Digital Marketing - Study Notes:
What is paid search?
Before we look at the fundamentals of paid search or pay per click (PPC), let’s begin by asking: What exactly is paid search?
Paid search is an inbound marketing channel that allows you to match your product or service with potential customers, who are looking for what you have to offer. By using advertising tools such as Google Ads, you can choose a number of keywords that your customers typically use when researching or buying your product or offering. So then, when they search, your business shows up in the top position in Google’s search engine results page (or SERP).
Paid search is different from search engine optimization (or SEO). With SEO, you need to create website content that is likely to show up on the search engine – because the content is relevant to what the customer is searching for.
On the other hand, with paid search, you simply:
- Choose the keywords that you want to show up in #1 position on Google, for example.
- Enter your lists of keywords into the advertising tool, such as Google Ads, Bing Ads, Amazon Ads, and so on.
- And then write some ads that will be relevant when someone looks for any of the keywords on your lists.
Then, on the customer-facing side of Google, when someone searches using those keywords, you can show up as a sponsored search ad at the top of the search results. When you group related keywords into lists in the paid search advertising tool, you can write ads that will be suitable for any keyword on that list.
For example, if you sell electronics goods, you should group all your radio keywords into one list, and then write an ad that talks about the radios you sell. However, if you also sell TVs and you included TV keywords in your list, your radio ad isn’t relevant. This is why you always need to group keywords with similar themes together and write an ad that would be relevant to all the keywords on that list. In this case, you would have two keyword lists: one for radios with a radio ad, and another for TVs with a TV ad.
In relation to the ‘paid’ part of ‘paid search’, if the searcher clicks on your ad, you have to pay a fee, called a cost per click (or CPC). However, you don’t pay if they don’t click your ad. So you only pay for clicks, or basically when someone chooses your ads over the paid search ads of your competitors.
Why use paid search?
The value of paid search is that it helps you to very quickly get to the top of the search results without you having to create any extra content for your website. So, when people input keywords to perform a search, ask questions, or look for something, you can show up as the answer. Your ad becomes the solution to their needs, or the answer to their question.
But how can you ensure that you become the answer to their question? Much like SEO, you need to research and anticipate the types of keywords that people are likely to use when researching or buying your product. However, rather than creating content from this keyword research like you would with SEO, you simply enter these keywords in the advertising tool. Then, when people search for these keywords, you show up!
The great advantage of paid search is that, overall, it is much faster than SEO in terms of driving traffic, sales, and conversions. But the obvious drawback is that you have to pay for it. This is why it’s so important to include both SEO and PPC in your digital marketing strategy. Then you are not overly reliant on paid traffic, because this can be costly in the long run. So finding the right balance between both PPC and SEO is key to success.
Back to TopCathal Melinn
Cathal Melinn is a well-known Digital Marketing Director, commercial analyst, and eommerce specialist with over 15 years’ experience.
Cathal is a respected international conference speaker, course lecturer, and digital trainer. He specializes in driving complete understanding from students across a number of digital marketing disciplines including: paid and organic search (PPC and SEO), analytics, strategy and planning, social media, reporting, and optimization. Cathal works with digital professionals in over 80 countries and teaches at all levels of experience from beginner to advanced.
Alongside his training and course work, Cathal runs his own digital marketing agency and is considered an analytics and revenue-generating guru - at enterprise level. He has extensive local and international experience working with top B2B and B2C brands across multiple industries.
Over his career, Cathal has worked client-side too, with digital marketing agencies and media owners, for brands including HSBC, Amazon, Apple, Red Bull, Dell, Vodafone, Compare the Market, Aer Lingus, and Expedia.
He can be reached on LinkedIn here.
These walkthrough videos give clear, step-by-step demonstrations and guidance on how to apply key digital marketing concepts and strategies, and use industry-standard tools. While relevant to this module, you will not be assessed on this content.
