Top 11 Benefits of PPC Advertising (+ Expert Tips)

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising helps brands gain immediate visibility on search engines and social platforms. Discover the benefits of PPC and find inspiration from expert advice.

Top 11 PPC benefits for brands

From outcomes to costs, PPC ad campaigns offer a long list of benefits. The biggest advantages of pay-per-click advertising include:

1. Gain complete control over budgets and timing
2. Run cost-effective campaigns optimized for key goals
3. Achieve results faster than traditional advertising tactics
4. Get to the top of Google search results faster than SEO
5. Reach highly targeted audiences
6. Build remarketing audiences throughout the funnel
7. Highlight unique value and time-sensitive offers
8. Track conversions and attribute results accurately
9. Create ads that complement other paid and organic channels
10. Experiment with paid search tactics using A/B testing tools
11. Launch paid search ads in minutes and optimize over time

What is PPC advertising?

PPC advertising is a type of online advertising designed to drive paid traffic to your website or landing page. With PPC campaigns, you pay only when a user clicks on your ad, not when the ad gets impressions. In fact, a primary advantage of pay-per-click advertising is that it optimizes for traffic (i.e., clicks) rather than visibility (i.e., impressions).

Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and social media networks like Facebook Ads all support PPC advertising. However, paid search is the most common type of PPC. With Bing and Google search ads, you bid on keywords to place your ad at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant queries.

For example, the Zoho ad below appears at the top of a Google SERP for the search “accounting for small business.” It targets prospects seeking a small business accounting solution and drives website traffic to a tailored landing page.

Want to reach advertising goals while retaining control over the budget, timing, and targeting for each campaign? PPC ads can reach prospects throughout the funnel, making them ideal for achieving key business goals efficiently.

How exactly can these ads fit into your digital marketing strategy? In this article, we’ll cover 11 PPC benefits for brands and share tips to plan, launch, and optimize your own paid search campaigns.

1. Gain complete control over budgets and timing

One of the benefits of PPC ad campaigns is that you never have to be surprised by how much you spend or when your ads run. Advertising platforms like Google Ads offer robust self-service options that give you complete control over PPC campaign budgets and timing.

Paid search campaigns typically require you to set an average daily budget. The actual daily ad spend may fluctuate based on bidding opportunities. Yet over the course of an entire month, you never owe more than your average daily budget multiplied by 30.4.

In addition to setting start and end dates for PPC campaigns, you can also create ad schedules. For example, if you only want your ads to run while your business is open, you can set an ad schedule that aligns with your open hours.

You can also use automated rules to switch search ads on or off based on specific scenarios. For example, PPC pros often configure ads to run during promotional periods or set them to display on a rotating basis.

At HawkSEM, we leverage automation while maintaining manual control. We always assign a senior strategist to manage campaigns and avoid leaving PPC ads on autopilot.

2. Run cost-effective campaigns optimized for key goals

If you usually run display ads or programmatic ads, you may be used to a cost per thousand impressions (CPM) pricing structure. Although this advertising model can deliver your ads at scale, it doesn’t necessarily drive revenue-focused outcomes. As a result, the true cost and impact can be difficult to forecast.

One of the main benefits of PPC marketing is that it uses a pay-per-click model. That means you only pay when a potential customer clicks on your ad. Because clicks take prospects to your campaign landing page, they automatically create conversion opportunities — which can drive revenue.

Many paid search campaigns optimize for clicks. That means they tend to work well for getting the most traffic to your website and creating the largest number of opportunities for conversions.

However, you also have the option to optimize paid search ads for conversions or for maximum conversion value. With this approach, you can ensure you’re getting the results you want at the cost you expect.

Most ad platforms have smart bidding algorithms to drive traffic at the lowest cost automatically. Yet, many also offer manual bidding options. By setting a manual cost per click (CPC) or a cost cap, you can retain maximum control over your campaigns.

3. Achieve results faster than traditional advertising tactics

Traditional advertising methods like print and television aren’t known for producing results quickly. Planning campaigns, reserving ad space, and awaiting publication often take several months.

