There are few marketing campaigns that consist of just one approach or just one outlet. You have social media, CRM, organic search and SEO, and countless other platforms to choose from when starting or ramping up a marketing campaign.
And whether you’re focused on your eCommerce needs, retargeting, or brand building, pay-per-click advertising through Facebook ads, Bing ads, Google search ads, or any other outlet can be a highly effective component that offers excellent ROI.
“Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is an essential component of an effective online growth strategy because it allows businesses to reach potential customers who are actively searching for their products or services. PPC also provides businesses with precise control over their advertising spend, as they only pay when someone clicks on their ad.” — Kevin Kim, CEO of MARZ AGENCY LLC
In order to help you get started, we consulted several digital marketing experts to get their thoughts on the best PPC strategies. They had lots of insightful tips to help you on everything from CTR to bidding strategy, CTAs, ad extensions, ad groups, and much more. One thing that they all agreed on was that paid ads created with the right PPC strategy are an outstanding option for small businesses.
“PPC is extremely effective for small businesses, especially local service businesses. You can maximize your PPC profitability by ensuring you have strict KPIs set and you monitor and adjust based off of those to maximize your conversion rates.” — Chris Rossi, Digital Marketing Consultant at Attorney Sluice
Our panel of experts also provided us with their candid thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages of PPC advertising, so that anyone who is just getting started can get a head start on the process.
“PPC is very effective for small businesses as long as it is set up and managed properly. To maximize profitability, we recommend using a tightly monitored set of keywords and pay a lot of attention to the landing page experience on their website.” — Ryan Turner, Co-Owner of 3PRIME Web Solutions
When executed properly, a solid pay-per-click campaign can both effectively grow your business and save you money compared to other methods.
“PPC is an essential component for any business due to its ability to drive targeted traffic, increase brand visibility, and generate measurable results. With the ability to bid on specific keywords and only pay when their ads are clicked, PPC offers a cost-effective and efficient way to reach potential customers who are actively searching for our services.” — Jordan Goodman, Director of Marketing at Strats & Roadmaps
Advantages of Pay-Per-Click Advertising for Small Businesses
Let’s look at the best part first: PPC marketing has a ton of advantages for any business, but especially for small businesses. And our panel of experts was quick to point out the many ways that PPC advertising can help level the playing field and give small business owners an effective method to reach customers and grow conversions.
“The biggest advantage to PPC advertising is scalability and control. Businesses can easily test campaigns and increase budgets. They can also lower budgets during slower periods. PPC gives businesses more control to decide what happens when a user clicks on their ad.” — Aaron Shishilla, CEO of WolfPack Advising
One of the key advantages that came up time and again was speed. From re-marketing brand building or any other type of online advertising, getting a PPC campaign up and running can be fairly quick, and the results can begin to show up for your business pretty quickly, too.
“Speed is the ultimate advantage of PPC. Launch a new service? Open up a store in a new location? Within an hour you can have ads up and running to promote that new part of your business. One other advantage is attribution. With PPC, you can see exactly what keyword has generated a lead or sale.” — Ryan Scollon, PPC Consultant at Ryan Scollon & Co
In fact, some experts say that businesses can see the results of a well-executed PPC campaign almost immediately.
“Speed is the greatest advantage of PPC advertising. You can get in front of potential leads almost immediately with a properly run PPC campaign. PPC can be very effective for small businesses, as long as the cost to acquire a new client is in line with their other numbers around client profitability and lifetime value.” — Brian Craig, VP of Client Services at DentalScapes
The ability to control PPC based on changes in need or budget was also a key factor that came up many times in our conversation. PPC offers flexibility and adjustability that you often do not get in other types of digital advertising.
“Once you have your campaign set up correctly, PPC can be turned on or off like a faucet to fill our opportunities. When we have too much to handle, we can pause our campaigns. When we don’t have enough prospects, we can turn up our advertising thanks to PPC.” — Dan Burt, CEO of Solzorro IT Services
Of course, no marketing campaign or effort can truly be called effective without the metrics. And PPC ads through Google Ads Display Network and several other outlets help you see how your ads are performing and your progress toward goals almost instantaneously.
