How Does Paid Search Work?

You have heard about paid search before, likely use it yourself as a customer, and as a business, if you don’t use it as part of your marketing strategy, you have been told time and time again that you should. So, what is it? How does paid search work? Every second, tens of thousands of people are searching on the top search engines for products, services, and solutions to their needs and problems, and paid search is the ticket to your business being found and driving results and revenue. We are going to take a deeper look into this marketing tactic and how it works.

What is Paid Search?

Paid search is a form of digital marketing where search engines such as Google and Bing allow marketers to show ads on their search engine results pages (SERPs).

Businesses can pay to have their website show up at the top of the search results. Paid search works on a cost per click (CPC) model, which means you aren’t charged until someone clicks on the link. Essentially, cost per click (CPC) is a digital marketing metric that measures the amount of money paid for each click in a PaidSearch marketing campaign. Paid search works to drive traffic to your website through relevant ads.

To put this simply, every time a user clicks on an ad and is directed to a webpage, a cost is incurred. Cost per click is determined by several factors, including your maximum bid, your Quality Score, and the ad rank of other advertisers bidding for the same keyword. The more relevant your ads are, the more effective they will be to drive the right people to your website.

Paid Search Terms you Should Know

Before we get too far into how paid search works, we think it is important that you understand and know some of the key terms used around paid search. Let’s review some of the basics below.

  • PPC: You may hear paid search referred to as PPC. PPC stands for pay-per-click and many people use this term interchangeably with paid search; however, they aren’t exactly the same thing. Paid search refers to all paid ads on SERPs and PPC is a type of paid search.
  • Click: This one is rather simple. Clicks are the count of the number of times users have clicked on your ad.
  • Impression: Impressions are the number of times that your ad has been displayed. An impression doesn’t always mean the searcher saw your ad, as it could be somewhere on the page where they didn’t look; however, it was displayed on the results page for them.
  • Click-Through Rate (CTR): This number is the percentage of people who your ad is displayed for (impressions) and then clicked the ad (clicks).
  • Cost Per Click (CPC): As we reviewed above, this is the actual price you pay for each click in your advertising campaign.
  • Web Event: This is the count of an action when someone interacts with your ad and then takes an action that you’ve defined as valuable for your business, such as a website visit.

How Does Paid Search Work?

You likely aren’t looking to be an expert in paid search, that’s what you have people like Water Bear Marketing for; however, before you dive right into to adopting this advertising method, you probably would like a better understanding of how it works.

As mentioned above, if your ads are not clicked on, you are not billed through the search engine, but it’s important to note, if they do receive clicks and don’t convert searchers, you are charged for those irrelevant clicks. Successful marketers need to deliver the right messaging for the right moment. Better creative messages improve ad relevance and drive more qualified clicks from your search ads (Google).  

No one wants to pay for a click that doesn’t turn someone into a customer, so having effective paid search ads and search terms are extremely important to ensure you have a successful paid search campaign. There are a lot of things that need to be considered when setting up paid search, like location, keywords (both negative and positive), what type of matching to use (exact, broad, phrase), creating effective text ads, setting bids, connecting to the right landing pages, and more. Because coming up with the right strategy is somewhat of a science, most businesses hire advertising professionals to do the work for them as they are experts in the world of paid search.

As a business, paid search is one of the best ways to reach people who are looking to solve a problem (products or services they are need of). With paid search, as they are searching, your business can come up and be their solution.

Water Bear Marketing PaidSearch

Now that you have a better understanding of how paid search works and how complicated it can be, you likely want to leave the work up to the professionals. At Water Bear Marketing we are experts when it comes to advertising, including PaidSearch.

Water Bear Marketing ensures that you can reach 99% of the places that people search online. We provide tracking of results through phone calls, online sales, and form submissions. Our proprietary technology helps us to proactively make adjustments to our client’s campaigns to drive more leads and sales. We use our proprietary processes and technology to track and improve your results. With our PaidSearch product, our goal is to generate revenue for our clients that meets or exceeds their exceptions.

Contact us today to schedule a free consultation.

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