Guide

PPC: a guide to pay-per-click advertising

Paid search and paid social: buying clicks from people who are already looking, and making each click pay.

Pay-per-click advertising buys placement in search results, shopping listings and social feeds, and you pay when someone clicks. Its great strength is intent: a search ad reaches people at the moment they are looking for what you sell. Its risk is that it is easy to spend money quickly — the platforms are designed to make spending simple, not to make it profitable.

Search ads

Search ads appear above and below the organic results on Google and Microsoft Bing. You choose keywords, write ads and bid in an auction; your position depends on your bid and on the platform's view of the ad's quality and relevance. Microsoft Advertising is smaller but often cheaper per click, and it also powers ads on other search products.

Keywords and match types

Group keywords tightly by theme so each ad matches the search behind it. Broad match reaches more searches but needs strong negative keyword lists and good conversion data to work; phrase and exact match give more control. Review the search terms report weekly and add negatives for the irrelevant searches you are paying for.

Shopping and automated campaigns

Retailers can run shopping ads from a product feed, showing image, price and shop name directly in results. Automated campaign types spread budget across search, shopping, display and video using the platform's machine learning. They can perform well, but they need accurate conversion values and good product data — and they give you less visibility into where the money goes.

Landing pages

Every click lands somewhere. Send people to the page that matches their search — the product, not the home page — with the price, the key reasons to buy and an obvious next step. Improving the conversion rate of a landing page lowers your cost per sale across every campaign that uses it.

Bidding and measurement

Set up conversion tracking before you spend. Work out what you can afford to pay for a lead or sale, then bid towards that target. Measure return on ad spend and, better still, profit after ad costs. Test one change at a time and give tests long enough to reach meaningful numbers.