Paid Media Channels are an invaluable tool for businesses to reach their target audiences. One of the most popular and effective forms of paid media is Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising.
PPC campaigns give advertisers the ability to precisely target potential customers and drive them towards conversion goals such as website visits or purchases. Without paid search ads, businesses can miss out on sales leads and the chance to generate new customers. As a result, company revenue declines over time.
Including paid media strategies in your digital marketing plan takes your business to a new level with fast and trackable growth in conversion rates and revenue increases. But what exactly is a paid media channel, and how do PPC bidding strategies come in when advertising with paid media?
A paid ad is an advertising solution used by businesses to generate leads. There are various channels available to reach different conversion goals. Businesses can boost their revenue efficiently with the right PPC bidding strategies.
In this article, we will dive into the details of what PPC campaigns are and why you should use them. We will provide an overview of the various PPC bidding strategies available and compare each one in terms of its advantages and disadvantages so that you can make informed decisions about your own campaign strategy.
Who we are: With over 25 years of experience, SnellMedia has created thousands of successful B2B Google Ads campaigns for clients primarily in SaaS, manufacturing automation and health tech.
Book a 30-minute consultation with a senior, Google-certified member of our team today. During the call, we’ll answer any Google Ads-related questions you have and audit your account to provide your marketing team with valuable feedback they can implement to double or maybe even triple your lead generation.
Paid media is a practical way of generating sales for your business. Unlike traditional print media ads and radio/TV ads, online advertising solutions can target specific audiences and deliver a customised message to drive conversions.
Consistent traffic is one of the benefits of paid advertising. Search engine optimisation and organic search take time and effort to push your content in the search results, and you often need 6 to 12 months to determine whether your changes increase traffic to your website.
On the contrary, PPC guarantees fast exposure. If your PPC bid strategies are right, your paid media ads will start running and you can adjust them as needed.
B2B pay-per-click advertising can be a lucrative source of advertisement. B2B industries rely heavily on outbound marketing. The bottom funnel-focused feature of paid media engages buyers with professional ad copy. The tool helps brands create a targeted demand generation strategy that combines insight from sales and marketing strength.
Paid advertising benefits a business in several ways, especially for B2B. By integrating paid search ads into your marketing strategy, you can enjoy the following benefits:
There are many ways to make your brand, website and product more visible. With paid media, you can instantly push your content to the top of the search engine rankings. Companies can use this feature to attract users who are most likely to convert into customers.
The management of customer relations, advertising and other aspects of digital marketing gradually drive new traffic to a company's website. This slow increase in traffic may not be enough to drive sales, especially for small businesses looking to expand. For businesses that aim to grow revenue, PPC can drive traffic to your site and generate leads steadily using quality ad copy and PPC landing pages.
Lots of marketing is wasted by being aimed at users who have no innate desire to buy the products they're being marketed. Customised paid media marketing campaigns help place ads in front of the people most likely to engage and convert.
In every way, paid media is a great way to jump-start your business. Companies that are visible and accessible online are more likely to grow their revenue. PPC is the most effective way to achieve this goal.
A PPC channel is an essential resource for B2B, but different channels give different results in acquiring leads and traffic.
Here’s a guide to the top five paid media platforms you can use and the specific marketing strategies they offer for your business.
Google is the most popular search engine. Google PPC takes advantage of this online monopoly and benefits brands who know how to utilise it. Using the Google platform for your PPC has benefits like:
Paid ad campaigns through Google allow businesses to reach customers on all of its platforms, such as Gmail and Google Maps. Thanks to Google's wide coverage, a paid media campaign through Google is more effective than one with other competitors in the market.
Google’s search engine has 4.3 billion users worldwide and your targeted audience is among them. Advertising with Google gives you exposure to the largest customer base.
The scope of Google PPC campaigns is highly customised from business to business. Brands can tailor the campaign scale in terms of duration, frequency and budget to achieve their temporary or long-term business goals.
One revolutionary option from Google Ads you must know is Performance Max. Performance Max allows brands to reach customers across different Google channels with diversified content.
Using AI learning technology, Performance Max identifies the best way to combine text ads and visual content with keywords from your target search query. It helps you achieve the best results from a single campaign.
In addition to these advantages, Google Ads is also a complex system that takes time to learn. An expert from a PPC agency can help you create and manage your account since the interface can be confusing for new users.
By advertising through Google, businesses not only attract more customers but also target specific demographics of consumers to increase conversions. There are many more advantages with Google PPC; here are some of them your business can experience:
Using targeted Google PPC allows businesses to target the audience of their choice and spend money on what is effective and important. Ad performance is shown to businesses as soon as it happens so they can make quick adjustments. It is easy to observe which ad copy performs the best at different times and in different locations.
