A Paid Search Beginner’s Guide | Digital Marketing Ldr

9 min readAug 4, 2021

https://digitalmarketingldr.blogspot.com/2021/07/for-beginners-digital-marketing-ldr.html

For beginners, Digital Marketing ldr presents an overview of paid search. Paid search, when done correctly, can help businesses develop at an exponential rate. You will gain from the results if you set your goals, forecast your outcomes, and avoid the dangers we’ve highlighted in this post.

Globally, $92.4 billion was anticipated to be spent on sponsored searches in 2017. This figure has increased year over year, demonstrating its value as a platform in which advertisers are willing to invest.

We’ll cover the following topics in this sponsored search beginner’s guide:

· An in-depth look at the principles of paid search.

· Some of the world’s most effective digital marketers use the following strategies.

· The top five problems to avoid when utilizing paid search and how to avoid them

How to forecast your potential outcomes before you spend any money.

What is paid search advertising?

Paid search is a type of digital marketing in which search engines like Google and Bing allow advertisers to place advertisements on their search results pages (SERPs).

Paid search is based on a pay-per-click approach, which means you don’t pay until someone clicks on your ad. In comparison to more traditional types of advertising, this makes it a measurable and controllable marketing channel.

Text advertising, which appears at the top or bottom of organic search results, and shopping ads, which appear above the search results are examples of ad formats.

A quick reminder about organic search results: you will not be charged for a click to your website if it shows here, and you will not be charged to be in the rankings.

What can you get out of paid search?

Tens of thousands of individuals are searching for products, services, and solutions on Google every second.

This is a fantastic opportunity for you to promote your company to a highly targeted and engaged audience that is actively researching or purchasing items or services.

Other types of advertising, such as banner adverts are referred to be “interruption marketing,” which means that the individual who views the ad may not be in the market to buy anything at this time. The advantage of paid search is that by typing something into a search engine, we know the user is looking for information or making a purchase.

Avoid pitfall #1: Not tracking return on investment

The first blunder made by new advertisers is failing to track their return on investment. Everything can be measured in online advertising, which is a huge plus. You can simply check how many people have clicked on your advertising and how much it has cost you, as well as how many people then take action (i.e. how many conversions you have).

You might track the following conversions:

Submissions to the contact form
Sales over the internet
Engagements via live chat
Calls are made.

This means you’ll be able to quickly check how many leads or sales your advertising has produced. Conversion tracking should be enabled on all websites using Google Analytics so that you can see which marketing actions are yielding the best results.

The terminology used in PPC

Some phrases are used consistently across paid search platforms, some of which are more self-explanatory than others.

When a user clicks on one of your adverts, it’s called a click.
When your advertising is shown, they make an impression. It’s crucial to realize that this does not imply that your adverts have been seen by users. If your ad appears at the bottom of the search engine results page and a user does not scroll all the way down to see it, it will still be counted as an impression.
CTR (click-through rate): the percentage of ad impressions that result in a click — The higher the number, the better
Average cost-per-click (CPC): how much a click costs on average.
Average position: where your ads appeared on the results page (position one being the highest)
Cost/conversion: the price you paid for paid search divided by the number of conversions you received. The smaller the number, the better.
The percentage of users who completed a conversion after clicking on your ad is known as the conversion rate. The higher the number, the better.

What is paid search and how does it work?

The majority of sponsored search platforms function in the same way.

Step 1: Select your preferred location.

You can target specific nations, cities, and zip codes with your adverts.

Step 2. Select your keywords

Keywords are search keywords entered into search engines like Google, such as “women’s shoes,” “tv repair business near me,” or “best sushi restaurant.”

Choosing the best keywords

The Google Keyword Planner, a free Google tool, allows you to see what phrases people are searching for to find items or services similar to yours all over the world. There’s another one from Bing, and there is a slew of other third-party options.

These tools will provide you with a list of potential keywords, as well as information on how many people search for them each month, how competitive they are, and how much they are likely to cost per click.

Step 3. Choose the correct match types

There are four different keyword match types in paid search that influence when your ads appear.

Exact match — keywords are represented as [women’s shoes] in this case. Your advertising will only appear when someone searches for that specific term if you use exact match keywords. It will also detect plurals and spelling errors, so advertisements for [women’s shoes] will appear alongside ads for [women shoes].

Phrase match — keywords are represented as “women’s shoes” in this case. If a person searching for the exact phrase, but with terms before and after (e.g., ‘red women’s shoes’ or ‘women’s shoe stores’), this keyword would trigger your advertising.

Broad match — where keywords are represented in the following way: women’s shoes If a user searched for this phrase in any sequence, including synonyms (e.g., ‘cheap women’s shoes,’ ‘women’s blue shoes,’ or ‘ladies shoes,’) this keyword would trigger your advertisements.

Broadened broad — where keywords are represented as +womens +shoes. If a user searched for this phrase in any order, without synonyms (e.g., ‘women’s training shoes’ or ‘shoes for women running,’ this keyword would trigger your ads.

