What is Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing?

What is Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing?
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is a method of driving traffic to your website by paying a publisher every time your ad is clicked. One of the most common types of PPC is Google AdWords, which allows you to pay for top slots on Google’s search engine results pages at a price “per click” of the links you place. Other channels where you can use PPC include:

Paid ads on Facebook.
Promoted Tweets on Twitter.
Sponsored Messages on LinkedIn.

Why Pay-Per-Click (PPC)is Important to Digital Marketing
Pay per click advertising, or paid search advertising, can generate traffic right away. It’s simple: Spend enough, get top placement, and potential customers will see your business first. If folks are searching for the key phrases on which you bid and you’ve placed a well-written ad, you will get clicks the moment the ad is activated.

How Keywords Work in Pay-Per-Click Advertising
As its name implies, the Ad Auction is a bidding system. This means that advertisers must bid on the terms they want to “trigger,” or display, their ads. These terms are known as keywords.
At the moment the user submits their search query, the search engine performs the complex algorithmic calculations that the Ad Auction is based upon. This determines which ads are displayed, in which order, and by which advertiser.

Say, for example, that your business specializes in camping equipment. A user wanting to purchase a new tent, sleeping bag, or portable stove might enter the keyword “camping equipment” into a search engine to find retailers offering these items.

Since you have to pay for each click on your ads, it’s imperative to only bid on keywords that are relevant to your business, so you can be sure to get ROI from your ad spend. A keyword tool can help you find the right keywords to bid on that are both likely to drive sales or conversions, and are not prohibitively expensive.