PPC (Pay Per Click)
Google’s main advertising platform is called Pay Per Click, which is usually shortened down to PPC. The clue is in the name: you can get your advert shown for free but you pay every time someone clicks on it, regardless of whether they then purchase anything from your site or not. How much you pay per click depends on how much Google values that spot and how many other people are willing to bid for it.
It undoubtedly works. It used to be that the ads were shown in obvious yellow boxes but now the ‘Ad’ badge that indicated they are paid-for has grown smaller and smaller over the years, meaning that we often click on them not realising they are ads. And if you’re presented with what seems like the perfect result then you are going to click on it.
If you are interested in PPC it is worthwhile spending some time getting your head around how it works. Google’s main PPC interface has been built with agencies in mind who will be managing multiple campaigns across multiple accounts, and if you dive straight in it can be overwhelming at first. So they recently introduced a simplified version which gives you a step-by-step walkthrough to set up your first advert where Google will fill in a lot of the blanks for you. Although this seems attractive, those blanks can cost you a lot of money. By guessing search terms for you, the advert that you thought you were setting up to capture people searching to buy vegan sweets may also get shown to people looking for vegan food recipes for example.
Google have some excellent tutorials however, as you would expect. From beginner guides through to full Google qualified certification, all their guides are free and allow you to study through them at your own pace. But if it’s your first time looking at PPC then it’s much better to find someone who already uses Google PPC successfully and get them to show you how it works. You will need to understand how ‘campaigns’, ‘ad groups’ and individual adverts are all layered in the Google Ads dashboard and the difference between them. You may want to use an agency or freelancer to set up your first campaign for you because it’s much easier to then add new ones once the first has been set up.
