Small business everywhere are using PPC advertising in Singapore because its cheaper than traditional media, easy to develop, manage, budget, control costs and optimise for profitability.
How did Google come about? Businesses and everyday users required something on the Internet that could sieve through all the content on the web and offer answers within seconds. And Google crafted just that.
Then Google saw a business opportunity for website owners to advertise their businesses in the search results pages. This is what is today known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising – although it wasn’t Google that came up with the concept. Other search engines invented it, Yahoo! perfected it and Google made it global.
This article discusses the magnitude of PPC to small businesses as well as some ideas that will assist you to take advantage of that to improve your business in Singapore.
What exactly is PPC?
Pay-per-click is a means for business owners to advertise their businesses through bidding on keywords that are associated with the interest of the audience or their field of business. Businesses bid to display their ads as results when a user searches for a particular keyword on search engines. Google displays a list of websites containing the keyword within seconds. The sites are arranged depending on various algorithms like relevance and location. There are two to three placements that appear above all these results. These placements are ranked depending on the topmost bidder for the particular keyword.
Businesses bid higher to attain a higher rank on the SERPs, but they only pay after someone clicking their ad and visiting their website. Hence pay per click: you pay if someone takes an interest which is a fairer way of advertising. About time too.
Advantages of PPC for SMEs
Whether you are a neighbourhood store or a large business, PPC has made the ground equal for advertisers from all business levels willing to market their businesses.
PPC has several benefits, and they include the following:
-
PPC Ads Are Simple To Create And Run
Google has simplified the process of digital advertising by offering various features on their platform. Google Ads is a user-friendly platform when it comes to creating the account as well as the ads, even for new users.
-
You Only Pay After Users Clicking on Your Ad
You want an online advertising option that can offer you an outstanding ROI. PPC can generate income for your business, and it can achieve this within a short time. It gives you the capacity to create and initiate campaigns within a few minutes. You can earn within the first day of launching your ad if the clicks lead to conversions.
Apart from being timely, PPC ads are also pocket-friendly since you only pay once people click on your ad. It can be seen by hundreds of individuals for free, but you don’t pay unless they click.
-
It Helps You Outperform Your Competition
There are several competitive advantages when considering PPC advertising for businesses in Singapore. The most important one is allowing you to bid for competitive keywords. If you become the best bidder, Google will display your ad when a particular keyword is searched despite the intention of the user. This approach is spectacular. It is a bold move to get a leg up over your competitors.
-
Offers Profound Targeting Alternatives
Pay-per-click also provides alternatives for deep targeting. Businesses can target particular keywords, demographics, and locations. Your targeting can be exceptionally specified when using pay-per-click. SMEs in Singapore can target specific keywords that are connected to their niche by using audience targeting options offered by Google Ads. PPC shows the ads for specific keywords and to the interested individuals only
-
Automated Options
PPC agencies for SMEs gives business owners the ability to automate various essential aspects like setting your maximum daily spend and specific keywords that when searched your ads should not appear. This saves advertisers a lot of money and time that can be used to undertake some other essential tasks
Starting Your PPC Strategy
Whether it is your first time to use PPC search engine marketing (SEM), or you are refining your current plan, you can use the steps below to develop your PPC marketing plan.
Step #1: Researching on Keywords
As we all understand, the days when a customer went to look for a product in a sales catalogue or a store shelf are almost at an end. The current marketing technology allows users to search for brands and purchase them by just clicking a button while at home.
Therefore, it is vital for businesses to know the keywords that their potential customers use to search for their products or services on the internet. So, they can bid for keywords and search queries that are related to their services or products properly. Several tools can assist you to achieve this, including the Google Keyword Research tool that shows you exactly the keywords that your consumers search for.
You can hire a professional to help you conduct the complex analytics to identify the popular keywords and the latest trends in your area of business while you focus on other business issues.
Step#2: Create Engaging Content
A smart business owner understands that a business does not become successful overnight. You need to work with creative specialists and content creators to enhance your brand reputation. It is your role as a business owner to ensure that you post engaging and appealing content to attract your viewers to go ahead to the next stage.
This is also equally important when creating an ad for your PPC strategy. Your ad has to attract the attention of the audience and encourage them to click on it to know more and make a purchase. An ad contains limited characters. So, ensure that they are simple, appealing and relevant.
Step #3: Examine and Optimize for The Most Excellent Results
The best thing about PPC campaigns is that you can frequently monitor the results and eliminate or correct the aspects that are not working. SMEs usually operate on a limited budget.
