What is Pay-per-click advertising?

Per-per-click or PPC is a model of digital marketing where an advertiser pays a fee whenever their target audience clicks the link in their Ad. PPC advertising is usually used to increase the traffic of a website or boost sales without necessarily relying on organic traffic only. PPC advertising is usually used in search engines like Google or social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.

Using PPC advertising requires you to buy advertising space on any of the search engines or social media sites. Let’s share with you the standard procedures for running Google Ads or Ads on any of the social media sites.

• Have your account ready: You will need to create a Google Keyword Planner to run Google Ads. If you already have a Google account, you simply have to link it with Google Keyword Planner to get started.
• Choose your goal: As you create your campaign, you will need to tell Google your clear goal so that it decides who exactly to show your Ads to. Some of the goals that you will choose from include, getting more website visits or driving more sales.
• Choose your target keywords: Google gives you the option to choose the relevant keywords that match your Ad. You may have to do some research using tools like SEMrush and KWFinder to determine the most relevant keywords to use for your Ad.
• Add your target audience: You will also be required to choose the location, gender, interests, and behaviour of the people you want Google to show your ad to. Google will also allow you to choose the operating system of the devices your Ad should be shown to.

The procedure for creating PPC ads on social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn, is similar most of the time. The first step for all these platforms is creating a business page or profile with your business. After creating the respective pages, follow these procedures.

• Go to the advertising dashboard: For Facebook and Instagram ads, you will use the Meta Business suit. With LinkedIn, you can use Campaign manager to run and manage your ads.
• Choose your goal: These platforms will require you to set a clear goal of what you intend to achieve with the ad. In this case, you can choose website or store visits. Make sure you add the link to the exact web page where you want your target audience to be sent.
• Choose an audience: The next thing is specifying the category of people that you want to target with your Ad. You will be given the option to choose the location, gender, the OS of devices they are using, interests, and more.

Once you have created Ads with any of these platforms, you can always check their performance through the analytics dashboard to figure out if the ad is driving results as expected. If a couple of days pass without getting the kind of results you expect, try making a few changes, including the keywords or the details of the audience you are targeting.