What is PPC? A complete guide to pay-per-click advertising

Among online marketing strategies on the market today, alongside SEO, Pay Per Click (PPC) paid advertising is also a choice for many businesses that want to promote themselves and grow sales through Google search. So What is PPC? How is SEO different from PPC? Which one is the better marketing strategy for your business? The guide below from MONA Media will help you decide.

What is PPC?

Pay-per-click advertising, also called PPC (Pay Per Click), is a form of online marketing that lets companies place ads on search engine results pages, social media sites and other websites.

With this model, you pay only when someone clicks your ad. The amount depends on the bid you set in your campaign. People see PPC ads on search engines or through pages Social Media.

Example: A company uses PPC on Google Ads to show ads for sunglasses. When a user searches for the keyword “kính mát nữ” (women's sunglasses), the company's ad appears at the top or bottom of the Google results page. Whether it sits high or low depends on the company's bid for that keyword, and each time a user clicks the ad, the company pays Google

How does paid advertising work?

How this type of advertising works Pay Per Click depends on the bid your business sets. This is where businesses running ads for the same terms compete: the higher the bid, the better the ad position and the more often it is shown.

In practice, the PPC platform uses a formula and an auction to decide which ads appear for which searches. Once an ad is live, its position, timing and the amount you pay are set by the platform's algorithm, based on your budget, bid, campaign setup, and the quality and relevance of the ad. In general, each platform's formula lets a business reach potential customers at a cost that fits its budget.

Example: Say you set a maximum bid per click of 8,000 VND, you will pay less for that keyword if the next competitor bids only 6,000 VND. But if someone is willing to pay 15,000 VND per click, their ad will appear above yours.

Besides the bid, ad platforms also look at other factors such as: asset score, Quality Score and CTR to decide which ad deserves the top position.

Pros and cons of PPC

Like other online advertising and marketing strategies, Pay Per Click has clear advantages and a few drawbacks worth knowing. Let's go through each with MONA below:

Advantages of PPC advertising

Pay-per-click advertising is a cost-effective way to drive traffic to a target website. The main advantages of PPC are:

• Cost-effective: You pay only when a searcher actually visits your website. You can also cap spending, choosing how much to spend according to your plan.
• Reach the right customers: When setting up ads, you can target audiences by demographics such as location, language, device, age, gender and more.
• Easy to measure: PPC campaigns can be set up to measure results closely and in detail, so you know exactly what return you get on your investment.
• Customizable: When running paid campaigns, you can fine-tune small details to get the best performance from the campaign.
• Fast results: You can see the effect of a paid campaign almost immediately, whether that is more traffic, more account sign-ups or more paying accounts.

Drawbacks of paid advertising

Alongside these advantages, PPC has some drawbacks that are easy to spot:

• Time investment: A PPC manager does not just set up the metrics and walk away. They need time to monitor, optimize and fix weak spots while the campaign runs to get the best final result.
• Requires skill: A PPC manager needs hands-on experience to set up an effective campaign. That is why many businesses turn to agencies that specialize in PPC advertising.
• Costs can climb quickly: If you do not monitor and optimize the campaign, the return on your PPC spending will be low and the money put into PPC is wasted.
• Clicks and visits to your website do not always lead to a purchase. So you need to convince visitors to “conversion rate” by improving your content and design and using effective calls to action.

When should you use PPC?

According to Mr. Ly Quoc Sieu, Marketing Manager at MONA, you can run a PPC campaign at any time. Once your website has its basic content and you have a small budget, you can start. And if you need to raise traffic and revenue in a short time, PPC is the right tool.

You can also start a PPC campaign when:

• You want your website to get organic right away.
• You need traffic from exactly the right audience.
• You need to get your product in front of the market quickly.
• Your website was not built for SEO.

The top 4 types of PPC advertising today

Today, the four most common types of PPC advertising are:

Paid Search

This is the most common type of PPC advertising. Paid search ads appear on search engine results pages when a user's query contains a keyword the advertiser has targeted.

Display ads (Display Ads)

Display ads are a form of online marketing that shows ads on websites, mobile apps and other online platforms through an ad network. They usually take the form of banners and other formats that contain text, images, video or audio to draw readers to your products or services. Display has a lower conversion rate than Paid Search, but it is an effective way to build brand awareness.

Behavioral retargeting

Behavioral targeting shows relevant display ads to users based on their online actions, such as searching or clicking on a brand or product. It encourages them to finish what they were interested in, such as putting a favorite product in the cart or paying for the items already in it.

Social media marketing (Paid Social Ads)

Social media marketing is a form of PPC that uses platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and TikTok to connect with users and market products or services. With the huge user bases on popular social networks today, social media marketing is seen as a high-potential PPC channel for businesses.

Google advertising services at MONA Media covers every Google Ads format: Google Search Ads Google Display Advertising Google Video Ads Google Shopping Ads Remarketing Keyword management Google Content Ads Return measurement Reporting & analysis With years of experience in online marketing and a highly skilled team that has run thousands of successful ad campaigns for MONA itself and for our clients, we are confident we can deliver a professional, high-quality Google Ads service. For full details about how to run Google ads at MONA, please CONTACT US via hotline 1900 636 648 or CLICK THE BANNER below for a fast, detailed consultation.  MONA Media commits to regular reports covering every item we agreed to deliver, along with improvements that move your website toward its long-term goals.

