Advertising of the Pay per Click (PPC) type has been with us for a while now. Yahoo was one of the first to offer it, quickly followed by Google and Google is now probably the most well-known provider with its Google Ads product (formerly known as Adwords).
You can read more about PPC on my website but here’s a quick overview.
How does Pay-per-Click work?
The overview is pretty simple.
- You (the advertiser) design an Ad to fit the constraints of your chosen platform.
- You agree to pay the host platform, whether Google, Facebook, Linkedin, etc. a certain amount of money every time your Ad is clicked on. This is your bid.
- You pay (an agreed) fee per click (every time someone clicks on your Ad). Because of the way that the bidding works, this is unlikely to be the full amount of the amount that you have bid
The amount that you have to bid is in your hands, the amount that you have to bid varies depending on whether you want to be at the top of the first page, the bottom of the first page, or elsewhere in Google search. Other variables that impact the cost you’ll have to pay include the number of companies competing with you AND the amount of profit in a particular sale. The more profit there is, the more you can afford to pay per click
I’ve worked on campaigns where we’ve paid a few pence per click and on others where the clicks have cost many pounds
The top three PPC platforms are Google, Facebook, and Linkedin, but which is the best?
They all work in pretty much the same way. You decide how much you are willing to pay every time someone clicks on your Ad and you set a maximum daily/monthly budget so that you have total control over costs.
There are no minimum campaign lengths and no minimum spends. Allied to the ability to start, pause, and stop your campaigns whenever you want/need to, your budget is totally under your control.
Where should I spend my advertising pounds, which is the best?
The reality is that there isn’t a “best” platform per se, the best is the one that most effectively reaches your target market.
If you are a Business to Business (B2B) supplier then Linkedin will be worth considering and if you are in the Business to Consumer (B2C) sector then Facebook would probably be your platform of choice
However, if you have a limited budget then the most effective option is probably Google Ads – and a quick look at the numbers demonstrates why
In 2019 93% of the UK had access to the internet. With an adult population of 52.5 million, this equates to a total internet reach of 48.82 million people.
Facebook has 32m active users in the UK and LinkedIn 27m. These are fantastic numbers. And you get to choose who your Ads are shown to. You can choose from a wide range of demographics to ensure that your Ads are properly targetted.
- where they live/work geographically
- their interests (Facebook)
- the ages you want to target
- the genders you want to target
- job descriptions (LinkedIn)
- job titles
- and more
However, there is no way of knowing who in your targeted audience is actually looking for the things you sell or the services you deliver but you are only paying when someone clicks on your Ad – so that’s OK then, isn’t it?
Are you Missing out?
As we have seen, the Social Media reach of Linkedin and Facebook is fantastic, as are the advertising controls, ensuring that your Ads are only displayed to those in your target demographic groups. But you ARE missing out.
Google is used by around 95% of the UK’s internet users, so that’s around 47m people, 15m more (nearly 50% more ) than Facebook and 20m (74%) more than LinkedIn,
And your Ad is only shown by people who are searching for the things you sell or the services you deliver.
Which makes Google Ads, in my opinion, the best place to spend your advertising money.
You might say that I am biassed but I actually manage campaigns across all 3 platforms and the results demonstrate that Google does provide a better return, provided your campaigns are properly managed.
And that’s the crux of the matter. Without effective management, you may as well simply send Google a cheque every month or just burn your cash because your campaign will just not work
With attention and careful management, however, you should be able to make a Google Ads campaign deliver a plentiful supply of new customers to your website.
But your website MUST be good at converting these new opportunities into leads, inquiries, opportunities, and sales.
Thanks for reading and remember, if you have any questions about PPC, need help with your PPC campaign or want help launching and managing one all you have to do is get in touch. I’ll be only too happy to answer any questions that you might have
Find me: https://seo.enterprise-oms.uk/ | andy@enterprise-oms.co.uk
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Phone me: 01793 238020 ¦ 07966 547146