In contrast, one of the biggest benefits of paid search is the speed at which you can see results. In many cases, you can launch a campaign, drive website traffic, and potentially begin to see conversions in the space of a few hours.

Not sure where to begin or not seeing the results you expect from your PPC campaigns? Consider outsourcing PPC to a trusted team. Reach out to learn how our PPC experts can build and launch full-funnel strategies quickly.

4. Get to the top of Google search results faster than SEO

Many brands use search engine optimization (SEO) to rank on the first page of Google search results. While SEO has many advantages — including the potential for long-term visibility — it won’t get you to the top of the SERP quickly.

Instead, SEO often takes months to make a measurable impact on organic search traffic, domain authority, and backlink portfolios. For particularly competitive keywords, ranking ahead of high-authority sites requires a substantial investment.

One of the most valuable PPC advertising benefits is that search ad placements can land you at the top of the SERP right away. With a high-quality score and a competitive bid, PPC marketing enables you to outrank organic competitors and get your site in the first position efficiently.

For example, MadKudu appears at the top of a Google search for “best ABM platform.” The SaaS company doesn’t appear on the first page of organic search results, but paid advertising enabled the brand to skyrocket to the top.

5. Reach highly targeted audiences

Paid search ads support several different layers of targeting, giving your brand the best possible chance to reach your ideal audience. As a result, you can run successful PPC campaigns that are highly targeted yet still cost-effective.

Keyword optimization

Search campaigns use keyword targeting to display PPC ads in specific search queries. As an advertiser, you can build a list of relevant keywords and bid to show your ads alongside matching queries.

In addition to choosing relevant keywords for your ads, you can select from available keyword match types to fine-tune your targeting. For example, Google Ads supports broad match, phrase match, exact match, and negative keywords.

At the ad group level, you can apply broad match targeting to reach the largest possible audience with the widest range of search queries. You can also narrow your targeting by setting phrase or exact match for specific keywords. With dynamic keyword insertion, you can even align ad copy with search queries automatically.

“Our Softlist spotlight campaigns achieve high clickthrough rates (CTRs) on broad keywords, which is not common with regular sponsored brand or product ads,” shares Fawaz Naser, CEO of Softlist.io.

“Instead of the average 1% CTR for top search placements (and usually 0.5%-0.7% on broad keywords), we’re hitting 2-3% CTR when our ads are spot on. These higher CTRs are significant because they mean more traffic from the same number of searches, leading to higher earnings in the same timeframe.”

Audience targeting

All PPC platforms support audience targeting, allowing you to show ads more selectively. Across platforms, audience targeting options typically include:

• Demographic targeting: Reach prospects by gender, age, location, or other demographics settings.
• Interest targeting: Get ads in front of prospects who have shown an affinity for certain topics.
• In-market targeting: Deliver ads to prospects who are in the process of researching or shopping for certain products or services
• Behavior targeting: Connect with prospects who have visited certain websites, joined specific groups, or used a particular device.

New customer optimization

By default, Google Ads bids equally for new and existing customers. However, the platform also allows PPC advertisers to optimize campaigns for new customers.

This setting is ideal when you need to expand your audience while achieving lower customer acquisition costs. This setting is particularly helpful if you’ve done the math and you stand to gain a better return on ad spend (ROAS) from new customers.

6. Build remarketing audiences throughout the funnel

Whether you need to increase brand awareness, improve lead generation, or get a better conversion rate, PPC ads can be a smart solution. In fact, pay-per-click advertising benefits the entire funnel.

PPC ads allow you to reach audiences as they’re just starting to research a problem. With remarketing audiences, you can continue to reconnect with these prospects as they research options, compare solutions, and make decisions.

Depending on the ad platform you choose, you can build remarketing audiences using a range of different data sources. For example, Google Ads (above) supports sources like customer lists, lead forms, website visitors, and YouTube subscribers.

Platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn Ads allow behavior-based remarketing. For example, you can retarget engaged followers or prospects who have interacted with your ads before.

