PPC advertising: Eight questions your boss will ask

So, the powers that be want to know if PPC is the right solution for their business.

Your boss will have many questions about Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. So, as a marketer or assistant, it’s important to understand how this channel will help to reach your company’s online goals.

Google Ads is the leading PPC platform. And you should arm yourself with info about its workings and how it will benefit the business.

Eight questions your boss is likely to ask you about PPC

1. What will it cost?

Your boss will want to know what PPC will cost. This is often a difficult question because there are many factors to the costs that you’ll be charged including:

1. The budget amount that you’ll set for your campaigns
2. Which keywords you’re bidding on and the traffic volumes
3. When you would like to run your ads
4. The level of competition and how aggressive they are

It’s always best to start with a test budget. That will differ for each business type of course, but it should be sufficient enough to get you traffic that will help you assess the performance.

I recommend a test budget of $600 per month which would equate to about $20 per day. So, within a month, you’ll be able to assess the performance of the ads and search terms and adjust accordingly.

However, this will depend on the keywords you will bid on and the suggested bids. So, start by doing keyword research and use the forecasting tool to assess what you need to spend and what budget to assign your campaign.

2. How long does it take to set up?

Setting up Google Ads campaigns is quick and can be done in a couple of hours. Your boss is likely to ask this question to decide when to start running the ads. So it’s important to be able to answer it.

However, it does depend on the type of campaign you are setting up and also the number of campaigns.

Search campaigns for example are quick to setup and can be ready in a few hours. A shopping campaign on the other hand could take days or weeks. That’s because of the many features you have to setup and the lengthy review process. This includes:

1. Setting up a Google Merchant Center account
2. Creating a datafeed and submitting it to Merchant Center
3. Linking Merchant Center and Google Ads
4. Setting up the shopping campaign in Google Ads

It can take up to a week or two to get your shopping listings live on Google.

3. Does it work?

Naturally, your boss will want to know if PPC works. You can point to the thousands of businesses that use it and quote stats like “businesses make an average of $2 income for every $1 they spend in Google Ads”, to show that its working for millions of businesses.

Of course, your boss will be more interested in knowing if it will work for her business. This is where you’ll need to carry out some research and produce some numbers.

Google Ads has free research tools like the Keyword Planner tool. You can use it to research potential keywords for your campaigns and show the stats for traffic volumes and what you’re likely to pay.

You can also use the forecasting tool to show the likely performance of your ads and where you will be positioned. All this gives insight to which market is looking for your products or services.

4. Do we have the skills to set up Google Ads?

Your boss will want to know if there is in-house talent to make Google Ads work for the business. As an advocate for Google Ads, you should have the answer on who will setup and manage campaigns.

And you have a number of options:

1. Employ the services of a freelance expert
2. Engage a PPC agency
3. Get some training to do this effectively yourself
4. Employ a PPC Expert

5. Are we tied into a contract?

If you’re looking to partner with a Google Ads expert, your boss will want to know the terms. So, will a contract be required and if so, how long?

This will depend on a number of factors. For example, if you’re looking to run a short campaign, for a few months, then it will be a short contract.

Three month contracts are the norm. And this is usually sufficient time to know if your campaigns are working or not. You can use this as a trial period to show your boss the value of launching PPC campaigns.

Many experts offer rolling contracts, meaning you can cancel at anytime.

6. Should we not do SEO instead?

For many businesses, the choice of online channel is between PPC advertising and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) And the choice is usually down to cost. PPC is perceived as costly because there’s always a charge, whereas SEO is seen as cheap because there’s no traffic costs.

For that reason your boss is likely to gravitate towards SEO. However, there’re pros and cons to both channels and it’s important to be able to explain them to your boss.

One major advantage that PPC has over SEO is that traffic results are instant, whereas SEO traffic can takes months, and that is not guaranteed.

So you’ll need to be able to explain this effectively to get buy-in.

7. What can we do to beat competitors?

Your boss will be familiar with competitors in your niche. However, he’ll not have the knowledge on what they’re actually doing and how they’re performing with Google Ads. So you’ll do some competitor research using tools like Spyfu and SE Ranking.

These tools are insightful and show you what keywords and ads competitors are using. You’ll also be able to spy into their average positions for each keyword and what their Cost Per Click (CPC) is.

8. Where will Ads appear?

If you’re running a search campaign, your ads will appear on Google and their search partner sites.

The exact positions in the auction results will depend on a number of factors:

1. Your average bid
2. Competitors’ bids
3. Time of day
4. Location you’re targeting
5. Device it’s appearing on
6. Ad quality

These are the main factors to consider. And as you manage your campaigns, you’ll discover the best ad positions for your ads and adjust bids accordingly.

Summary

Whether you’re a digital marketer or an assistant tasked with finding out more about PPC advertising, it’s important to know how this channel will help your firm. This will help you explain its benefits to your boss and get buy-in to launch this channel.

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