PPC can help you target show your ads to a specific audience and target a particular keyword, even on a small budget. Because the monitoring is done in real time, you can know the campaigns that are not working instantly and stop them. By so doing, you prevent wastage of resources on ads that do not bring conversions.
The above steps are the ones you require to increase the value of your PPC marketing.
10 Simple Approaches to Win the PPC Battle for Your Business
If you own a small business, there is a high likelihood that you operate on a limited budget. Or you have a tight schedule, so maintaining the state of your campaigns is hard. For this reason, we have outlined 10 of our SMEs PPC approaches that can assist you to save time and resources.
-
Explore Search Term Reports
The PPC marketing platform includes this feature that enables you to see the particular search terms that the users typed on the search engine when your ad appears. You can also learn the popularity of some of the search queries.
-
Schedule Ads
As an owner of SMEs, most likely you deal with different roles – from marketing to improving sales and processes. Without a big team to assist you, your ads can sometimes become a waste if they are not carefully examined.
Therefore, you should time your PPC ads at periods that your business is likely to get traffic. For example, if you own a restaurant, you are likely to get traffic in certain hours of the day. Ensure that you utilise the ad scheduling feature that allows you to pause your ads at certain times of the day when you suspect your audience is not looking for your services or products. It saves you a lot of time and money.
-
Include Negative Keywords
Negative keywords are search terms that you add to your PPC Ad to instruct Google not to display your ad when the users search for those keywords.
For example, if you own a local gym, you can include negative keywords like ‘home’ to prevent your ad from showing when users search for terms like ‘home fitness’ since that is not what your business deals with. The word home does not make sense to your business. So, don’t let it waste your money on clicks from people who are not interested in your business. Negative keywords prevent your ads from being seen by uninterested users while reducing your expenditure on SEM.
-
Enhance Bids for Competitive Keywords
PPC marketing gives you a detailed targeting and segmenting to reach only interested consumers. It means that you can also see the exact keywords that can convert people to your business. Getting those high-performance keywords for your ads will optimise them for better results.
It is good to monitor the keywords that will result in increased sales. Increase the bids for these specific keywords to enhance your rank and surpass your rivals.
-
Split Testing
PPC marketing is very flexible. Running experiments together with your PPC campaign is another great way to leverage the user-friendliness of your platform. Google divides your finances and runs your experimental ads alongside your other operating commercials to disclose the ones that offer the best output.
The data generated from split testing can assist you to implement changes to enhance the flexibility of your ads or delete the ads that are not working. This feature is mostly useful for businesses that need to test various ad innovations to the same target audience.
-
Develop Ads for Dynamic Searches
Dynamic ads are beneficial for SMEs, especially if you don’t have a PPC creative expert to track your PPC ads and prevent your ads from becoming weak. The Dynamic Search Ad tool in your ad creation platform allows algorithms to undertake most of the job for you. Google combs your site for the most used keywords and compares them to searched queries by consumers.
Google utilises an algorithm to display the most excellent landing page that corresponds with what users are looking for.
-
Make Use of Google Analytics
Google offers advertisers and small business owners with free tools to identify data associated with their online business. You can connect Google Analytics with your website by simply inserting codes to your site.
Google Analytics gives you a chance to gather information about your website to formulate sound business decisions about your marketing. Use this information to develop superior ads that attract the interests of your target audience.
-
Retargeting Site Visitors
Google allows you to retarget your customers using display ads after establishing the right infrastructure for identifying the individuals who visited your site to persuade them further to purchase your brand.
This is the favourite feature of PPC for businesses, and if conducted correctly, it can lead to increased sales while reducing advertising cost.
-
Examine the percentage of online search impressions
With some clicks on your PPC platform, you can observe the percentage of online impressions your campaigns are getting or losing. This feature is useful for business owners who need to ensure that your ads appear the greatest number of times when users search for particular keywords. Based on your findings, you can either improve the relevance of your commercial, or increase your budgeting to get a high impression percentage.
-
Check Your Quality Score Regularly
Quality score is the degree of fitness of your ad and landing page to give a solution to the queries searched by the users. Ads having a low-quality score will incur you a higher cost per click and will not do well as ads with a high-quality score.
Conclusion
Google offers the chance for Singapore businesses, especially SMEs, to succeed through its PPC Ads. However, it is the journey that will provide you will a very rewarding experience that will hold you in good stead when you advance to more complicated campaigns. Although Google makes changes and advancements to the PPC Ads platform regularly, ensuring that you are updated offers your clients with the best possible experience while saving your time and resources. The tips outlined above can help you to win the PPC battle and outdo your competitors to ensure that your brand appears on top at all times.
