What is a PPC agency?
A PPC agency is an organization that provides paid search advertisements (also known as pay per click or PPC) to various websites. These ads appear when someone searches for certain keywords related to the products and services offered by the advertiser. PPC ads could appear on search engines (like Google or Bing) as well as online marketplaces (like Amazon or eBay).
What do pay-per-click (PPC) companies do?
Pay-per-click (or PPC) companies help businesses manage their advertising campaigns on search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo!, etc. They also provide analytics so that you can see how successful your ad campaign has been and what keywords have generated the most traffic.
Here's a breakdown of the various aspects of PPC management.
PPC Audit
The very first thing that a PPC management agency would do is an extensive PPC audit. The audit will include looking at your advertising campaigns, your audience targeting, conversion tracking, and the way the account is set up. A good agency would also check to make sure you're not missing any ad types or retargeting campaigns.
Keyword analysis
Next, the agency would look at your keywords (including negative keywords) for each of your campaigns. Each search engine and social media platform has its own rules and marketing strategies around keyword lists. Make sure that the digital agency you work with has experience with the specific platform that you're using.
Competitor analysis
A critical part of the PPC audit is looking at what your competitors are doing. That involves looking at their ad copy, creatives, and landing pages and seeing the type of campaigns they run.
Channel strategy
Once all of the research is done the digital agency would create a digital marketing strategy for each channel. For example, Amazon PPC is very different than Google PPC campaigns so you need a different strategy for each channel.
The channel strategy should also match up with the overall digital marketing strategy of the business because there is often overlap between a company's PPC campaigns and its social media marketing or the A/B tests it's running as part of its conversion rate optimization program.
Monitoring
A good agency will monitor every campaign and every ad they run and keep track of the results. They will regularly login into the account (on a weekly or even daily basis) and make changes to optimize performance.
A/B testing
A/B testing and experimentation are a crucial part of any kind of pay-per-click management. It's important to test different variations of creatives, ad types, and audience targeting regularly in order to improve conversion rates.
What are the different types of PPC ads?
PPC stands for pay-per-click and encompasses a wide range of ad formats including - display ads, Google Shopping Ads, programmatic ads, and native ads. PPC could also include video ads on YouTube and other social media sites.
Google ads
Google Ads (previously known as Google Adwords) include things like display ads that appear on the search results, Google Shopping ads, Youtube video ads, and much more. They are the best at helping you get relevant traffic to your site. They are especially powerful for eCommerce businesses.
Social media advertising
Social media ads include things like Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and TikTok ads. There are some that are PPC-based, where you pay per click, so a lot of paid media agencies do offer them.
Mobile app advertising
Some businesses run ads on mobile apps and if there are specific apps that your target audience uses then you should find an advertising agency that specializes in this channel.
What is search engine marketing?
Search engine marketing or SEM refers to ads that appear on search engine result pages. It's a subset of the wider category of PPC ads. It's sometimes called search engine advertising or Google PPC.
What's the difference between SEO and PPC?
PPC is paid advertising (like display advertising) that a business has to pay for. Search engine optimization (SEO) involves improving the organic search rankings of your site pages with the goal of getting more qualified traffic to your website. It doesn't require ad spend or creatives.
How much should I spend on ads to get results?
In our experience, it's best to start with a $10k ad budget in a particular marketing channel to get enough data and be able to optimize your campaigns.
If you are not there yet, consider using other forms of online marketing such as social media marketing, email marketing, conversion optimization, or growth marketing. Some agencies charge hourly rates if you want to get a quick consultation.
How much do PPC Advertising services cost?
The cost of PPC management varies based on your marketing budget. Usually, the higher your budget, the more expensive the agency's retainer is. The good news is that if you work with Mayple, our vetted Google Ads agencies charge a pretty standard management fee which includes everything except for any graphic design work.
How do you choose the right PPC company for your business?
Find an agency with channel-specific experience
It completely depends on the advertising platform that you are running your ads on. You should choose a top PPC agency that has a proven track record of running ads on the specific platform that you are using for your business.
See their case studies
Don't get wowed by their fancy customer reviews. Look at their actual case studies and see the kind of target audiences, marketing budgets, and types of marketing campaigns they have experience running. Most PPC companies won't let you look under the hood at their actual data but it's always good to ask for some screenshots.
Ask about their process
It's always important to find out the marketing agency's process for campaign management and reporting. Helpful questions to ask include:
- How often do you report on your results?
- Would we have regular calls? How often?
- How many A/B tests do you run per month?
- How many people will I be in touch with?
- Will I get an assigned project manager?
Build your A-team of marketing experts
Even the best marketing company doesn't work in a vacuum. You can dramatically improve your results with PPC if you also run conversion rate optimization campaigns, improve your online presence with reputation management, boost your email campaigns, and utilize omnichannel strategies to reach out to potential clients on all the relevant channels.
You need a marketing expert for each of those digital marketing channels and with Mayple you can build a dedicated team of experts that will create and implement a winning digital strategy for your business.
It's like having a full-service digital marketing agency on your side, just with more transparency, communication, and better results. What are you waiting for? Get started today!
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