer ad platforms that provide lots of feedback on ad campaigns. Marketers can take the data they get from keyword research, keyword performance, A/B ad tests, conversions, impression share, etc., and use that data to finetune their SEO campaign.

Moreover, since search PPC offers results much faster than SEO (days and weeks instead of months or years), it’s possible to test keyword strategies in PPC and then use conversion rate (CR) and traffic data to determine if similar strategies would work for long-term SEO benefit.

What Are Some Fundamentals or Best Practices to Allow PPC to Become A Vehicle For Sales Growth

As you can see, PPC is vital to business success. To run a successful PPC campaign, businesses should focus on the following components:

1. PPC -Specific Landing Pages: A well-designed landing page is crucial for converting clicks into desired actions. It should have a clear, compelling headline, persuasive copy, prominent call-to-action (CTA), and relevant visuals. Implementing PPC landing page best practices increases the chances of conversions and improves the overall user experience.

In the world of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, landing pages are a critical component for maximizing conversions and achieving success. 

A well-designed landing page bridges an ad and the desired action, ensuring a seamless user experience. 

Let’s explore the key elements of an effective PPC landing page and why they are crucial for PPC campaigns, PPC search engine marketing, and the collaboration between PPC and SEO strategies.

Importance of Well-Designed Landing Pages:

Landing pages are the gateway to sales. That means a well-designed landing page generates money. There are several reasons why this is the case.

1. Relevance and Alignment: Landing pages must align with the ad that leads users to them. They should provide continuity in messaging, offer, and visual elements. By maintaining relevance, landing pages enhance user experience and increase the likelihood of conversions.

2. Conversion Optimization: Landing pages are specifically designed to drive conversions, whether it’s making a purchase, filling out a form, or subscribing to a newsletter. By implementing best practices, businesses can optimize their landing pages for higher conversion rates.

3. Ad Quality Score: Search engines consider the quality and relevance of landing pages when determining the Ad Quality Score. A high-quality score positively impacts the ad’s visibility, click-through rates, and cost per click.

Key Elements of an Effective PPC Landing Page:

While creating landing pages is like creating any other page on the website, there are some key differences. To create an impactful PPC landing page, consider the following elements:

i) Compelling Headlines and Persuasive Copywriting:

A strong headline grabs attention and entices users to read further. 

Persuasive copywriting should clearly communicate the value proposition and benefits, compelling users to take the desired action.

ii) Clear Call-to-Action (CTA) Buttons:

A well-placed, visually distinct CTA button guides users toward the intended action. 

It should use action-oriented language and be easy to locate. A compelling CTA encourages users to click and convert.

iii) Mobile Optimization and Fast Loading Times:

Given the rise in mobile usage, landing pages must be optimized for mobile devices. 

Mobile responsiveness and fast loading times ensure a positive user experience, reducing bounce rates and increasing engagement.

iv) Relevant and High-Quality Visuals:

Images, videos, and graphics help capture attention and convey messages effectively. 

Visuals should be relevant to the offering and create a positive impression. High-quality visuals enhance credibility and professionalism.

v) Trust-building elements, Such as Testimonials or Guarantees:

Including testimonials, reviews, ratings, or trust badges helps build trust and credibility. 

Users feel more confident in taking action when they see social proof. Guarantees, such as money-back guarantees or free trials, reduce perceived risk.

By implementing these key PPC landing page best practices, businesses can create a compelling user experience, increase conversions, and enhance the effectiveness of PPC campaigns.

Furthermore, optimized landing pages align with PPC search engine marketing goals by providing a seamless user journey from an ad to a landing page. 

Additionally, they contribute to the collaboration between PPC and SEO strategies by sharing insights and data for improved targeting and content optimization.

2. The Inherent Link Between PPC & Search Engine Marketing: PPC is closely intertwined with search engine marketing. Businesses must select the right keywords that align with their offerings and target audience. Crafting compelling ad copies, utilizing ad extensions, and optimizing targeting options are essential to maximizing the impact of PPC search engine marketing.

PPC search engine marketing is a powerful strategy that allows businesses to maximize their visibility and reach a highly targeted audience. 

