A Brief Overview of the Three Major PPC Platforms

by Alfie Davies Financial Manager

When the business landscape was changing its direction to a more streamlined, digital approach, marketers found it necessary to invest more in their online digital marketing efforts. Today, digital marketing has emerged as the most effective marketing strategy available, consisting of social media, SEO and PPC campaigns. Among the three, PPC or Pay-Per-Click campaign is used for paid advertising and has proven to be an effective way of generating the best Return on Investment.

PPC campaigns are one of the best ways for marketers to get their client’s website at the top of the search rankings. The main focus is to increase brand visibility through paid efforts. For websites having high click-through rates, the “Paying per measure” model works best. However, when there is a low click-through rate of the website, the pay-per-click model is best used for optimizing marketing efforts without spending unnecessarily.

The three major PPC campaign platforms in use today are Facebook Ads, Bing Ads, and Google’s AdWords. Each of them has their unique advantages and capabilities, and marketers often choose to combine the three. We will now discuss these platforms one by one in brief. (Information Credit: Gill Solutions)

· Google’s AdWords

Developed by Google, The AdWords platform is one of the best when it comes to PPC campaigns. A lot of it has to do with the fact that Google has the largest search traffic volume in the world, hence the biggest ROI achievable. It is competent enough to handle any type of website if the keywords are properly targeted.

It should be noted, however, that keyword targeting and research are crucial. A simple mistake of picking “generic” keywords will not achieve the desired results even if it is receiving a good amount of clicks. AdWords is known to work extremely well when shopping results are concerned. A higher conversion rate can be achieved if the prospective customer knows what they’re getting into prior to clicking. Hence keywords have to be chosen after much consideration for this platform to work successfully.

· Bing Ads

Bing Ads cater to advertising specifically on the Bing! and the Yahoo! Network. Similar to AdWords, the platform suffers to some extent because of the size of the search pool Yahoo! Offers. The ad implementation strategies and methodologies are almost the same and have been proven effective to target adults, specifically old people. Digital marketing agencies tend to conduct both AdWords and Bing Ads simultaneously for having a bigger chance at visibility.

· Facebook Ads

Ever since Facebook became one of the most widely used social media platform, it has opened up broader avenues for marketing to people. It beats both AdWords and Bing Ads! when the targeting audience is taken into consideration. Facebook Ads have the uncanny ability to allow marketers to send links directly to specific recipients. It is a remarkably efficient tool for customer oriented businesses like an e-commerce website, which mimics the shopping ads found in AdWords. It has proven to be the most effective PPC campaign with the biggest success rate recorded till date.

The super targeting feature of Facebook ads is what attracts marketers. It allows a greater degree of personalization and customer engagement, critical for many industries. Moreover, professionals can target Geo located niche markets. Facebook has also proved effective in the broader markets, as it has the highest number of active users than any other platform in the world. It is comparatively much cheaper than other platforms with a user-friendly interface.

In conclusion, AdWords are many marketers’ “go-to” platform for PPC because of Google’s search rankings. However, in industries which require laser-targeting capabilities to target particular audiences, Facebook is also the answer to all the above problems.