Whether you’ve heard a little about PPC marketing and are curious to learn more, or you already know that you want to use PPC to market your business, but aren’t sure where to start, you’ve come to the right place! This is the first lesson inPPC University, a set of three guided courses that will teach you everything you need to know about PPC and how to make it work for you.
First, we’ll need to define PPC and establish a basic understanding of how PPC advertising works. Let’s go!
What is PPC?
PPC stands for pay-per-click, a model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Essentially, it’s a way of buying visits to your site, rather than attempting to “earn” those visits organically.
Search engine advertising is one of the most popular forms of PPC. It allows advertisers to bid for ad placement in a search engine’s sponsored links when someone searches on a keyword that is related to their business offering. For example, if we bid on the keyword “PPC software,” our ad might show up in the very top spot on the Google results page.
Every time our ad is clicked, sending a visitor to our website, we have to pay the search engine a small fee. When PPC is working correctly, the fee is trivial, because the visit is worth more than what you pay for it. In other words, if we pay $3 for a click, but the click results in a $300 sale, then we’ve made a hefty profit.
A lot goes into building a winning PPC campaign: from researching and selecting the right keywords, to organizing those keywords into well-organized campaigns and ad groups, to setting up PPC landing pages that are optimized for conversions. Search engines reward advertisers who can create relevant, intelligently targeted pay-per-click campaigns by charging them less for ad clicks. If your ads and landing pages are useful and satisfying to users, Google charges you less per click, leading to higher profits for your business. So if you want to start using PPC, it’s important to learn how to do it right.
What is Google Ads?
Google Ads is the single most popular PPC advertising system in the world. The Ads platform enables businesses to create ads that appear on Google’s search engine and other Google properties.
Google Ads operates on a pay-per-click model, in which users bid on keywords and pay for each click on their advertisements. Every time a search is initiated, Google digs into the pool of Ads advertisers and chooses a set of winners to appear in the valuable ad space on its search results page. The “winners” are chosen based on a combination of factors, including the quality and relevance of their keywords and ad campaigns, as well as the size of their keyword bids.
How are your Google Ads really performing? Find out with our Free Google Ads Performance Grader.
More specifically, who gets to appear on the page is based on and advertiser’s Ad Rank, a metric calculated by multiplying two key factors – CPC Bid (the highest amount an advertiser is willing to spend) and Quality Score (a value that takes into account your click-through rate, relevance, and landing page quality). This system allows winning advertisers to reach potential customers at a cost that fits their budget. It’s essentially a kind of auction. The below infographic illustrates how the Google Ads auction works.
Learn more in our post on How Does Google Ads Work?
Conducting PPC marketing through Google Ads is particularly valuable because, as the most popular search engine, Google gets massive amounts of traffic and therefore delivers the most impressions and clicks to your ads. How often your PPC ads appear depends on which keywords and match types you select. While a number of factors determine how successful your PPC advertising campaign will be, you can achieve a lot by focusing on:
Keyword Relevance – Crafting relevant PPC keyword lists, tight keyword groups, and proper ad text.
Landing Page Quality – Creating optimized landing pages with persuasive, relevant content and a clear call-to-action, tailored to specific search queries.
Quality Score – Quality Score is Google’s rating of the quality and relevance of your keywords, landing pages, and PPC campaigns. Advertisers with better Quality Scores get more ad clicks at lower costs.
Creative – Enticing ad copy is vital; and if you’re advertising on the display network, you can use a tool like our free Smart Ads Creator to create designer-quality ads that will demand clicks.
PPC Keyword Research
Keyword research for PPC can be incredibly time-consuming, but it is also incredibly important. Your entire PPC campaign is built around keywords, and the most successful Google Ads advertisers continuously grow and refine their PPC keyword list. If you only do keyword research once, when you create your first campaign, you are probably missing out on hundreds of thousands of valuable, long-tail, low-cost and highly relevant keywords that could be driving traffic to your site.
An effective PPC keyword list should be:
Relevant – Of course, you don’t want to be paying for Web traffic that has nothing to do with your business. You want to find targeted keywords that will lead to a higher PPC click-through rate, effective cost per click, and increased profits. That means the keywords you bid on should be closely related to the offerings you sell.
Exhaustive – Your keyword research should include not only the most popular and frequently searched terms in your niche, but also to the long tail of search. Long-tail keywords are more specific and less common, but they add up to account for the majority of search-driven traffic. In addition, they are less competitive, and therefore less expensive.