By leveraging the potential of search engines, businesses can drive relevant traffic to their websites and achieve their marketing goals. 

PPC provides immediate results, which means you can pinpoint the keywords driving traffic and which are less effective. 

That means you will know how to optimize your SEO targeting to drive even better results.

So let’s explore the key aspects of PPC search engine marketing and understand how it contributes to PPC landing page best practices, the collaboration between PPC and SEO, and the overall importance of PPC.

Why Search Engine Marketing is Especially Powerful When It Is Intertwined with PPC:

Search engine marketing (SEM) involves promoting websites by increasing their visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs) through paid advertising. 

PPC is an integral part of SEM, offering businesses an opportunity to display their ads prominently on search engines like Google or Bing. 

This strategy ensures that companies are visible to users who are actively searching for products or services related to their offerings.

There are a number of aspects that determine the successful intermingling of PPC with search marketing. Let’s explore them now.

i) Choosing the Right Keywords for Your PPC Campaigns:

Keyword selection is crucial to PPC search engine marketing. Businesses must identify relevant keywords that align with their target audience’s search queries. 

Thorough keyword research helps uncover high-performing keywords with adequate search volume and competition levels. 

By incorporating these keywords into their PPC campaigns, businesses can attract qualified traffic and increase the chances of conversions.

ii) Creating Compelling Ad Copies and Optimizing Ad Extensions:

Compelling ad copies is essential to capture users’ attention and entice them to click on the ads. 

Ad copies should align with the keywords, provide a clear value proposition, and highlight unique selling points. 

Additionally, ad extensions such as site links, call extensions, or structured snippets enhance the ad’s visibility and provide additional information to users, increasing the chances of engagement and conversions.

iii) Utilizing Ad Targeting Options to Reach the Right Audience:

PPC search engine marketing offers various targeting options to ensure ads reach the most relevant audience. 

Businesses can target based on demographics, location, interests, or behaviors, allowing them to refine their targeting and maximize the impact of their campaigns. 

Precise audience targeting ensures that ads are shown to users who are more likely to be interested in the offerings, increasing the return on investment (ROI).

3. PPC and SEO Working Together: PPC and search engine optimization (SEO) strategies can work in synergy to achieve optimal results. Sharing keyword data and insights between PPC and SEO efforts helps identify high-performing keywords and refine content strategies. By leveraging the strengths of both PPC and SEO, businesses can enhance their online presence and visibility.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) are two powerful digital marketing strategies that, when combined, can create a synergistic effect, driving substantial results for businesses. 

Understanding the relationship between PPC and SEO and leveraging their collaboration is essential for maximizing the impact of both strategies. 

Let’s delve into the different ways in which PPC and SEO can work together effectively, incorporating PPC landing page best practices and highlighting the importance of PPC.  Grasping these concepts is key to maximizing the impact of PPC on SEO, and ultimately, providing a feedback loop that strengthens your overall growth marketing plan and efforts.

The combined efforts of PPC and SEO drive targeted traffic, increase conversions, enhance brand visibility, and boost overall online marketing performance.

The importance of PPC must be considered in today’s digital landscape. When PPC and SEO work together, they create a dynamic duo that amplifies the results of each specific strategy. 

i) Understanding the Relationship Between PPC and SEO:

PPC and SEO are two distinct approaches to online marketing. Still, they share the common goal of increasing visibility, driving traffic, and generating conversions. 

While SEO focuses on organic search results, PPC enables businesses to have instant visibility through paid advertising. 

By understanding their relationship, businesses can harness the strengths of both strategies and achieve comprehensive online marketing success.

ii) How PPC Campaigns Can Complement Your SEO Efforts:

If you’ve read other blogs, then you may have seen marketers pit SEO and PPC together in a death match to find which one is better. 

However, that’s not the case at all. These two tools complement each other and work together in several ways to ensure sustainable growth. Here are some of the ways they help:

1. Keyword Insights: PPC campaigns provide valuable keyword insights, including search volume, performance metrics, and conversion data. Sharing this information with SEO efforts helps identify high-performing keywords and optimize organic content accordingly. By aligning PPC and SEO keywords, businesses can enhance their overall search presence and increase the chances of visibility in search engine results.

2. Quick Testing and Feedback: PPC campaigns allow businesses to test the effectiveness of keywords, ad copies, landing pages, and other elements in real time. This rapid feedback loop can provide valuable insights that can be applied to SEO strategies. Testing and refining with PPC help optimize organic content and improve overall website performance.

3. Maximized Visibility: By combining PPC and SEO efforts, businesses can maximize their visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs) and within social media. While SEO strategies work on organic rankings, PPC ensures instant visibility through paid advertisements. This dual presence increases brand exposure, enhances credibility, and boosts overall click-through rates.

iii) Sharing Keyword Data and Insights Between PPC and SEO:

Sharing keyword data and insights between PPC and SEO efforts is vital for leveraging the synergy between the two strategies. 

PPC campaigns provide valuable information on keyword performance, user intent, and conversion trends. 

By sharing this data with SEO teams, businesses can optimize website content & metadata, improve keyword targeting, and enhance overall organic search visibility.

PPC is An Excellent Way to Test and Refine Your SEO efforts:

PPC campaigns offer a unique advantage in testing and refining SEO strategies. By running targeted PPC campaigns, businesses can quickly gauge the effectiveness of keywords, content, and landing pages. 

The insights gained from PPC testing can inform SEO efforts, allowing businesses to make data-driven decisions and optimize their organic search performance.

8 PPC-focused Marketing Tactics that Your Business Needs to Add to Your Growth Plan

Now that we have an understanding of the benefits of PPC as well as aspects that make for a successful PPC campaign, let us now examine 8 PPC strategies that your growth-focused businesses ought to strongly consider incorporating into their day-to-day tactics.

1.  Advertise on multiple platforms

Most businesses focus their online advertising on Google Ads, which is smart. With Google Ads, your company can reach a massive audience that encompasses millions of people, including those in your target market. That doesn’t mean your business should limit yourself to Google Ads.  You can reach people in your target market on other platforms too, like social media networks. Facebook, for example, is a go-to social media site for companies looking to build brand awareness, improve customer loyalty, or even generate sales.  Research the ad networks available and see if any align with your PPC strategy and goals.

2.  Remarketing: 

A remarketing campaign is your business’s best friend. When you use remarketing to retarget a website visitor, like someone who browsed a product page, they’re 70 percent more likely to purchase your product instead of a competitor’s.

Remarketing is an advertising tactic where you remarket your business to people that interact with your website. In Google Analytics, you can create audiences for remarketing campaigns, narrowing your audience by page, device, time on page, and more.

3.  Ad Extensions:

For companies with a history of online advertising, ad extensions aren’t a new addition to your PPC strategy. Ad networks like Google Ads, however, continue to expand their list of ad extensions, which means you may have missed a new, valuable extension to upgrade your ads.

A few examples of some useful ad extensions in Google Ads include:

Message Extensions: Add a message extension to allow mobile users to text your team. You can receive and reply to messages from a designated phone number or email address, as well as setup automated responses. This extension works well for companies in hospitality and travel.

Call Extensions: Include your phone number with a call extension to make it easy for users to call your business.

On mobile devices, people can click and call your team in an instant. Call extensions are excellent for companies that provide emergency services, like heating and cooling repairs.

Price extensions are a must-use extension for e-commerce stores. If you want to provide your target market with value, plus stand apart from your competitors, you need to use extensions. No matter your industry, ad networks like Google Ads feature extensions that offer something for every business.

Explore the ad extensions offered by Google Ads and experiment with them in your PPC strategy. After every experiment, be sure to perform a PPC analysis to see how your tests performed!

4.  Do not Ignore mobile optimization when it comes to landing pages

Today, companies aim to please mobile users, and for three good reasons:

• More than half of the world’s Internet traffic comes from mobile devices

• More than 40 percent of online transactions occur on mobile devices

• More than 50 percent of ad clicks happen on mobile devices

A lot of businesses, however, forget about mobile-friendliness when it comes to their PPC strategy. While your ads may display on smartphones and tablets with zero issues, your landing page (or where you send users who click on your ad) may deliver a less-than-stellar experience.

