Making your business more visible on the internet can take a lot of effort as you will need to increase your search engine rankings on your targeted keywords which is why many businesses turn to paid search engine advertising to get their business to the top of the search lists.
Paid search is a type of digital marketing which focuses on online advertising especially on search engines to increase your visibility on them. Paid search marketing is also referred to as pay-per-click (PPC) as this is the method in which the advertising is charged, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. Pay-per-click advertising can be much broader than paid search as it only forms one part of it as you can also do pay-per-click on social media as well.
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How much does paid search (PPC) marketing services cost?
Paid search advertising can cost as much or as little as you want as you can set a budget and not exceed it as you can turn it off and on whenever you want to. The price will depend on how many ads you place, the popularity of the search term based on the online auction, and the number of people that ultimately click through on your ad.
The cost of the paid search marketing services will vary depending on the agency you select and the rates that they charge. They will typically charge for the time they spend planning your campaign, executing the campaign, and then monitoring and reporting on the results to you. Agencies will charge you an hourly rate for their work or a monthly fee for packages plus the cost of the paid search advertising.
- The cost per month for a paid search ad can cost as little as £20 up to £200 on some campaigns but agency fees may be additional.
- The UK average cost-per-click on Google Ads is £0.66 to £1.32
- Freelancers offer their services on an hourly rate which can start from £20 per hour.
- Packages can cost from £59 per month.
Paid search in the form of pay-per-click can be an inexpensive marketing tool that is scalable as you can grow your budgets for this activity as it proves its value to your business. The cost of the ads varies depending the popularity of the keywords associated with your ad. Keywords are the backbone of pay-per-click ads as these are what you are buying and your placing in the search engine rankings will be determined by.
When you search for a keyword on search engines you get a list that starts with ads followed by the organic searches. Those marked as ads are those that have paid to be listed at the top of the search for the keyword searched for. If the user then clicks on the ad, the advertiser then pays the agreed cost for the click-through from the ad. Because your ad will only feature when a user searches on your selected keywords it is very focused marketing and it should pay for itself if your ad links to the right page on your website to convert the visit into a sale. People pay to increase their rankings on the search engines because the effort, time and cost of increasing your search rankings organically can be high and therefore it is quicker and more cost-effective to pay to get to the top.
Paid search advertising may seem simple but there is a lot that goes on in the background that you need to understand as there are different factors that determine which ads appear in the search engine and in which order. Firstly, the ad will need to match the user search term and seem relevant. The ad relevance is determined through an ad auction.
Ad auctions are held by the search engines on specific search terms and the ad will be automatically assessed for its relevance to the search term and its’s Ad Rank. If the ad is believed to be relevant to the search term it could appear on the search engine’s results page. The Ad Rank is calculated by multiplying CPC Bid which is the highest amount an advertiser will spend and the Quality Score which is based on your click-through rate, relevance and quality of your landing page. In these auctions, you will bid for your ad placement based on the keywords you have selected. The more in demand the keywords are the higher the cost will be as you are bidding against other businesses that also want to place ads on those keywords.
The search engines that operate pay-per-click advertising are:
- Google Ads which is the most popular search engine for ads due to the large volume of searches conducted through the search engine. Ads can be in the form of text, image, video or responsive based.
- Bing Ads is a growing place for advertising. They have a tool that allows you to import your campaigns from Google Ads although making adjustments to the ad is advised. Ads can be in the form of text for text-based searches and can be responsive for placements.
You can also place pay-per-click advertising on social media platforms which include:
- Facebook ads which can be very focused ads based on demographics, interests and behaviours. These ads can be made up of video, photos, carousel-style, slideshows or canvas.
- LinkedIn ads can also be targeted by the individuals’ profession, job title, seniority and company amongst other things. The ads can be text and image-based.
- Twitter ads place ads in the users’ feed on the Twitter app. Promoted tweets can be a flexible ad format which includes text, images, videos and GIFs.
- Pinterest ads come in the form of promoted pins, one-tap promoted pins, promoted video pins, promoted app pins and cinematic pins.
What does paid search (PPC) marketing include?
To successfully run a paid search campaign, you need to understand how the search engine’s pay-per-click advertising works. Firstly, you need to do your research to work out what search terms or keywords your customers are searching for and where you currently rank on those searches to whether you want to pay to increase your visibility on the search engine’s rankings.
Google Ads has a keyword planner that can help you with this research and find the keywords your target audience is searching for if you want to do this yourself or a paid search marketing agency will do all this for you and more.
They will advise on what keywords will be best for your business whether they should be specific terms or longtail keywords. They will manage the online auctions on your behalf using their experience to bid for keywords that you have agreed to and they ensure you get a good price and that you get the exposure you need.
They will work with you to create a budget for your paid search campaign so you know how much you will be spending. They can keep you informed about the cost of the campaign and give you the opportunity to increase your budget.
A paid search marketing agency will also create the ads for you so that they are distinctive and appealing to your target audience so that searchers click through on your ad. They can also advise you on your landing page and how to convert visits into sales as well as making the page help your quality rating with the search engine.
They will also monitor your campaign and adjust the campaign where necessary to improve the results as well as pause and restart your ads if needed. They will analyse the statistics behind the paid search marketing to demonstrate the results from the campaign based on impressions, click-throughs, your quality score rating from the search engine as well as examining how many clicks converted into sales. This will allow you to see the cost-effectiveness of your campaigns and the return on investment (ROI).
What are the benefits of using paid search (PPC) marketing?
There are many benefits of paid search marketing which include:
- It is a very targeted method of marketing directly to those that are interested and searching for products like yours.
- It will ensure that your business or products/services are visible across all devices.
- It is a very accurate and measurable form of advertising and is more measurable than most other kinds of advertising.
- They will create cost-effective ads that drive traffic and revenue through your website.
- They can aid you in quickly and easily seeing what is happening with your ad and whether it is working.
- It is great for businesses that sell online and can convert the traffic into sales quickly once they have arrived on your website.
- They can help you to find the right keywords for your business and what your target audience is searching for and prevent you from wasting time and money on the wrong keywords.
- They understand keywords and they know when specific terms are best or whether using longtail keywords are the right choice, this will save time and money that can be wasted on broader terms which will deliver fewer results.
- They will create compelling ads that will encourage users to click on your ad opposed your competitors’ ads or listings and to increase the chances of your ads of being included in the search ads.
- They will ensure that your ad gets selected to appear by the search engine due to its relevance and quality without spending too much on your ads.
- They will purchase the ads for you and try to get you the best deal in the auction.
- They can help you to create a budget for your paid search campaign and monitor the spend.
- They will ensure that your landing page is optimised to enhance both your quality rating which will improve your search engine selection and convert visits to sales.
- They will monitor your campaign to see how it is working and make amendments where needed.
- They will provide statistics on how your campaigns are going including views, clicks, quality score and can marry that with your sales statistics through your website to see what revenue your ads have achieved.
- They can tweak your ads, pause and re-start them whenever you need to so that you have total control of your ads.
What type of paid search (PPC) marketing services are available?
There are a variety of agencies that offer paid search marketing services which include:
- Full-service marketing agencies that offer digit marketing services amongst their service offerings. They may offer standalone paid search marketing or offer it as part of a package.
- Digital marketing agencies that specialise in online marketing. They offer a range of digital marketing services which include paid search, SEO, website design and social media.
- Freelance providers that offer a range of digital services may include paid search on search engines and social media platforms as well as SEO services.