Paid search is a form of digital marketing that involves advertising on search engines and other online platforms. It uses strategic keywords to place ads at the top of search results. There are approximately 5.9 million searches per minute on Google alone, and paid search positions your brand to capture more sales from customers actively seeking your product or service. It also boosts visibility.
From sales to awareness, paid search offers tremendous benefits for any business. But it isn’t easy. There’s a lot of competition. If you’re not using the right techniques, you can waste your ad budget on the wrong keywords, target demographic, or both. That’s why many companies partner with a paid search agency.
Whether you choose an agency or work in-house, it’s important to understand how paid search works. In this article, we’ll cover the basics of paid search and provide the knowledge you need to get started. Learn how paid search can make your business truly stand out in today’s cluttered digital landscape.
How Does Paid Search Work?
Imagine you want to buy vintage green sneakers online. With millions of websites to choose from, where do you begin? If you’re like most people, you’ll click over to Google and type your query in the search bar. When you hit “search,” you’ll be taken to a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). At the top of the SERP, there’s an ad for the exact shoes you want. That’s the magic of paid search!
So, how do you ensure your ad is what consumers see? As with any digital marketing strategy, there are different ways to approach paid search. However, all paid search campaigns involve the following components:
1. Keyword Research
You or your paid search agency will begin by creating a list of keywords or phrases that potential customers might use to search for your company. Tools like SEMRush and Google Keyword Planner can help.
If working with an agency, provide detailed information about your product or service, ideal customer, competitors, and industry in general. Be prepared to answer a questionnaire or participate in an onboarding session to discuss your business. The best paid search agencies will identify keywords that might not occur to you. They can also find your competitors’ blind spots or discover new audience segments.
The right keywords or phrases enable you to target specific users based on precise population demographics and factors like location and interests. This means you’ll place your ads in front of individuals more likely to want your product or service.
2. Creating Ads
Next, you or your agency partners will create the ads. The most common ads for paid search are sponsored links with a title, a short paragraph called a meta description, and sometimes an address or phone number. These ads look like other results on the SERP but display the word “Ad” to the left of the website’s URL.
Other types of paid search ads include:
- Shopping Ads: Features a product photo, price, and special offers
- Local Ads: Optimized for users looking for a business “near me” or based on regional search terms like city names and zip codes
- Display Ads: These ads appear as banner graphics on different websites or apps
- Video Ads: Short ads that play before or during a streaming video
- Paid Social Ads: Ads that resemble a social media post and appear on consumers’ feeds
- Remarketing Ad: A type of ad that relies on cookies to target consumers who have already visited your website
3. Creating or Optimizing Landing Pages
While your overall homepage may be great, your paid search ads should direct users to the specific product or service highlighted in the ad. These destinations are known as landing pages. A great landing page is simple, engaging, and loads quickly without broken images or other glitches. It makes it very easy for users to complete a purchase or fulfill another type of transaction, such as signing up for a mailing list.
Without the right landing page, even the best paid search ads fall flat. If you need help creating new landing pages or streamlining your existing pages, consider partnering with a paid search agency.
4. Bidding
You may have heard of paid search, also called Pay-Per-Click (PPC). That’s because you pay each time someone clicks on your ad. The amount you pay for each click is known as a bid. Paid search relies on an auction-style system where higher bids help you rank better on SERPs.
You or your agency partners will strategize bidding across different keywords and phrases to get the most ROI (return on investment) from your total ad spend. This ties into the final component of paid search: tracking performance.
5. Tracking Performance
The final phase in a paid search campaign is tracking performance. Once your ads go live, you’ll need to monitor your key performance indicators (KPIs). This could include metrics such as click-through rates (CTR), cost per click (CPC, related to bidding), and conversion rates.
If your ads aren’t performing as well as you’d like, you can make adjustments. It’s common for businesses to refine ad copy, try new keywords, set a new demographic target, or increase their bid amounts to achieve their desired results. This is where many companies benefit from the experience and expertise of a paid search agency. A paid search agency can help you save money in the long term because they reduce trial and error.
Paid Search Platforms
The system of channels where your paid search campaign appears is known as a platform. Google Ads is the most popular platform because its search engine is so widespread and includes important features like Shopping Ads and Local Ads. With rare exceptions, Google will be the primary focus of your campaign.
However, a comprehensive campaign should consider additional platforms and adjacent marketing techniques, such as:
Microsoft Ads: An alternative search engine with an older demographic. Although Bing isn’t as popular as Google, its smaller niche audience means less competition and cheaper ads. You may get more “bang for your buck” when placing bids.
Paid Social Advertising: An excellent companion to paid search, paid social media ads can target hyper-specific customer segments based on personal interests and behavioral data. Platforms like Meta (Facebook and Instagram), LinkedIn, and even TikTok can yield high-value customers who will increase your conversions.
Benefits of Paid Search
Paid search advertising is important to any marketing strategy because of its unique benefits. Whereas traditional media advertising targets a broad audience, paid search can hone in on a potential customer and capture their attention at the exact moment when they’re looking for a product or service like yours.
Paid search also offers flexibility. No matter the size of your business – or your budget! – you can create a paid search ad campaign that will achieve results. Unlike other types of advertising, where you may be locked into a contract, you can also adjust your bids or reallocate your ad spend as you go. It’s also easy to change your ad’s messaging, images, and landing pages.
Additionally, paid search can generate immediate results. As soon as you launch your ads, you have the potential to begin bringing in more traffic and increasing your website’s visibility. Other digital marketing strategies, such as organic search, generally take weeks or months before you’ll begin to see results.
Finally, the detailed analytics of paid search tools provide valuable insights that allow you to streamline your campaign as you go. This data can help you understand how well your ads perform and enable you to make changes in real-time.
Get the Most from Your Campaign
Paid search ads are vital to any digital marketing efforts. With the right strategy, you can expand your business’ reach at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising. Whether your goal is boosting sales or signups, or simply bringing more visibility to your brand, paid search can help.
At Mandzok Marketing, we specialize in paid search campaigns custom-tailored to businesses of all sizes in various industries. Contact us today for a free paid search consultation.