The Ultimate PPC Beginner’s Guide: What You Need to Know to Get Started

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is one of the most powerful tools in a digital marketer’s toolkit… when used correctly. Whether you’re a small business owner or just starting your career in digital marketing, understanding the basics of PPC can be a game-changer for your online strategy. In this ultimate PPC beginner’s guide, we’ll break down everything you need to know to get started and set yourself up for success.

What Is PPC & How Can It Benefit Your Business?

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is a digital marketing model where advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. It’s a way to drive traffic to websites, with the cost directly tied to the number of clicks received. PPC is a highly targeted way to drive traffic to your website, build brand awareness, and, most importantly, generate leads and sales.

Advertisers use keywords to target specific search terms for their PPC ads. When someone searches for one of those keywords, it triggers an auction among advertisers bidding on that term. If your ad wins the auction, it will be displayed on the search engine results page (SERP).

But what are the benefits of PPC? Here’s why:

• PPC provides immediate visibility on the SERP and traffic to your site once your campaign is live. Campaigns can be optimised to focus on any specific goal, delivering immediate results in terms of clicks and impressions. With a solid strategy in place, these can then lead to valuable conversions and leads.
• Strong targeting capabilities, you can target your ads based on demographics, location, device, time of day, and user behaviour. When targeting by interests and intent, you can choose between two audience types: affinity audiences, which are broader groups based on long-term interests and lifestyle habits, or in-market audiences, which are more focused and made up of users actively researching or considering a specific product or service. This makes it easier to reach the right audience at the right time.
• The results from PPC are highly measurable and trackable, which allows for easy optimisations and better ROI. There are various bidding strategies available to align with different campaign goals. If your objective is to drive conversions, key strategies include Maximise Conversions, Maximise Conversion Value, Target CPA, or Target ROAS. For campaigns focused on generating clicks, Maximise Clicks or Manual CPC may be more suitable. If visibility is your main goal, strategies like Target Impression Share or Maximise Clicks can help increase exposure.

Understanding the Basics: Key Terminology

Before diving into the setup and strategy, let’s clarify a few common PPC terms you’ll need to know:

• CPC (Cost-Per-Click): The amount you pay when someone clicks on your ad.
  • Total cost / total number of clicks
• CTR (Click-Through Rate): The percentage of people who click your ad after seeing it. A higher CTR means your ad is compelling.
  • (Total number of clicks / total number of impressions) x 100
• CPA (Cost-Per-Aquisition): The cost of generating a conversion through your campaign.
  • Total cost / total conversions
• Quality Score: A metric used by Google to measure the quality and relevance of your ads and keywords. This score is made up of 3 components: ad relevancy, landing page experience and expected CTR. Higher quality scores can reward you with a lower CPC.
• Conversion: When a user takes a desired action on your website, like making a purchase or making an enquiry. You can set a primary conversion, which is the main action your campaigns are optimised towards, as well as secondary conversions, which are additional actions you can track but not necessarily optimise towards.

Now that you are clued up on the key terminology:

Step 1: Define Your PPC Goals

Before you start creating ads, it’s important to clearly define your goals. Are you looking to drive traffic to your website? Increase sales or enquiries? Or simply build brand awareness? Your goal will dictate your PPC strategy, including the types of ads you create, the keywords you target and how you measure success. You can choose from a variety of campaign types based on your marketing goals. YouTube and Display campaigns are ideal for top-of-funnel awareness, Demand Generation targets the middle of the funnel to engage interested users, while Performance Max (PMax) and Search campaigns are best suited for driving lower-funnel actions and conversions.

Step 2: Choose The Right PPC Platform

While Google Ads is the most popular platform for PPC campaigns, it’s not the only option!

Google Ads is the largest and most widely used PPC platform, one of the main reasons for this is it the biggest search engine in the world so it has an exceptionally large reach. It allows you to run search ads, performance max ads, shopping ads display ads, app ads and even video ads on YouTube.

An alternative option is Microsoft ads, it is similar to Google Ads but on the Microsoft Search Network, which includes Bing.com, MSN.com, AOL.com, and Yahoo.com. It tends to be a less saturated market, which can make it more affordable due to lower CPCs. Another reason for choosing this option is that it can help you target different demographics. With Microsoft ads, you can access LinkedIn’s inventory and leverage their data for targeted advertising. Specifically, you can use LinkedIn profile information to target audiences based on their company, industry, and job function.

Step 3: Set Your Budget

How much are you willing to spend on your PPC campaign? Setting a realistic budget is crucial to ensure you don’t overspend while still getting the results you need. You can set daily budgets and adjust these as needed.

In general, the best practice is to start small and scale up as you see positive results. It’s important to test different strategies and adapt to what works best for your audience.

Step 4: Conduct Keyword Research (Search Campaign)

Effective keyword research is the backbone of any successful PPC campaign. Start by identifying the terms and phrases your target audience is searching for. Think about what words or phrases have the correct intentions behind them, for example, ‘best places to go in Dubai’ is most likely a user researching this destination or what to do on a holiday they have previously booked. ‘Holiday to Dubai’ has the intention of finding a holiday to Dubai and booking it.

Tools like Google Keyword Planner can help you discover relevant keywords and estimate how much you’ll need to bid for each one. You should consider your budget; for businesses with a smaller budget, consider long-tail keywords (more specific phrases) as they tend to have less competition and lower CPCs. For example, If someone has a £10 daily budget and is bidding on keywords with a £4 cost-per-click (CPC), they’ll get fewer than three clicks per day. With a smaller budget, it’s more effective to target long-tail keywords that appeal to users further down the funnel who are searching for specific offerings. For example, targeting a term like “all inclusive family holidays to Dubai” is more focused – it tells you the type of holiday (family and all-inclusive) and the destination. While this keyword will have a lower search volume compared to broader terms like “all inclusive holidays,” it’s more likely to attract high-intent users who are closer to making a booking.

Step 5: Creating Your Ads (Search Campaign)

Now that you’ve set your goals, chosen your platform and researched your keywords, it’s time to create your ads. Your ad copy should be clear, concise and relevant to the keywords you’re targeting. Follow our top tips for relevant and compelling ad copy…

• Include your target keyword. This helps your ad feel more relevant to the user and can improve your quality score (through improving the ad relevancy & expected CTR components).
• Have a strong call-to-action (CTA). Encourage the user to click through and complete an action, whether it’s “Shop Now”, “Book Today” or “Contact Us”
• Highlight a unique selling point (USP). What makes your product or service stand out from the competition?

Step 6: Monitor and Optimise Your Campaigns

Once your ads are live, it’s time to start monitoring their performance. Google Ads and other platforms provide detailed analytics, including CTR, CPC, conversion rates, and more. Use these insights to make data-driven decisions about your campaigns.

Consistent testing and optimising your PPC campaigns is essential for success. Just a few ways this can be done is improving ad strength and quality score, adding negative keywords, performing keyword gap analysis, monitoring and adjusting bids, and refining audience targeting.

Continuously check back on your campaigns and, in best practice, ensure that you are completing regular SQRs (search query reports). SQRs allow you to discover what searches your ads are serving for, use this to negate irrelevant terms or add keywords to ad groups.

Overview

PPC advertising can be incredibly rewarding, but it requires careful planning, monitoring, and constant optimisation. By understanding the fundamentals, choosing the right platform, targeting the right audience and optimising your campaigns, you’ll be on your way to running a successful PPC campaign.

This beginner’s guide should give you a solid foundation in PPC advertising. Ready to take your first step? Get in touch with our team of experts today for your free audit.