Expansive – PPC is iterative. You want to constantly refine and expand your campaigns, and create an environment in which your keyword list is constantly growing and adapting.
If you want to find high-volume, industry-specific keywords to use in your PPC campaigns, be sure to check out our popular keywords.
Managing Your PPC Campaigns
Once you’ve created your new campaigns, you’ll need to manage them regularly to make sure they continue to be effective. In fact, regular account activity is one of the best predictors of account success. You should be continuously analyzing the performance of your account and making the following adjustments to optimize your campaigns:
Add PPC Keywords: Expand the reach of your PPC campaigns by adding keywords that are relevant to your business.
Add Negative Keywords: Add non-converting terms as negative keywords to improve campaign relevancy and reduce wasted spend.
Split Ad Groups: Improve click-through rate (CTR) and Quality Score by splitting up your ad groups into smaller, more relevant ad groups, which help you create more targeted ad text and landing pages.
Review Costly PPC Keywords: Review expensive, under-performing keywords and shut them off if necessary.
Refine Landing Pages: Modify the content and calls-to-action (CTAs) of your landing pages to align with individual search queries in order to boost conversion rates. Don’t send all your traffic to the same page.
You’ll learn more about all of these elements of PPC campaign management as you move forward through the coursework in PPC University.
If you’re a local business wanting to learn more about local PPC, head to LOCALiQ Marketing Lab’s Local PPC course.
If you’re ready to get started with PPC, skip ahead to learn how to set up a Google Ads account.
If you’ve already got an Ads account, we suggest you use our FREE Google Ads Performance Grader to help you zero in on areas of improvement. In 60 seconds or less, you’ll receive a customized report grading your account performance in 9 key areas, including click-through rate, Quality Score and account activity.
Now that you’ve read up on how to get started with PPC, download the complete PPC 101 guide to jumpstart your PPC success!
Did you know that you can make money advertising for companies? Yep, there are so many ways to get paid as a novice advertiser.
How would you like to be earning a full-time income advertising for companies from your laptop?
People are finding ways to make money from home. Advertising is one of the easiest ways to make your work from home dreams a reality.
Luckily for you, I’m going to show you proven strategies to make money easily with advertising. How much you earn is up to you and the strategy you choose.
So let’s get started, shall we?
What companies need help advertising and will actually pay you to advertise?
Surprisingly enough, every company needs advertising. If no one knows about your business then how can you make any money?
You can advertise for Multi-Level Marketing companies, anyone willing to split a commission with you for selling product, and companies with money.
Multi-Level Marketing companies sell a specific line of products. Think Advocare or Doterra. These companies give you a percentage of the profits for referring business. However, MLMs don’t have the best reputation which can scare people away. Usually, MLMs are heavily focused on recruiting others to sell products. MLMs often have strict rules on how you can and cannot promote their products. Split commissions. Companies will pay you a commission for referrals. Unlike MLMs, there is no recruiting of others. It’s just a commission based sales model. Companies with money understand that advertising creates more revenue. Getting money from these companies is harder to do, but more rewarding. These companies will pay for you to help them advertise. Each have their own strengths and weaknesses.
How much do companies pay for advertising?
Pay depends on the strategy you use and your efforts. Some strategies are more profitable.
If you get a car wrap then you’ll have a guaranteed income that pays a couple hundred per month. Advertising with affiliate marketing or other commission based methods depend on how many sales you can generate and the size of the commission.
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing can be a huge income generator if done right. Bloggers and social media influencers use affiliate marketing to generate a large portion of their income.
Essentially, you get paid a commission to sell someone else’s product. With the right strategy, affiliate marketing will earn you money in your sleep.
For example, you can join the Amazon associates program. When you send a customer to Amazon and they purchase a product, you earn a small commission.
So how do you know what companies have affiliate programs?
The easiest way is to look at the bottom of a companies website. You’re looking for a spot that says something like “Affiliate Program, Affiliates, or Partner with Us.”
You’ll see “Partnerships” at the bottom of Best Buy’s website.
Clicking on partnerships brings you to the section of Best Buys website where you can learn about their affiliate program.
You can also join affiliate networks like ShareASale. ShareASale is a large collection of companies offering affiliate programs in one convenient place for you.
Creating an account is easy and free. Once you’re approved, search for a merchant you want to promote. Some merchants will automatically accept you while others have high requirements for affiliates.
