Marketers, can we be candid with one another for a second? On a scale of 1-10, how much do you really know the world of Pay-Per-Click advertising or Google Ads?
A study revealed that 65% of small businesses use PPC*, yet the world of PPC is still one that perplexes a lot of us. As any business striving to be relevant, PPC is a channel that you can’t afford to overlook and should have under your belt. But to what degree should one be involved?
Let’s explore this channel further and gauge.
A primary reason that Google advertising has gained so much traction is because Google streamlined it in such a way that makes it ultra-accessible. Google carefully designed the onboarding experience to invite everyone from amateur to professional to dive right in. Today, just about anyone can set up their Adwords account and create live ads in the matter of minutes. How so?
It uses a variety of prompts that can make success seem relatively straightforward
- Suggestions
Google offers recommendations to the user such that there appears to be many options at hand to choose from to decide where to start. In reality, they are far too generic and rarely will be the optimal ad pertaining to your business and market. - Budgeting
Google is well aware of business owners’ reluctance to allocating money and not yielding results; so, it created a budgeting tool that offers to manage spending. The advice and tools Google provides induce a feeling of confidence in knowing what money is going where. But one should be weary as this could be merely a fallacy. - Results
A campaign is only as useful as its results. Google demonstrates results in such a way that gives the impression that the campaign has succeeded in increasing traffic, giving way to a preliminary surge of optimism that convinces you to invest.
In that sense, it is deceptive in its ease of use that it’s attracted several entrepreneurs and even had them toot their own horn.
So, what does it take to harness the power of PPC to your favor?
Truly harnessing the power of PPC requires much time spent in trial and error. That is what sets specialists apart from anyone merely dabbling in the Google advertising world. That includes figuring out what ads, formats, delivery times, and methods work best for your specific business.
Upon running tests and examining results, you are extremely susceptible to misinterpretation. That is because of the many different factors that affect the results.
Let’s say that you are giving out free merchandise to target leads who will convert to long-term customers. If not set correctly with the help of a professional, this may lead to promoting your merchandise to random visitors to your website who will take advantage of your offering with a cheap click. This can trigger the results on the back end to appear as though you have achieved a high Click Through Rate for low click cost and send you off celebrating, at the end of the day, with no real conversion.
Let’s take another example
Suppose that you have set up your ad and you are getting clicks. You decide that you would like to scale up to have more than 40 clicks a day. What’s your first instinct? Possibly to ramp up your budget or adjust your click bid amounts. Maybe even to introduce more general keywords into the mix. It won’t be long before you realize that you’ve exhausted your budget before noon and your clicks are rare, if any. In reality, you’ll be doing more harm than good to the model in place.
This is where a professional will be able to run sophisticated, in-depth tests and denote seemingly good results from real ROI. A professional will be able to put together a well-orchestrated plan that will opt for the best ROI rather than the cheapest or most rudimentary route.
For all the aforementioned reasons, it is best to take PPC with a grain of salt. Your best bet to navigating the world of PPC for your brand will be outsourcing the experts.
Heck, if done right, you can generate consistent profits that you can continue to allow them to manage your campaigns and grow your business.