How to manage a pay-per-click campaign effectively

For a PPC campaign to perform at its best and reach the KPI you have set, your business needs to keep monitoring and analyzing performance. That way the campaign's settings can be adjusted while it runs. MONA has put together four key steps in managing a PPC campaign for you to keep in mind:

• Choose keywords relevant to your industry: long-tail keywords with high targeting that reflect what your customers are searching for.
• Build a suitable landing page: Your home page may be an attractive landing page, but it is not necessarily the one that gives the best user experience. Use a landing page that matches the keyword and gives in-depth, useful information.
• Write ads with a headline and a call to action that capture your customers' attention.
• Track results through key metrics, such as impressions, click-through rate (CTR), bounce rate, and others, so you stay informed and can adjust in time.

How much should you spend on PPC advertising?

How much should you spend on PPC? There is usually no single number. The cost of a pay-per-click campaign varies by industry, customer lifecycle, current consumer trends, your business's financial capacity and more.

You can use the following points to guide how much to budget for your PPC campaign:

• Highly competitive industries such as business services (real estate, accounting, etc.) have a higher CPC.
• The longer your customers take to decide, the higher the CPC tends to be.
• Skilled account management helps your business spend less on PPC.
• Google Ads runs on an auction system, so higher-quality ads cost less and get better placement.
• The average cost per click is from $2 – $4 on the Google search network and under $1 on the display network.
• Giant retailers spend about $50 million a year on paid advertising in Google Ads. Small and medium businesses spend about$12,000 to $120,000 a year.

The difference between PPC and SEO

PPC and SEO are both very important forms of online marketing. However, each delivers different results and has its own characteristics. Specifically:

Position on the search results page

PPC ads are normally placed above SEO results. Specifically, SEO and PPC results are arranged as follows:

• SEO: Your website can reach the first page if it is optimized for search engines.
• PPC: You can place your ad on the first page, but you must pay a cost per click higher than the CPC. 

Cost

PPC is expensive, but you control your daily budget and can set a fixed spending cap. A well-set-up and well-managed pay-per-click campaign can build a high-quality pool of potential customers at low cost. PPC is especially effective when you want to reach customers in one local area before expanding.

As for SEO, in theory it costs nothing. But to get good SEO results you still need to invest in backlinks, content creation and more. Over the long term, though, SEO remains the cheaper way to succeed.

Traffic

SEO usually brings more traffic than PPC. When you hold one of the top five positions, you can expect steady traffic 24/7 without paying anything. So if you compare traffic against cost for a first-page position, SEO traffic comes out ahead. Specifically:

• SEO: As long as your page ranks in one of the top positions, traffic keeps coming in.
• PPC: PPC ads can get more clicks, but that means you pay more.

Conversion rate

According to a 15-year statistical report from First Page Sage , an internet marketing analytics company, the average conversion rate across all industries for SEO is 2.4% and for PPC it is 1.3%. The industries where SEO converts far better than PPC are:

• Financial services: 2.2% – 0.3%
• Luxury goods: 1.1% – 0.3%
• Real estate: 2.8% – 0.8%
• Medical devices: 3.1% – 0.9%

If your ads are set up with conversion optimization as the goal, visitors from PPC are more likely to convert than visitors from SEO. A web page can rank for many different keywords, so visitors may not be looking for exactly what that page presents.

On the other hand, in a successful PPC campaign, you only get clicks from visitors who are interested in 100% of your content or product.

Difficulty

PPC campaigns are considered easier to run and get in front of searchers faster. PPC ads come with ready-made metrics that let you adjust as you go. Businesses usually hire an experienced agency so the campaign launches quickly and performs well. A PPC ad typically takes only a few days to reach searchers.

SEO, on the other hand, takes a lot of time. A page or website usually needs around 3 to 6 months of continuous SEO to reach a high position, sometimes longer. Be prepared for the possibility that after 6 months the results still fall short of what you expected.

Method

PPC uses money directly to push a page to a high position and reach many potential customers. SEO optimizes the page and the website to climb the SERP results naturally and gradually.

From these comparisons we can see that PPC is a paid strategy that delivers fast results, “hitting” the market segment that already needs what you sell and raising conversion rates. SEO is free advertising that brings in a large amount of traffic, but it takes a lot of time and optimization effort to climb the rankings. So depending on the goal of your campaign, you can choose the right type flexibly, or combine both for the best results.

Frequently asked questions about PPC paid advertising

1. What is Quality Score?

Quality Score is Google's rating of the quality and relevance of your keywords and ad campaign.

2. Is PPC important in marketing?

PPC is one of the important activities in marketing, especially in communication planning. If you do no PPC at all, you may lose valuable traffic and revenue. A pay-per-click program is worth running in the cases listed above.

3. What is the difference between PPC and CPC?

CPC Cost per Click is the cost of each click. PPC, on the other hand, is the advertising model that lets marketers place ads on platforms.

4. Should you choose PPC or SEO?

A business running marketing communications should do both SEO and PPC. SEO is an activity to keep up throughout the life of the business. To decide whether to use PPC, consider whether the product, service or message is for the short term or the long term. In the short term, use PPC when:

• You want fast results.
• Your product is the first in its field.
• You want to promote an offer, a discount or a giveaway.
• You want to send customers to a landing page.

5. What are PPC ad impressions?

Impressions of a paid ad are the total number of times your ad is shown on the search results page or on the advertising platform's display network. For example, impressions of a PPC ad on Google are the total number of times the ad is shown in Google search results or on other pages in the Google network for a given keyword query.

That covers the question “What is PPC?” and a detailed overview of this click-based paid advertising. We hope the information MONA Media shared above is useful to you. If you need advice on Pay Per Click advertising or our other SEO and marketing services, contact us for a fast, detailed consultation.

Please contact us via:

• Hotline: 1900 636 648
• Email: info@themona.global
• Address: 1073/23 Cach Mang Thang 8 Street, Ward 7, Tan Binh, Ho Chi Minh City