If you have done any reading on digital marketing strategy, you have probably found yourself buried under a pile of abbreviations. Some of them are SEO (search engine optimization), PPC (pay per click), SEM, H1, CTA and plenty more. It can wear you out, but do not despair. In this article and the others we explain the basic terms of digital marketing as plainly as we can. Join us and step into our Academy pages to learn the rest of them.
What Is PPC Marketing?
PPC stands for pay per click, and PPC marketing is a form of online advertising where the advertiser pays a fee every time someone clicks their ad. PPC turns up in a lot of different shapes, but the simplest way to explain it is this; PPC is the ads belonging to the sites marked “sponsored” on a Google search results page. Bear in mind that paid ads online can run on many different platforms, but I do not want this article running too long, so for the sake of clarity I will keep my examples to Google Ads.
According to the American Marketing Association (AMA): paid search advertising, also called pay per click (PPC), is used to pay for traffic to a website.
There are many different reasons a company chooses this form of marketing and advertising; the main one is that it is fast and effective, and the results come back almost instantly. It is a sound strategy for working out the balance between ad spend and revenue. When you set up a PPC campaign in Google Ads you can reach how many people saw your ad (views and impressions), how many clicked it (hence pay per click), the click-through rates and, more to the point, how much you got back for each keyword.
Competing on the keywords where you are converting well starts to look like a rather good idea.
Other Names for It
- Click based advertising
- Cost per click (CPC) marketing
- Sponsored search advertising
What Are the Benefits of PPC Marketing?
The benefits of PPC marketing are too many to get through. This has been my trade since 1999, so let us start with the 3 that matter most:
- You can measure it ~ unlike traditional marketing, PPC lets you test and measure your campaigns quickly and easily. You can even track how much you spent on every single keyword you targeted, or keep it under control by setting a budget.
- You can target it ~ one of PPC’s biggest advantages is that you can reach your ideal customers by targeting them. Using a list of keywords tied to your products and services, you can put the right page of your company in front of the right person within a very specific audience.
- You control the cost ~ the third advantage I would name is that it costs less than traditional marketing. You can set a daily Google Ads budget of 100 lira or less.
Building a PPC Campaign That Works
Building a PPC campaign that works usually takes experience, and it does not happen overnight off the back of one article. Do not leave yet. Our experience will be worth a lot to you in making a proper start.
Do a little philosophy and sociology
The first thing to hold in your head while you plan a PPC campaign is who your potential customers are. Who is the person who is going to buy this product or this service of yours?
Once you have defined that audience, “WORDS” take the stage, or groups of words. Which words or phrases do the people who would buy your product or service actually search for?
With tools like Google Keyword Planner and the Türk SEM keyword planner you can see your keywords and how often they are searched. These tools can show you the keyword match types that will bring you the best results.
If one search type carries a lot of volume, building a dedicated page for that phrase can improve your quality score. (If you do not know what a quality score is, pretend you did not read that sentence, no need to get confused)
You should also add negative keywords. Negative keywords stop your ad appearing when someone is searching for something else. If you opened an ad on exact match for a brand name, for instance, you do not want to show up on searches for that brand plus “complaint”. Because; the person searching for complaints about the brand is already a customer of it.
Remember too that the landing page for your ads needs a call to action (CTA). That could be filling in a form, getting in touch over WhatsApp, downloading a technical document or signing up to a newsletter.
Next comes your ad copy. It has to say clearly what you are offering and why people should buy from you. Make sure it is interesting enough to get people clicking through to your landing page.
We have set our keywords and arranged the page around them. Now it is time to build the ads. Here you can lean on AI (Gemini, OpenAI) to put together effective ones. Do not be shy, just ask. “Hey Gemini, I am going to run Google Ads PPC for my boiler repair company in Istanbul, could you write me an effective description?”
My Closing Notes on PPC
In this piece we went through what PPC is and the basic steps of building PPC ads through Google Ads, and of course there is more I could say. In the middle of the 2000s I kept a wide berth from PPC advertising and poured all my energy into SEO. Cost per click was rather cheap back then, too.
That turned out to be a mistake for the rest of my working life. TatilPanosu, the travel agency project I call the project of my life, never reached the success I wanted for it. On a project you truly believe in, put energy and budget into Google Ads. It may be the golden touch your project needs.
Google runs free training on a stack of ad formats through Skillshop. Taking those courses will develop you and fill in a lot of what we touched on here. And if you would rather work with a professional agency, Türk SEM will do everything it can for you and your company.
I could have made this article a great deal longer, but I tried to explain it as simply and plainly as I could, and I think I managed it. Tell me what you think in the comments, or join the arguments on X.
Happy PPC.
