But while SEO gets you free clicks, PPC ads require you to pay every time someone clicks on your ad. This means that it's common for businesses to spend hundreds, if not thousands of pounds every day to drive traffic to their website.
But what makes PPC such an effective marketing channel?
PPC allows you to see almost instant results. Almost instantly after your PPC campaign is up and running, you'll start seeing traffic, clicks, and conversions. However, it can take months to achieve the same results with SEO.
You’ve probably noticed where PPC ads are placed in search results: right above the page.
Paid Ad Listing vs Organic Listing
This means that for both mobile and desktop searches, PPC ads are the first thing a user sees, right before any organic results. PPC gives you the opportunity to appear right above the search results, in positions that aren’t possible to achieve when you’re working solely with SEO.
PPC also gives you opportunities to improve your business presence in search engines with things like phone numbers, callouts, and expanded site links. You have more opportunities to draw users' attention to your ad.
The fact that launching and managing a PPC campaign typically only requires one paid search specialist and perhaps a copywriter to write enticing ads and landing pages means that a smaller team of experts is needed compared to SEO.
When you're using ads, you have the option to reach your consumers with paid ads, shopping ads, video ads, Gmail ads, and more. You can use the right ad formats to reach your audience and encourage them to buy from you or make inquiries. For example, think about shopping ads. Google has started rolling out (again) free listings , which are only shown in the shopping tab and not in the sponsored display directly in the SERPs. However, organic listings don't have the same variety of options to reach your audience.
Running a PPC campaign gives you a variety of data on the keywords and ads that users click on before making a purchase, as well as those that don’t generate a return. This means you can quickly make changes to your campaign to better optimize it and improve your ROAS (return on ad spend).
It’s quick and easy to run A/B tests with Google Ads, allowing you to take a “constant testing” approach to execute and drive continuous improvement and higher ROI.
You can take a very precise approach by running ads for specific customers. Whether you want to target users based on their location, time of day, device used, or other factors, you can design a PPC campaign that reaches only those people you know are most likely to buy.
With PPC, you don't have to constantly monitor Google's algorithm updates. You bid to be at the top, so your rankings don't matter much.