Pay per click advertising (PPC) can help you reach thousands of new customers, re-engage old customers and help your brand to stand out from the competition. By spreading your budget across the four main networks, it allows for equal representation and significant budget reductions. Let’s discuss the main advertising networks, followed by digital campaign types:
The main networks we work with as Digital Marketing campaign specialists:
Note that we are impartial as to the network you use – and do not receive a commission from your ad spend. The most important thing to us, is to get you good quality web traffic that is going to convert into real customers. The advise below is based on what we experienced with our customer accounts, rather than what is reported by paid media.
Bing Ads: As part of the Microsoft network, Bing is rapidly growing it’s market share, catching up with Google in many ways. I am a strong advocate of using Bing to acquire customers, especially in markets where Bing makes up more than 10% of the search volume. The fact is that if there are 10 million searches per month for your topic and you only target 20000 clicks – chances are you can probably run on Bing alone without even touching Google and Facebook. (The same applies vice-versa for Google and Facebook).
Linkedin Advertising Solutions: Typically Linkedin is useful in two scenarios: When B2B advertising is more appropriate and you do not seek to reach out to the public at large, or when the campaign seeks to target people with specific job roles, qualifications, company sizes etc. In fact, there is no other network that can help you to target in such a precise manner. Naturally this explains why the typical cost per click on Linkedin ads may be higher – and rightly so.
Google Adwords: Since Google currently has the largest share of the search market, companies tend to spend the bulk of their budget with Google. However if you opt to look beyond the obvious, where you competitors are not looking (i.e. Bing, Linkedin, AOL and other networks) then significant savings can be made – since the competition raises the CPC on the Googe network significantly. Google is quite useful for remarketing, search and display, although issues with invalid clicks, “bot traffic” and fraudulent clicks is a huge concern in this network.
Facebook ads: Whilst Facebook offers the ability to target users based on a variety of specific demographic, personal, geographic and behavioral criteria, campaign managers have to guard carefully against hidden costs and the tendency to charge for impressions rather than clicks. Typically, only in cases where search demand is too low, or perhaps in crisis communication, would it make sense to include Facebook in the marketing mix.
Pay per click advertising is mainly divided into the following sub types:
Display network: So a lawyer or accountant would like to appear in the Economist, Forbes, Entrepreneur.com and Businessinsider? Or a doctor would like to appear on WebMD and Mayoclinic? We can get you in there without editorial approval in a matter of minutes. A potential customer could be reading about your competitor, a specific product or service – or even broadly speaking, they could exhibit online behavior associated with your typical customer. In this case, the reader is targeted with an advert that will only incur a cost when they click on it. The bonus here is if the advert is NOT clicked on, but still seen by the reader, we do not pay anything, thus the “branding” benefit is absolutely free. Remarketing is a sub type of display advertising, where we mainly target previous visitors with specific messages.
Search network:
This is by far the highest converting method. Whereas display ads may convert 1% of visitors in a category, search ads can easily convert 3 to 5% of the same visitors. This is because the visitor is asking Google or Bing a specific question – and your company advert comes up as an answer.
Making sure you get the best deal for online advertising:
We can help you to set up and manage digital advertising campaigns across all of the major networks. As an agency, we take ZERO commission on the adverts. You pay Bing, Google, Linkedin and Facebook directly for each click. Our simple flat rate is based on monthly tasks we carry out on your behalf, without any binding contracts. There are loads of extras that we add to save you a fortune on your advertising: For example, graphics, copywriting and reputation monitoring.
Next steps:
Read more about our PPC packages for digital marketing campaign management.
Sharing our knowledge and providing thought leadership with a global industry:
Thousands of professional marketers around the world also use training material authored by Adriaan Brits to carry out their task more effectively. See the video below on remarketing: