A Beginner’s Guide to Starting PPC: Everything You Need to Know

PPC, or Pay-Per-Click, is a form of online advertising where businesses pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. It’s a way of generating visits to your site by buying prime advertising space, rather than earning them organically. The most common platform for PPC advertising is Google Ads, but there are also options with Microsoft Advertising, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and others.

PPC can appear in search engine results pages (known as paid search) or on social media feeds, websites, or YouTube videos (known as display advertising). The flexibility of PPC allows you to target specific keywords, locations, devices, and demographics.

Before you jump into PPC, it’s crucial to define your campaign goals. Ask yourself: What do I want to achieve with this campaign?

Common goals include:

• Increasing website traffic
• Generating leads (e.g., form submissions or phone calls)
• Driving eCommerce sales
• Raising brand awareness

Having clear goals will help you structure your campaigns and measure success effectively.

Keep your goals in mind at every step of the way as this can determine the direction you take in PPC advertising, from the channel you choose to launch a PPC campaign, to the audience or keyword targeting you define.

The next step is to choose where to run your PPC ads. The platform you choose depends on your target audience and business objectives.

• Google Ads: Ideal for reaching users searching for specific products or services. Google Ads allow you to target specific keywords, ensuring your ads appear when people are actively searching for what you offer.
• Microsoft Advertising (Bing Ads): Similar to Google Ads but with a smaller audience, Microsoft Advertising can be more cost-effective and reach users across Bing, Yahoo, and AOL. If you are a B2B business, Bing may be a good fit due to other businesses using Microsoft Edge and Bing as the primary operating system and search engine.
• Facebook Ads: Best for targeting based on interests, demographics, and behaviours. Facebook Ads also appear on Instagram. Facebook Ads are often better suited for lower priced products or services that are directed at customers directly, rather than other businesses.
• LinkedIn Ads: Useful for B2B companies looking to target specific industries, job titles, or companies.

In a nutshell, Google Search campaigns will always offer a better return on investment as you are advertising to people actively searching for your product or searches, but if you are looking for exposure to a wide audience, Google display, Facebook and Linkedin PPccampaigns can expose you to large audiences for a much cheaper cost than Google search ads can cost.

If you choose a platform like Google Ads, keywords are the backbone of your PPC campaign. Keywords are the search terms that will trigger your ads to appear. Conducting keyword research helps you find the best keywords for your business, ensuring your ads appear when potential customers are searching for relevant products or services.

Here are a few tools to help with keyword research:

• Google Keyword Planner: A free tool provided by Google to identify keyword ideas and estimate traffic.
• SEMrush: Offers detailed keyword data, including volume, competition, and cost-per-click (CPC) estimates.
• Ahrefs: Another powerful tool that provides in-depth keyword analysis.

Search Console: Use your own organic data (if possible) to find words and phrases that you are already being found for and use these as a basis to boost search position each time they are searched.

When doing keyword research, keep in mind you will be looking for terms that your customers will use to describe your services, not your own, more technical and complicated descriptions (binman, rather than refuse engineer for example.)

A well-organised campaign structure is essential for managing PPC efficiently. Campaigns in Google Ads are divided into:

• Campaigns: The overarching structure that contains all your ads. You’ll set budgets and goals here.
• Ad Groups: Within each campaign, you can create multiple ad groups to target different sets of related keywords or products.
• Ads: Each ad group will contain individual ads. These are the actual creatives users will see when your ads are triggered.

Start with a clear structure based on your goals. For example, if you’re an eCommerce site, you might create separate campaigns for each product category, then organise ad groups by specific product types.

A good Ad Campaign will follow a similar structure to your website. Top-level links in your menu would be your campaign and sub-pages of the top-level menu item will be your Ad groups.

Your ad copy needs to grab attention and persuade users to click. In most PPC platforms, your ads will include headlines, descriptions, and a display URL. Keep the following tips in mind when writing your ads:

• Use Relevant Keywords: Ensure your primary keywords appears in the headlines and descriptions to improve relevancy.
• Focus on Benefits: Highlight the value proposition – why should someone click your ad? Do you offer free delivery or a special discount?
• Include a Call-to-Action (CTA): Encourage users to take action with phrases like “Buy Now,” “Learn More,” or “Get a Free Quote.”

Geographic and experience-based text also works in getting better click-through rates in our experience. ‘Based in the UK’, or ‘Est since 2000’ for example, are some of hte headlines that have helped our Ads outperform others.  

One of the biggest advantages of PPC is that you have full control over your budget. You can decide how much to spend on each campaign and adjust your bids for specific keywords or audience segments. For beginners, it’s wise to start with a smaller budget while you test the waters.

In Google Ads, you can choose from several bidding strategies:

• Manual CPC: You control the maximum amount you’re willing to pay per click.
• Enhanced CPC: Google automatically adjusts your bids to increase conversions while staying within your budget.
• Maximise Conversions: Google optimises your bids to generate as many conversions as possible within your budget.

Facebook and LinkedIn advertising also allows you to set a maximum budget amount you are willing to spend each day, with different ways of reaching people based on your audience selection.

Your PPC ad is only half of the equation – the landing page that users are directed to is equally important. Ensure your landing page is optimised for conversions by:

• Making sure it loads quickly
• Keeping the messaging consistent with the ad
• Including clear CTAs and easy navigation
• Optimising for mobile devices

A well-optimised landing page will improve your Quality Score, a metric Google uses to determine your ad rank and cost-per-click.

If your website is not geared up to be as good as it should be at turning visitors into customers, one tactic is to build a stand-alone page that is purely aimed at generating conversions, then targeting this page on your PPC ads. Occasionally, web pages are not really optimised for generating leads and changing one page will mean having to change all the pages for consistency. This makes creating a new page only for PPC ads a more convenient, time-saving exercise that will generate better results.

Once your campaign is live, monitoring performance is crucial. Google Ads and other PPC platforms provide detailed reports that allow you to track key metrics like:

• Impressions: The number of times your ad is shown
• Clicks: The number of times your ad is clicked
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of people who clicked after seeing the ad
• Cost Per Click (CPC): The average amount you’re paying per click
• Conversion Rate: The percentage of clicks that lead to conversions (e.g., a sale or lead)

Regularly reviewing your campaign data will help you identify which ads or keywords are performing well and where you may need to make adjustments.

Conversions in Google ads or Facebook / LinkedIn ads are not counted by default and will need a little extra work.

Google can provide you with a code snippet to place on your converting page (a thank you for subscribing / buying / getting in touch page), or you can import conversions from Google Analytics, which does a good job in counting valuable clicks on web forms, embedded phone numbers and revenue tracking if you have an e-commerce business.

Starting with PPC can seem overwhelming, but with careful planning and strategic execution, you can see fast and measurable results. Begin with clear goals, choose the right platform, and structure your campaigns to target your audience effectively. Always monitor performance and be prepared to make ongoing optimisations to improve results.

If you’re looking for expert guidance or want help managing your PPC campaigns, reach out to the team at Interact Digital. We specialise in creating and optimising PPC campaigns to help businesses grow and succeed online.

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