Avoid Pitfall #2: Using all broad match terms in your search.

Because the wide match is the default match type, one of the most costly mistakes new advertisers do is to just utilize broad match keywords.

As a result, adverts appear when users search for the advertiser’s precise keywords, as well as hundreds, if not thousands, of alternative permutations, some of which are more relevant. Advertisers quickly deplete their budgets and receive no sales or inquiries as a result.

Before you start, think about which match types to employ and make a good negative keyword list.

Step 4: Create your advertisements.

You will create advertisements that will appear when a user searches for one of your keywords.

Text ads are made up of three main components:

30 characters for the first headline

Headline 2: 30 characters; Description: 80 characters

However, there are a few things that your ads cannot include, including but not limited to:

All capital letters (e.g. FREE DELIVERY)
Symbols to draw attention to your advertisements (for example, ***Free Delivery***)
additional room (e.g. F r e e D e l I v e r y)
Terms that are trademarked
The headlines contain exclamation points.

What makes a good advertisement?

Ads should engage your target audience and persuade them to choose you over the other ads or organic listings on the page. A good advertisement will include:

Words and phrases related to your keywords
Differentiating features
Prompts to action

Step 5: Decide on your bids.

You decide how much you want to pay for a click on one of the ads that appear when you enter your keywords. This is referred to as a ‘Bid’ or a ‘Max. CPC’. Each keyword can have a unique bid.

Paid search platforms will advise you on how much to bid, but the final decision is yours. If Google suggests a bid of $2.50 but you only want to bid $2.00, that’s fine; it just means your ads will appear lower down the page or less frequently.

How do search engines decide where to place your ad?

When someone searches for one of your keywords, your ads are auctioned off. Two factors are considered when determining where your ad appears on the page. These two factors are combined to determine your ad rank. The first result will be the advertiser with the highest ad rank in the auction. These two elements are the bid and the quality score.

The quality score is the number from 1 to 10 assigned by paid search platforms to each keyword in your account, with 10 being the highest. This is determined by three factors: the expected click-through rate, the relevance of the ad to your keywords, and the experience of the landing page.

Quality score was introduced to prevent advertisers from simply paying the most to appear at the top of search results for terms that their website is unrelated to. Paid search platforms are now rewarding higher-quality advertisers, not just those with the deepest pockets.

Step 6: Include ad extensions

Ad extensions are additional pieces of information about your company that can be displayed alongside your ads. They can improve your ad’s quality score and help it take up more space on the results page, in addition to providing a better user experience.

Some of the ad extensions that are available include:

Sitelinks are links to other pages on your website.
Callouts — extra text about your company
Show your business address in the location field.
Show your phone number when you call. This also gives mobile users the option to click-to-call.
Price — display various services or products as well as their prices.
Seller ratings are automated snippets that may appear if your business has reviews on sites such as Google My Business or TrustPilot. This may not work with all review platforms, so double-check first.

Step 7: Publicize your ads.

Typically, your ads will begin to appear within a few hours, and you will be able to see the results in your paid search accounts. You have the option to pause your campaigns at any time.

How do I make a payment for paid search?

When it comes to billing, each paid search platform is slightly different. You enter your credit card or direct debit information when you create your account. You are charged once a certain threshold is reached or once every 30 days, whichever comes first. It is usually possible to get some free credit applied to your account — a quick search will reveal this.

Avoid Pitfall #3: Putting too much emphasis on activities rather than outcomes.

Most failed marketing campaigns fail because they did not begin with the end goal in mind. Before you begin your paid search campaigns, it is critical that you consider your goals.

What are your objectives?

You should ask yourself two very important questions:

How many new customers are you looking for?

How much money are you willing to spend on them?

You might respond, “as many as possible for as little as possible,” but is that true? Could your company handle 1000 inquiries in a single day?

Campaigns with no specific goals will inevitably waste money. How will you optimize your campaigns if you don’t have a goal in mind? How do you know if your cost/conversion is good if it is $50?

Avoid Pitfall #4: failing to calculate the required conversion rate.

Once you’ve established your objectives, you can determine whether they’re attainable by calculating the conversion rate required. The average website converts at about 2%.

Safer:

If you are willing to pay $50 per conversion and you know the CPC is $1, then 1 out of every 50 clicks must convert. The conversion rate needed for this is 2% (1/50).

Riskier:

If you were only willing to pay $5 per conversion, 1 in every 5 clicks would need to result in a conversion, implying a 20% conversion rate. This is far less likely to occur.

To calculate it, divide your target cost per conversion by your expected CPC. Many advertisers embark on paid search campaigns without performing this calculation, only to discover that the campaign is not viable in the long run.

After you’ve completed your keyword research, compute the average CPC. Then consider your target cost per conversion. This allows you to calculate the required conversion rate. The following is a conversion rate for most brochure websites:

The risk is low: 0–2%.
2–8% is considered to be a medium level of risk.
Approximately 8% of the population is at high risk.