Check the toolkits in Google Ads before designing your ad and see which ads are performing well in your market. Use the information to inspire your winning ads. Don't reinvent the wheel if you already have a successful formula.
Google also helps you find your target market. You can research and discover new markets with high potential and low competition.
With Google, you can set and adjust your budget in a timely manner. For a budget-limited campaign, It has a "monthly budget" setting. You can customise your monthly budget and the bid for one click and never have to worry about budget control.
Google Ads is undoubtedly the most effective marketing channel with measurable return on investment (ROI). If you are new to PPC, starting with Google search ads is the best decision you can make.
With Google, businesses have several options to analyse the performance and success of their PPC marketing campaigns. It can also connect with other Google tools like Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is a must-have website performance tracking software in digital marketing. Marketers can use it to track and identify where and when a conversion happened and adjust the campaign settings accordingly. This allows business owners to change their PPC strategies based on the results in a timely manner.
Along with providing the tools necessary to run a successful online advertising campaign, Google offers several methods for business owners or managers to manage their Google advertising and monitor its performance on a day-to-day basis.
One must-have tool to assist you in PPC management is the Google Ads optimisation score. This score is an indicator of your ad quality. It points out the weakness and suggests adjustments to make to achieve a higher engagement rate. Thus, a higher quality score means a lower cost per conversion.
With Google Ads, businesses can display ads in front of prior visitors to their website or mobile app. Using this technique, you can stay top-of-mind with past customers and increase the likelihood they'll return to your site or app and convert.
Google can run targeted campaigns that result in a high click-through rate (CTR). With the help of a PPC management agency, businesses can achieve even better results.
A PPC management company is a team of paid ads experts that will help you create, manage and monitor your campaign. They can advise you on the best way to achieve your marketing goals with PPC. As your business partner, they want to make sure you get the most out of your PPC campaign and get a positive ROI.
Another PPC platform in the paid search field is Amazon. Amazon is the largest online marketplace in the world. The marketing campaigns on Amazon are more eCommerce-based, and PPC on Amazon is more niche compared with Google.
Like Google and Bing, Amazon is an eCommerce-based search engine (one of the most popular choices for eCommerce PPC management).
Amazon allows companies to buy sponsored ads that push their products higher in the Amazon search rankings. The increased visibility lures the target audience to interact with a company's products. However, this kind of engagement often only exists within the Amazon platform.
If you're looking to invest in a PPC campaign on social media platforms, Facebook is a smart choice for starters. Facebook has the advantage of being a digital monopoly in social ads. It is the largest and most influential social media outlet in the world, with 2.93 billion users online.
Even though Facebook and Google are both potentially lucrative sources for PPC marketing, the two platforms have very different advantages when it comes to the mechanism of audience engagement.
Facebook ads compare to Google's target impression share in a more upper-funnel market. They are a powerful tool for brands that want to build their brand awareness.
Doing PPC with Google is more effective when it comes to targeting audiences that are more likely to convert into customers, as known as bottom-funnel buyers. It is a great platform if you're looking for immediate sales and conversions.
Both Google and Facebook are effective in their own way. Which one you should use depends on your marketing goals.
Here are the main differences between the ways Google and Facebook work on PPC:
Facebook ads can be a way for a company to reach a very specialised customer base with social media advertising. However, because the idea of Facebook is to interact with your community, audiences prefer to do more research about their potential purchase using Google search after they engage with Facebook ads.
Facebook and Instagram target very different demographics even though they both provide paid social ads and have a large number of users who operate on both platforms.
Here are the main differences between Instagram ads and other PPC channels:
Bing is another large platform that provides paid advertisements. Bing Ads tend to have a lower cost-per-click (CPC) than Google.
The Quality Score on Bing is determined by CTR, ad relevance and landing page experience. Bing allows you to target consumers by degree, age, gender, income, job title and more. You can also exclude certain demographics if you wish.
However, there are some serious disadvantages to using Bing as a PPC channel over Google. The major one is that 90% of users who are searching on the internet go with Google over Bing because of Google's impeccable machine learning and pinpointed search results.
Because of this disadvantage, it is only advisable for businesses to advertise on Bing if they have already invested in a PPC campaign on Google. Setting up an ad campaign with both search engines gives business owners the greatest possible exposure to internet users.
While we can't recommend that Bing be the only PPC channel that a business uses, it is one of the secondary channels to invest in.
For B2B companies, LinkedIn ads offer a unique opportunity to reach an engaged professional audience and generate leads. LinkedIn ads are extremely useful for their ability to target users by job title, industry, interests, education level and more. This way companies are able to create highly targeted campaigns that are tailored towards their ideal customer.
LinkedIn also offers PPC bidding strategies for businesses of all sizes, that allow them to quickly test different ad creatives on any budget. Advertisers can choose from a variety of ad formats and creative elements, including text ads, display banners, sponsored content, video ads and more. These strategies allow advertisers to set bids at different levels based on their budget and desired outcome.
For example, advertisers can select a “CPM” (cost-per-impression) bid for their campaigns to ensure that their ads are seen by as many users as possible.
On the other hand, advertisers can choose a “CPC” (cost-per-click) bid, which allows them to pay only when a user clicks on their ad and visits their website or landing page. This strategy is ideal for advertisers who are looking to drive more qualified traffic to their website and generate leads.
Advertisers can also take advantage of advanced targeting options, such as “lookalike audiences” which allows them to target users that have similar characteristics and interests as those of their existing customers.
Given the flexibility that LinkedIn Ads offers, along with the ability to accurately target potential customers, it is highly recommended for B2B companies to invest in this platform for their paid media efforts as it can help them maximize ROI from their campaigns and generate leads more efficiently.
For PPC B2B lead generation, the bidding strategy you employ has a significant impact on your campaign results. Different industries, product types and company goals necessitate different approaches to PPC bidding.
For different conversion goals, Google offers the following types of PPC bidding strategies:
Target CPA bidding is designed to help increase the number of conversions while simultaneously assigning a goal CPA for each action. Target CPA bidding strategies focus on bringing in lucrative conversions rather than the highest number of conversions available.
The bidding strategy for target ROAS is focused on helping businesses recoup the expenses of marketing. This strategy requires a historical performance of 15 conversions per month to enable the system.
Maximise Conversions is a PPC bidding strategy that focuses on creating the largest number of conversions possible without placing CPA variables on the equation.
Rather than maximising the number of conversions, the Maximise Conversion Value bidding strategy allows you to concentrate on what maximises the number of conversions with higher value and boosts your revenue.
The ECPC bidding strategy allows you to automatically adjust manual bids for maximised conversions.
These five smart bidding strategies make it easy to customise a PPC campaign that enhances marketing efforts. By making the right bid adjustments, you can use your marketing budget to its maximum efficiency.
Manual bidding gives you more control over your campaign but requires time and effort to get the most out of it. Automatic bidding, on the other hand, is easier and can help save time while still achieving the desired results.
Automatic bidding helps you reach your target ROAS faster for several reasons. One is AI and machine learning. Google and other search engines use these technologies to develop cost-effective automatic bidding strategies.
For instance, the performance planner on Google can suggest bid amounts that have a high chance of achieving the target ROAS and also provide the filter to predict the trend and performance of your campaign.
Another reason automatic bidding is more advantageous is that it can take into account a variety of factors, including location, time of day and type of device used, that manual operation cannot.
Automatic bidding can take into account a wider range of factors than manual management. With the manual option, you would have to consider all these factors yourself and try to predict how changes will affect the outcome of your campaign. This can be difficult and time-consuming if you have a large campaign. Automatic bidding can take care of all the fine details while still maintaining your desired results.
Moreover, automatic bidding can make real-time bid adjustments based on changes in these factors. This is difficult to do with manual bidding.
Owned media channels are the channels that companies control. These can be a website, blog or social media profile.
Earned media channels are those that a company doesn't directly control. These include things like organic social media mentions, word-of-mouth referrals and online reviews.
Paid media are those where a company pays to have its message seen. This can include things like search ads, display ads and social media ads
Each type of media channel has its advantages and disadvantages. Paid media marketing tends to be the most effective at reaching a large audience quickly.
PPC marketing is the only form of paid media that exists in digital marketing. The best way for companies to succeed is to have a multi-pronged attack strategy when it comes to digital advertising.
Engaging in paid media, generating branded content and having strong graphical advertisements can help bring companies exposure in an oversaturated market.
Who we are: With over 25 years of experience, SnellMedia has created thousands of successful B2B Google Ads campaigns for clients primarily in SaaS, manufacturing automation and health tech.
Book a 30-minute consultation with a senior, Google-certified member of our team today. During the call, we’ll answer any Google Ads-related questions you have and audit your account to provide your marketing team with valuable feedback they can implement to double or maybe even triple your lead generation.
