Reach more users. Get more Traffic. - Using paid search to grow your business.

If you have ever wondered how search engines like Google or Bing make their money, the vast majority of it is through paid search.

What Is Paid Search?

Also known as search engine marketing (SEM), paid search refers to the usage of pay-per-click (PPC) and cost-per-click (CPC) ads that are displayed at the top of search engines result pages (SERPs) when a user enters in relevant keywords.

The first results of a search for Audi vehicles might look something like this.

As you might have guessed, Google and Bing then charge the advertiser for each click they receive from that advertisement.

This of course brings up the question,

Why Should A Digital Marketer Invest In Paid Search?

1. It's cost effective. Unlike some other forms of advertising, businesses see an average of $2 for every $1 spent, and average keywords aren't that expensive. If leveraged properly, you can gain a great ROI from them.
2. It builds brand awareness. While a new business may be trying to gain traction through SEO, PPC ads allow you to get to the first page of SERPs instantly, instead of having to wait for SEO to start working.
3. You get great data from it. While it may difficult to gauge how other marketing channels are working, PPC gives you clear, actionable data that can inform you exactly what benefits you are gaining from it.
4. You can automate it. Unlike creating great content or crafting marketing campaigns, the PPC process can be automated, allowing you to spend your time more effectively on other projects you have.

With so much to gain, it makes sense why among small businesses with more than 50 employees, 74% are investing in PPC advertising.

By this point, I hope you agree with me that PPC is an important investment for marketing your business.

Now of course, your next question is probably something like,

What Do Bing And/Or Google Advertisements Do For Me?

As touched on earlier, both Bing & Google are designed to help connect businesses and audiences together, and do so through PPC adverts. But more importantly, which one do you use?

While I don't have the perfect answer for you, let's go over what you get out of both of them.

What They Both Do

• They both have large audiences, and even though Google is much larger than Bing, there are still 136 million unique searchers use the Bing Network.
• They both look very similar on the SERP.

• Both are designed to help you attain short-term marketing goals and conversions.

How They Differ

• Google dominates the market. It is no secret that Google has hold of the search engine market share, and since so many people use Google, the amount of potential reach you can acquire is massive.
• Google is comprised of the Search Network and the Display Network, while Bing ads are visible across all three Microsoft search engines.
• There is less competition on Bing. Due to the fact that there are simple less advertisers on Bing, there is less traffic for keywords. This means you can potentially gain more visibility without paying more for keywords.
• Some people don't use Google. Yes, over 60 million people use Bing instead of Google for their searches, and many of these individuals are from older, higher income demographics. This means that these people aren't going to be reached by Google Ads campaigns.

How A Hypothetical MBA Program Could Leverage PPC For Its Betterment

Now, hypothetically speaking, if I were to give some recommendations to a particular MBA program here in Washington regarding ways they could leverage PPC, I'd tell them the following.

1. Choose the correct targeting location. Making sure your ads are going to be seen by relevant users is the most important and critical step to a PPC campaign. For example, if you were advertising this program in Alabama, you probably aren't going to be as successful if you had instead chosen to target people in Washington.
2. Research your keywords. Making sure that the keywords used for the PPC ads will be one of the most important factors in making sure they are visible to users. This process would involve some research to make sure the university is properly competing. Some examples of this may be Western Washington University, Washington MBA Programs, or Best MBA programs in Washington, but if these keywords aren't relevant, they may never find the program!
3. Have a good landing page. The landing pages from these ads need to be structured in a way that gives only as much information as needed for someone to convert. Having extra functions for a landing page can create distractions for users and decrease conversion rate.
4. Leverage your options. As discussed earlier, both Bing and Google have an enormous amount of reach. Figuring out exactly how effective these options can be for you will allow you to properly make decisions regarding marketing budgets.

Key Takeaways

1. PPC is important. With so many benefits to reap from these ads, it's important to be aware about how these systems work, even if you don't end up using them for your business.
2. Research is critical. You should know what you will be getting from these advertisements before you dive in. There is no point to spending money on advertisements if nobody is going to see them.
3. Bing is not irrelevant. While Google may be the biggest player in the search engine game, there are lots of potential upsides to using Bing in addition to normal Google ads.