“In addition to targeting, PPC advertising also provides measurable results in real time. Businesses can monitor the performance of their ads, including the number of clicks, impressions, and conversions. This data can be used to optimize campaigns for maximum effectiveness, making PPC advertising a valuable tool for ongoing growth.” — Andrew Perez, Director of PPC at inspirationPPC
Disadvantages of Pay-Per-Click Advertising for Small Businesses
No option for advertising is perfect, of course. There will be disadvantages with any advertising outlet or method, and it’s important to be aware of some potential drawbacks when it comes to display ads, paid search, and Adwords campaigns, for example.
“One major drawback is the potential for click fraud, where competitors or bots can click on your ads to use your budget up without generating any actual traffic. PPC advertising can also be costly, especially for highly competitive keywords, and requires ongoing optimization and monitoring to ensure a positive ROI.” — Steven Kohnke, CEO/Partner/Advisor at Denver Business Coach
As with any advertising effort, the question of pricing or budget is always a part of the conversation. And while PPC campaigns can be remarkably effective, there is always the chance that you may overextend yourself if you are not careful with your bidding strategy.
Factors such as cost per click (CPC) and other considerations need close monitoring to ensure that you don’t spend more than you intended.
“It all depends on the budget of the business and specifically the level of competition. PPC can be effective in many arenas, but a business can burn a lot of cash if they don’t know what they’re doing. It’s something we see far too often. Small businesses can maximize the profitability of their paid search campaigns by performing proper keyword research and setting their budgets wisely.” — Omeed Gül, CEO at Civono
As with any business growth strategy, it’s always important to be on the lookout for results that seem to be too good to be true.
“Wasted ad spend is the biggest disadvantage to PPC advertising. We audit all of our client’s existing digital strategy when they come aboard. In the majority of circumstances we have found that PPC advertising has been incorrectly set up, or set up in a way that inflates conversions. Unfortunately, the amount of bad actors and deceptive digital agencies out there is astounding.” — Evan Holmgren, Co-Founder of Hammerhead
Despite the potential drawbacks, our panelists all saw PPC advertising as a critical component for small businesses.
“To be honest, I don’t feel like there is much of a disadvantage as long as you make the most of your marketing. Pay-per-click advertising may be a very successful strategy for small businesses to get discovered online, drive customers to their website, build brand awareness, and promote their business in the digital world.” — Christopher Yap , PPC Marketing Manager at Brandlume
Top Strategies to Optimize your PPC Campaign
Whether you are just starting out your PPC campaign or you have several years of experience, our experts offered plenty of tips and strategies to help with optimizing your results.
These strategies assume that PPC is a key component of your marketing efforts, but are designed to work in conjunction with existing campaigns such as search engine optimization efforts, organic social media, content marketing, and more.
“Our PPC advertising strategy is built around content generation and education for potential customers. Our goal is to drive users to interesting and unique content to show the customer how we differentiate ourselves in the way that we work.” — Robb Fahrion, Partner at Flying V Group
As mentioned earlier, tracking is key to a successful campaign. Because you can adjust your PPC efforts frequently, you also need to be monitoring it frequently to know when adjustments are needed and what changes can have a true impact.
“In order for pay-per-click advertising to be successful, conversion tracking and data analytics MUST be set up properly, integrated, and measured by the appropriate ad platform in order for pay-per-click campaigns to be better optimized. Setting up your Facebook Pixel, syncing Google Ads with GA4 conversion events, and optimizing campaigns according to real conversion data is the key to optimizing campaign performance.” — Josh Mangum, Founder of WiT Group Agency
With PPC campaigns including SEM (search engine marketing), you also don’t have to go very far to get valuable information about campaign performance.