7. Highlight unique value and time-sensitive offers

No matter which advertising platform you use, PPC requires relatively concise ad copy. While Facebook and LinkedIn are more generous with word count, Google Ads limits most ad copy fields to 30, 60, or 90 characters.

However, you often have additional options to showcase unique value in your paid ads. For example, Facebook Ads offers info labels, which support information about shipping, payment methods, and return policies. Meta automatically adds these elements to your ads when they’re more likely to get results.

With Google Ads, you can add callout extensions to ads. These elements are more flexible and can feature short statements about limited-time offers, open hours, shipping specials, and unique selling points. Since you can schedule callout assets, you can specify exactly when they display.

8. Track conversions and attribute results accurately

A major issue with traditional advertising, social media, and content marketing is that these channels don’t make it easy to track conversions or attribute results. If your prospects typically require more than one touchpoint before converting, tracking outcomes with tools like Google Analytics becomes even tougher.

One of the biggest benefits of PPC advertising is that it simplifies conversion tracking and marketing attribution. Platforms like Google Ads automatically track conversions and revenue. They also provide data on conversion paths and the time it takes most prospects to convert via paid clicks and even call tracking.

For more accuracy, you can choose specific attribution models or adjust conversion windows to align with your sales cycle. Then you’ll know exactly which campaign, ad group, ad, or even keyword is delivering the best ROAS. You’ll also be able to attribute every marketing dollar so you can optimize faster.

While native tracking tools can tell you a lot, third-party tools can tell you even more. HawkSEM’s proprietary ConversionIQ tool tracks each step of the buyer journey. With this tool, we can see which aspects of your marketing campaigns are working best and which need additional optimization.

9. Create ads that complement other paid and organic channels

PPC ads don’t have to be isolated from other channels. In fact, paid search benefits a wide range of marketing efforts, including organic channels and other types of ad campaigns.

One of the easiest ways to expand the reach of search marketing campaigns is to run ads on the Google Search and the Google Display networks simultaneously. When you run both search and display ads, you can improve brand recognition while targeting website traffic, leads, and conversions.

PPC can also complement your SEO strategy. In fact, you can use PPC to drive traffic to web pages you’ve published and optimized as part of your SEO efforts. You can use keyword data from PPC campaigns to guide SEO and improve return on investment (ROI) from content marketing.

“When we mixed PPC with social media, something magical happened,” explains Matt Little, Director of Festoon House. “To increase traffic to our social media channels, we employed PPC, and vice versa.”

“It produced this lovely feedback cycle in which visitors from PPC advertisements would further interact on our social media channels, and engaged individuals from social media would convert through PPC ads. It increased our brand visibility and conversions like a tag team.”

10. Experiment with paid search tactics using A/B testing tools

Wondering whether a slight change could improve your conversion rate or boost your ROAS dramatically? All PPC platforms offer A/B testing tools, so you can easily test different ad versions and make adjustments based on experiment metrics.

For example, Google Ads’ experiments feature allows you to create new ad versions by updating URLs or PPC ad copy. You can set the date range and the budget allocation for each version to retain complete control over the text. Then you can update the final version of the ad based on the results.

11. Launch paid search ads in minutes and optimize over time

As helpful as A/B tests can be, they aren’t the only way to improve search marketing outcomes. Instead, you can launch campaigns quickly and make countless optimizations over time as you monitor PPC analytics.

For example, you can add, remove, or change keyword match types in Google Ads. You can also adjust manual CPC bids to ensure that your ads reliably appear at the top of the SERP, even as the competitive landscape changes.

The takeaway

From lowering CPC and acquisition costs to reaching target audiences throughout the funnel, pay-per-click advertising offers a long list of benefits. While you can always manage these ads independently, we’ve seen firsthand how working with experienced consultants can help you realize the true advantage of PPC advertising.

Ready to learn more? Contact us to book a free consultation and discover how HawkSEM’s search marketing expertise can benefit your biz.