If you’re running a business, especially a small one, and you’ve apparently exhausted many offline means of promotion, such as putting up posters, flyers and billboards, your jaw could drop when the subject turns to digital marketing. Such marketing can be daunting, if also surprisingly accessible…

For this reason, you shouldn’t shy away from tapping into it, whatever your early misgivings. A digital marketing pie can comprise various slices, of which PPC shouldn’t be underestimated.

What are the keywords to the PPC kingdom?

Bytestart.co.uk details various forms of digital marketing for companies’ consideration. However, while you can indeed draw more people to your company’s offerings with a carefully crafted SEO strategy, a well-designed website or a slick social media campaign, what does PPC entail?

It stands for “Pay-Per-Click” and lets you place ads on popular sites, including Google and Facebook. When someone clicks on that ad, you will pay an advertising fee – meaning that, with PPC, you are essentially “buying” visits to your site. Therefore, you need to get your money’s worth…

What are the keywords to the PPC kingdom?

Through researching and carefully selecting the keywords for your PPC campaign, you can help to ensure that you attract visitors especially inclined to become paying customers. Business 2 Communitycites four broad categories of keywords: “brand”, “generic”, “related” and “competitor”.

Brand and competitor terms refer, respectively, to your company and its competitors. To come up with fitting keywords, start broadly and then narrow your focus. For example, a plumbing firm in Chester could start with “plumber Chester” before proceeding to “bathroom fitting in Chester”.

Just say the word… or, should we say, AdWords

Once you have compiled a vast body of appropriate keywords, log into Google AdWords before clicking the relevant link to create your first campaign. Don’t be too ambitious with this initial campaign; for example, select “Search Network Only” for the “Campaign Type”.

Pick no more than ten keywords before entering them for the campaign. After creating the ad itself, specify your maximum cost-per-click. You might want to initially set this fairly low before increasing it as your experience and confidence with using AdWords grow.

Give visitors a soft landing… with landing pages

Let’s assume that someone does click on your PPC ad. Where exactly should you send them? While you might be content with simply linking to your home page, you could investigate making landing pages dedicated for use with your PPC campaigns.

This strategy can work well through allowing you to tailor the page content to the types of people likeliest to click on your ads. Keep each landing page clearly defined in title and consistent in branding.

How to spot room for improvement

As Startups.co.uk wisely points out, PPC marketing is possible not just with Google but also Bing, Facebook and Twitter. Wherever your PPC marketing efforts take you, a digital marketing agency could assess them objectively and develop new campaigns for you. These are among the many digital marketing services on offer from Climb Online, for example.