Paid search marketing is a digital marketing strategy that allows you to advertise your products or services in search engine results pages (SERPs) when someone searches for a similar product or service.
Paid search advertising is a great way to get your business noticed by those who are actively looking for your niche.
What is paid search?
Paid search is the form of digital marketing that allows advertisers to show ads on Google and Bing. It's a great way to reach potential customers and get them interested in your products or services.
Also known as PPC (Pay Per Click) which is exactly what it sounds like - you pay per click, which makes it a measurable and controllable marketing channel.
Ad formats include text ads, which are shown at the top of the search results (these look similar to a normal site listing except for the little 'ad' icon), shopping ads also appear at the top of the results but are limited to products being sold on your website. There are also banner ads which show on sites while you are browsing the web. Each type of ad is different and requires a different approach.
What can paid search do for you?
Every day there are millions and millions of people are searching online for products, services and solutions.
By running search ads you can get your website to appear at the top of Google in front of the eyes of someone specifically looking for a product or service you offer. This results in the quality of users coming to the site being higher quality and therefore more likely to convert into a sale or lead.
Types of Ads
Search Ads
These are the ads in Google search results - businesses bid in an automated online auction on certain keywords that they want their advertisements to show up for and depending on a variety of factors will determine where your ad appears and how much it will cost.
Banner Ads
You can also run banner advertising, these are known as ‘interruption marketing' because the person who is shown the ad might not be in the market for your product or service. Where paid search has the advantage as the user has already expressed intent in their research or purchase. Equally though Search Ads are much more expensive that Banner Ads so are a great way to get a lot of exposure of the brand and build awareness.
Banner Ads can be used to target a person based on a lot of factors including profiling the user such as demographics, hobbies, browsing history and showing ads to them on various sites across the web.
Or you can run ads on specific sites or pages that included content related to your product or service where you think users .