By designing a mobile-optimized, and intuitive landing page to maximize your overall ROI from PPC. You can create your landing pages in-house or use landing page design services for the sake of optimization conversions in order to ensure your ads provide the best user experience possible.

5) Finding Audiences that Are Similar to those that Have Previously Bought From You

If you’re looking for innovative PPC strategies, try lookalike audiences on Facebook and similar audiences on Google Ads. While available on different platforms, both audience types help your business reach users similar to your existing followers, customers, or website visitors.

For example, with Google Ads, you can reference a remarketing audience (which must contain at least 100 users) to build a similar audience. On Facebook, you can upload a customer file, and refer to site traffic, app activity, and more to build a lookalike audience. Facebook recommends a source audience of at least 1,000 people.

Combining similar audiences with a display remarketing campaign can increase your conversion rate by more than 40 percent because you are not only combining a potentially compatible target audience with the power of memory recall and reinforcement that remarketing helps to trigger.

6 Responsive Ads (Both Search & Display):  

With Google Ads, your business can take advantage of not only responsive display ads but also responsive search ads. A responsive ad, whether for the Display or Search Network, helps your company automate parts of your PPC strategy. 

You also have greater flexibility when experimenting with ad copy and images, as you can submit multiple headlines and descriptions for Google to test.  You also get to leverage the machine learning power of Google Ads and quickly get performance data that can easily be optimized.  The platform will create dozens of ad combinations and gather critical data about their performance as Google Ads delivers them to users. That data helps Google Ads discover which ad combinations perform the best. For your business, the assistance of Google Ads means smarter, stronger, more effective ads.

7. Optimizing for Keyword Precision:

 Long-tail keywords are a phrase that comprises 3-5 words. This is a great strategy as the longer the keyword, the more significant the search volume. This high-quality traffic generated from these PPC ads has a higher chance of conversions and hence this is one of the basic PPC strategies everyone should implement. Keywords have a direct relationship with brand visibility and conversions. By using direct and indirect keywords, you can broaden the spectrum of your ad. Indirect keywords have a not-so-direct relation but they can give great results.  

What's more, if you’re paying to show your ads on certain keywords, you don’t want them to be diluted by being shown on similar keywords that are totally irrelevant to you. Use the negative keywords feature which allows you to precisely tell Google, which keywords you do not want to be ranked on. 

8.  Do Not Ignore A/B Testing

Similar to optimizing mobile landing pages, testing various elements such as landing page layout, copy, ad variations, and calls to action are tactics that are often overlooked when it comes to creating a growth marketing playbook. Investing in A/B testing allows businesses to reinforce a data-driven focus that is key to gaining insights needed to consistently drive growth. 

With experiments, your business can test a variety of factors, including:

• Bids

• Audience targeting

• Location targeting

• Etc.

AB Testing allows your business to make a data-backed decision when it comes to optimizing and improving your PPC strategy. You aren’t guessing, but instead pulling actual data to guide your choice of tactics and messaging.

PPC Needs to Be An Essential Aspect of the Growth Marketing Fundamentals in Your Business

With so many strategies to choose from, make sure that you have an integrated plan that covers all aspects and gives you maximum ROI for every PPC ad. 

From creating custom audiences to designing mobile-friendly landing pages, you can take a variety of approaches to enhance your PPC strategy.  This can include partnering with a growth marketing consulting firm with a result-driven focus.  With our extensive array of SEM and PPC-driven tactics (paid social media, Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, remarketing, Facebook) as well as other tactics such as email that we provide expertise on, we can provide your business with a PPC strategy that drives results.

If you are looking for help with setting up and determining how best to set up an efficient, growth-focused PPC strategy as a way of better leveraging the growth marketing funnel that is relevant to your organization, why not reach out for a free, no-obligation growth marketing consultation?  Our expert growth marketing consultants look forward to meeting with you and getting you started on the path of improved ROI and continuous growth and improvement and business in your organization.