The benefits of running a paid advertising campaign to drive traffic to a blog.

What is paid advertising? Paid advertising is an online advertising model where advertisers bid to participate in real-time auctions in order to show their ads within slots on a specific platform or network. For example, in this search on patio furniture you can see both shopping ads and text ads. It is also sometimes called biddable media or PPC advertising. PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click advertising as you usually pay every time someone clicks on your ads. This model is usually opposed to earned or owned advertising where you can use a platform to push your content for free i.e. Facebook or LinkedIn posts. 

1. PPC Contributes to Business Goals This is often the most compelling reason to use PPC advertising. PPC can help you achieve a vast number of business and marketing goals. These goals range from high-level brand exposure and thought leadership to a hot lead submission or ecommerce sale. early any type of conversion goal can be tracked. PPC is a powerful tool for aligning website traffic drivers to end-goal. 

2. PPC Is Measurable & Trackable A major benefit of PPC advertising run through Google Ads is that it’s easy to measure and track. Simply use the Google Ads tool in combination with Google Analytics. You’ll see high-level performance details, including impressions, clicks, and conversions (based on the defined business goals). 

3. Quick Entry Even if you’re a decade behind your competitors in jumping into PPC marketing, you can get up and running quickly with a little bit of optimization. This is often a big contrast to starting up SEO efforts, which often takes a lot of time and attention to get the same positioning and traffic that Google Ads offers within minutes of launch. 

4. You’re in Control While there are several nuances regarding default campaign settings, you ultimately have control over a wide range of options for reaching potential customers. This starts with the keywords or placements you choose to target and how restrictive you want to be. You also have a lot of budget flexibility if you want to start small. 

5. PPC Works Well With Other Marketing Channels Content marketing has taken over the digital marketing world, and content plans and calendars are the norm in most businesses now. With the investment in producing original and unique content to support the customer buying cycle and establish thought leadership positioning, Google Ads is an engine that can drive visitors to content more quickly and improve the ROI on your content investment. PPC and SEO work well together as the impressions and opportunities for traffic are often to the same audience – the people using Google to find information, services, or products. The performance data of impressions, clicks, and conversions from Google Ads can provide great insight and direction on a keyword-by-keyword basis for prioritizing SEO efforts. 

6. Incredible Targeting Options Many advertisers take a multi-layered approach in Google Ads to test and ensure full coverage across the networks and targeting types that can gain brand exposure. 

7. A Wealth of Marketing Data While there’s a lot of data and performance information directly available in Google Ads, the value of information gained goes beyond just PPC performance. Impression, click, and conversion data for each keyword can be used to advise SEO strategy and content marketing efforts.