paid search marketing

Paid search marketing, also known as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, is a digital marketing strategy in which advertisers pay a fee each time their ad is clicked on within a search engine’s sponsored listings. It allows businesses to bid on keywords relevant to their products or services, ensuring their ads appear prominently when users search for those keywords on search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo.

Paid search marketing operates on an auction-based system, where advertisers compete for ad placement by bidding on keywords. Advertisers set a maximum bid amount they are willing to pay for a click and a daily budget to control spending. When a user enters a search query that matches the advertiser’s chosen keywords, the search engine’s algorithm determines which ads to display based on factors such as bid amount, ad relevance, and quality score.

PPC, which stands for “pay-per-click”, is a common acronym used by marketers to define the strategy of paying only when someone clicks on an ad.

How most PPC systems, like Google, operate is that advertisers specify how much their willing to pay to be ranked highest up the search engine results, but only pay the operator if their ad is clicked.

Picture an art auction. While many people may bid on a work of art, it’s only the bidder that secures the art that has to make payment. That’s PPC!

Well, you could choose us (that’s our biased recommendation), but our true recommendation for companies looking to hire an PPC agency is to treat the process a bit like dating.

Meet with a few PPC agencies to see where their processes and strategies overlap and where their PPC process is unique. Every business is unique and there is absolutely an PPC agency that can fit your needs.

In particular, keep an eye out for PPC agencies that recommend bidding on your own brand name in search. This is a strategy M&P never recommends. We apply a holistic approach to search, where SEO (free traffic) should be covering branded searches while PPC covers highly competitive keywords.

The ultra-simplified version of how paid search marketing works can be broken into five major checkpoints.

1. Keyword Selection: Advertisers choosing keywords or phrases relevant to their product or service.
2. Ad Creation: Writing unique, compelling headlines, descriptions, and implement UTM parameters on landing pages URLs for detailed tracking and reporting.
3. Bid Setting: Depending on the relevancy of a keyword, geo-location, or device (among others), PPC agencies can customize bidding structures to ensure maximum business benefit.
4. Ad Auction: Once the campaign is running, early data will indicate the best performing and worst performing settings. This is when a PPC agency goes into optimization mode.
5. Payment: These campaigns come with a price. Once the campaign is running and generating traffic, it’s time to pay up and keep the PPC train rolling.

There are three main ways that PPC agencies charge their clients.

The first is a simple management fee structure. This is a retainer fee that stays the same, regardless of campaign spend, that covers hours and labor used to set-up, monitor, and improve the campaign.

The second is a media spend fee. PPC agencies will charge a percentage of your overall campaign spend. Most PPC agencies using this model charge 25% – 35% fee of the total spend. 

The third is a lead-based model. PPC agencies will say that their fee only comes into play when your business get a lead from their campaign. While this model often appeals to business owners, the results of the campaign are often lacking. This model prioritizes quantity, not quality of the leads from the campaign.