What is one common feature behind the success of online platforms like Amazon, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook? You guessed it right! It is their on-point pay-per-click (PPC) strategy. The seller or advertiser pays a nominal fee to make the potential customer click on the advertisement/post/product. In return, it drives more traffic and sales to the website. The best part is that, unlike search engine optimization (SEO), PPC lets the advertiser control how much to pay and when to run the ads. One must optimize Facebook ad copy, creative advertisements, and Google Search ad copy for effective PPC advertising to generate quick, traffic-generating results.

Stagewise Breakdown of a PPC Campaign

Understanding the stages of a PPC campaign is essential to deduce how long it will take to show results. Here is a typical timeline of how a PPC campaign works:

Stage 1: Studying the existing traffic and drawing lessons from it

A page or website should gather enough traffic and views (based on SEO) for one to understand the trend. Depending on that, one can design a PPC campaign to increase leads and visibility. Here are some examples to illustrate this point:

• Getting your message across as fast as possible is the current objective of digital marketing. Therefore, keeping the Facebook ad copy length crisp (125 characters for the primary text, 40 characters for the headline, and 25 characters for the description) is essential. Pause the underperforming ads. Write more than one ad copy targeting different consumers. To learn more about optimizing Facebook ad copy, click here.
• For a Google Search ad copy, focus on the keywords. Highlight the USPs of the product and service and conclude with a compelling call-to-action (CTA). Based on the current traffic, adjust the keywords and change or omit descriptions that are not generating impressions. To learn more about Google Search ad copy best practices, click here.

Time frame: Months 1, 2 and 3

Stage 2: Designing new strategies

Once the advertiser knows the general areas working and those not generating leads, they can start developing new ideas. One strategy is to focus on the ad groups driving traffic and swapping out the ones not performing up to the mark. By following Google Search ad copy best practices, one can design clever PPC campaigns adding more valuable data to the ad copies. Make the Facebook ad copy stand out among the competition by building audience personas and using them to define conversion targets.

Time frame: Months 4 and 5

Stage 3: Optimizing and revamping the existing strategies

By this time, the PPC campaign would have established itself and started to generate leads. At this stage, one must think of ways to revamp the content and increase brand recognition. Remember that the audience will eventually get bored of the same ads. Therefore, refreshing the imagery and ad copies through a creative process in advertisement becomes crucial to retain interest.

Time frame: Month 6 and onwards

When Can One Expect to See the Results?

Judging from the above timeline, the average timeframe for a PPC campaign to show results is three to six months. The first three months go into gathering data to improve the ad campaigns, and by the end, one gets an idea of its performance. It will take close to 9 months to build a strong PPC campaign. The budget also plays a role. The larger the budget for PPC, the more data to work with and the faster the optimization, leading to rapid turnaround times.

Why the Wait?

The chief reason why a PPC ad campaign takes so much time to manifest is because of the previous lack of data and conversion history. As a PPC campaign starts picking up, lead generation begins, and one gradually gathers the data to begin. The increased impressions enable the advertiser to tweak their PPC strategies to make their ads perform better. All this takes considerable time and is not an overnight process.

How to Know if A PPC Campaign Is Successful

How does one define good results in a PPC campaign? What are the metrics to judge whether it is a success or not? Here is a list of parameters to determine the outcome:

• Quality score – It measures the relevance and quality of PPC ads.
• Click-through rate (CTR) – This metric estimates how often people click to view the ads.
• Impressions – It refers to the number of views the ad gets, irrespective of whether people click to watch it.
• Position on the search page – The ad’s positioning on a search engine results page (SERP) plays a crucial role.
• Conversion rate – It involves the percentage of visitors who convert or take the intended action through the PPC campaign.
• Cost per acquisition (CPA) – It measures the total number of conversions over the money spent on the ad.

Tips for Accelerating PPC Campaign Results

Here are some tried-and-tested suggestions that are sure to give an edge while designing a PPC campaign to generate faster results:

• Mark the end goal right at the beginning.
• Consider the budget.
• Create buyer personas to define the target audience.
• Identify the relevant keywords.
• Apply a creative process in advertising to gain the upper hand over rival companies.
• Optimize the landing page using keywords, designing engaging graphics, and writing a compelling CTA. Put in ad extensions.
• Remember to optimize the ads for viewing on mobiles.
• Track the progress regularly.
• Revamp the ad copies for better lead generation and increased visibility.

Although a PPC campaign does not yield immediate results, it is worth the wait. It helps a business grow in a way traditional marketing tools cannot. Subscribe to Ad Digest and get valuable insights on designing creative advertisements and marketing strategies. Connect with us to receive tips on how to drive more traffic to your site, double your sales, and enhance conversions.