“Our strategy is to be very analytical. We use the data that is provided by Google to hone in on the right audience. By monitoring the cost-per-click and click-through rate (including the conversion rate) we’re able to allocate the budget to the proper audience, and the keyword/phrases will help increase your conversions. With the same data, we’re able to see what keywords/phrases are not performing well.” — Kevin Fidler, Partner at NuStream
Being actively involved was a frequent piece of advice, and a critical one in order to ensure that your small business PPC efforts are effective without being overly expensive.
“In order to maximize the profitability of PPC, companies must optimize their campaigns on a DAILY basis, must be constantly A/B testing, and must be reviewing their search terms reports on a daily basis!” — Ronnie Katz, CEO of BullsEye Internet Marketing
Frequent monitoring is also important to ensure that you are not getting outbid and therefore missing out on traffic that your competitors have captured.
“PPC is very effective for small businesses but you have to keep on top of campaigns and keep tweaking every week. Without regularly reviewing your campaigns, you will waste money or be outbid.” — AJ Saunders, Founder of AJS Digital Group
As for planning your PPC campaign and incorporating it into your overall marketing efforts, you need a solid strategy. And one area where PPC can really pay off is to make up for shortcomings that may be present in your existing campaigns.
“PPC should be utilized to both fill gaps where a website isn’t doing well organically, to compete for very important keywords where competitors are advertising, and to stay top-of-mind to an actively searching audience.” — Mary Smucker-Priest, CEO of Simple Search Marketing
Strategy is another theme that came up again and again. You would never begin a print ad campaign or a pricey direct-mail campaign without a clearly defined strategy. And you should take the same care with your PPC efforts as well.
“We start with keyword research to identify the most relevant search terms. Then, we create targeted ad campaigns to capture the interest of potential customers. Finally, we continuously monitor and optimize ads to ensure maximum potential results.” — Kim Ortiz, Owner/Creative Director at Boost Web Studio
Some experienced online marketing strategists take a three-stage approach to PPC campaigns: goal-setting, audience-targeting, and ad execution.
“Every single new project we handle starts with in-depth research and defining clear goals. In this stage, our PPC team collaborated with our (business development) department to get the clearest picture of client expectations. In the second stage, we define the target audiences and keywords. In the third stage, we collaborate with the content team to get compelling ad copies and proceed with setting them up.” — Mary Ghazaryan, Pay Per Click Specialist at inSegment
As you construct your strategy, remember that there’s no such thing as knowing too much. Have your target audiences, goals, and as much information as possible ready for your team before you get started.
“Our strategy for PPC advertising focuses on setting clear goals, identifying target audiences, selecting relevant keywords, and creating engaging ad copy and landing pages.” — Sushil Kumar, CEO of TEQTOP
While it may not be the most exciting part of a PPC campaign, the importance of thorough research can’t be overstated.
“Our company’s overarching strategy for PPC advertising to generate qualified leads involves conducting thorough research on our target audience to determine the most effective keywords, demographics, and interests to target. We also focus on creating compelling ad copy and optimizing our landing pages to increase conversions and maximize ROI. “ — William Campos, Principal Owner of Sophisticated Marketing Solutions
Finally, all of our panelists were quick to remind small business owners and marketing professionals that there is no “magic solution” when it comes to marketing strategy. From the headline to the call-to-action, sometimes things work and sometimes they don’t
But PPC advertising allows you to make changes and adjustments as you learn more from your efforts, making it easier to improve your performance.
“It’s also important to understand that with any marketing strategy, it is not a guarantee and not a quick-fix. Companies will want to spend time understanding key audiences, defining what success ultimately looks like, and serving up PPC ads and content that are relevant to their end users.” — Melissa Harrison, CEO of Allee Creative
Get the Most from Your PPC Marketing
As you can imagine, the advice and tips offered here are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the expertise available from our panel of digital marketing and advertising professionals.
There is a wealth of additional information they’d love to share with you, including guidance on negative keywords, improving your quality score, targeting the right search queries, and much, much more.
Regardless of where you are in your PPC efforts, you can find dozens of highly rated and client-recommended PPC experts here at UpCity who are ready to collaborate on your next successful campaign.