Online advertising agency
While affiliate marketing involves making a sale, starting your own digital ad agency involves acquiring clients. Your ad agency will help businesses with their online advertising through retargeting campaigns. Most businesses don’t know the first thing about advertising online, which is where you come in.
You will be working with professional businesses so you’ll need to seem legit. One of the best ways to build credibility is to create your own ad agency website.
Make sure you have an email address that ends in your website (e.g. yourname@yourwebsite.com). Having a website with a professional email makes you sound more credible.
How to create an online advertising agency
The first thing you want to do is identify businesses that actually have money which are located in a large city. Examples include restaurants, salons and spas, yoga studios, tattoo parlors, etc.
Select one type of business that you want to promote. For our example, let’s say you want to advertise for Yoga studios.
Next, contact the Yoga studios in large cities. I’m talking every yoga studio in every major US city. Call them by phone because ignoring an email is easy. Get at least one per city to agree to work with you. Have a contract ready to send over with the details of your arrangement.
Maybe you charge a monthly $2,000 advertising fee plus any money they want to spend on advertising. Let’s say your average Yoga studio has $5,000 each month to send your way. You get $2,000 and spend $3,000 on targeted advertising.
Now let’s assume you got 10 clients into a 12 month contract. At $2,000 per client, you’re now making $20,000 per month in advertising fees.
Take some of that $20,000 and hire freelancers to create high quality digital Yoga images for advertising. Personalize them for each Yoga studio.
Learn how to create retargeting campaigns where people search on Google for “best Yoga in Seattle” and now they see your ad on Facebook. Now you’re using that same advertisement for 10 different Yoga studios in different marketplaces.
Congratulations, you are now earning $20,000 per month setting up ads.
There’s no such thing as the average website owner anymore. There are e-commerce websites that earn millions, book review sites that earn revenue with Amazon links, blogs that make money off advertising, and websites that promote authors’ or artists’ work. Website income depends on your site’s purpose and your success at achieving it.
Tip
Websites that join an advertising network earn an average of $1,000 a month. Crowdfunding websites average $824 in donations. Specific websites’ income depends on many factors, such as how many people visit.
Website Ad Revenue
Next to e-commerce, advertising on your website or blog is one of the most familiar ways to earn a website income. SmartyAds points out that there are multiple ways to generate website ad revenue, with one of the common ones being cost per click (CPC). For every person who clicks on an ad, you receive a small fee. Alternatives include website ad revenue for every thousand visitors who see an ad.
Whichever method you use, websites that pay you a lot of money for advertising have to draw plenty of visitors. The best advertising networks pay more for sites that can put the ads before a particular demographic. If you cover a niche topic that draws a particular category of visitors – cool news in the art museum world, for example – it is more usable for targeting advertising than a random news blog.
Website owners can work through Google AdSense or another ad network and have it provide the ads. The alternative, WebsiteSetup advises, is to cut out the middleman and sell directly. You can use the same metrics or charge a flat rate to earn website ad revenue.
Affiliate marketing, WebsiteBuilderExpert explains, generates website income on similar principles but without ads. If you run a book or movie review site, for example, as an Amazon affiliate, you link the items you review to their Amazon page. If someone clicks and buys, you get a percentage. With other programs, someone clicking and looking without buying may be enough.
Colibri reports that joining the best advertising networks brings in an average of $1,000 per month, while affiliate marketing averages $2,000 a month. Big, successful sites bring in far more, while some small, lonely websites generate nothing. You won’t know what yours can bring in until you try.
Other Website Income Streams
Affiliate links and website ad revenue aren’t the only way for online platforms to make money. If you’re selling anything – books, classic vinyl, hard-to-find car parts – a website is usually an important part of that. Whether you’re selling online or encouraging viewers to email you for a quote, your website can generate money this way.
If you’re in a creative field, your website becomes your portfolio. Whether you’re into graphic design, music or custom-made jewelry, your website earns money by showing what you can do for a client. There’s no average revenue for sites like this – it depends on how much you charge and how many people want to buy.
Another approach that’s become increasingly common is crowdfunding online, asking for donations from potentially hundreds or thousands of people. This can work for a charitable endeavor or to launch an artistic or commercial project. Fundera says that the average successful campaign raises more than $28,000. The average raised by all crowdfunding, including unsuccessful campaigns, is $824.
