Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC) has become a crucial component of a good digital marketing strategy. PPC isn’t particularly easy though. It takes a lot of knowledge, a lot of effort, and constant attention. Many business owners prefer to hire professionals to handle their paid search efforts. However, knowing the basics gives business owners at least an idea of why paid search marketing is so important, helping them to make informed decisions about whether they can tackle it themselves or not. There are a lot of PPC ebook resources available for learning about paid search marketing, but many of them are either too vague or too detailed. In order to help you find information that you can actually use, we’ve rounded up some good(and free) PPC ebooks to help you understand how PPC works and why PPC it’s important.
An Introductory Guide to Paid Search
This PPC ebook from Hubspot is a really good guide for beginners. Paid search can be pretty complicated, even for a seasoned pro. This PPC ebook focuses specifically on Google Adwords, and it provides a clear and concise overview of some of the most important elements of paid search. While it isn’t a definitive guide, it is a really great place to start. It’s easy to read, and it includes decent graphics to help illustrate the explanantions.
Here’s an overview of what you’ll learn in each section of this PPC ebook.
What is Paid Search
In this section, you’ll get a brief introduction to what paid search is. Then, you’ll learn how paid search is different than organic search.
How to use Paid Search
In this section, you’ll learn how paid search should be used. This includes discussion of why you should use landing pages and why you should test them. Next, you’ll how to use PPC to find new keywords. Last, you’ll learn how to use PPC to complement your other inbound marketing initiatives.
How Paid Search Works
In this section, you’ll learn about the three primary components of paid search–keywords, PPC advertisements, and landing pages. You’ll also learn about PPC bidding and Google’s quality score. Plus, you’ll learn about the three types of keyword matches and how they affect your PPC campaigns.
Paid Search Strategy
This section provides a discussion of general keyword strategies. You’ll also learn how to structure your Adwords account and how to set your budget. Lastly, this section includes best practices for PPC ad copy.
Measuring with metrics
I this section, you’ll learn about the four basic metrics that are most important in Adwords. Once you understand those, you’ll learn how to combine these metrics to get data that you can use to refine your PPC campaigns.
Compelling PPC-How to Create Ads That Convert
This PPC ebook by the folks over at Click is a brief overview of how to create good PPC campaigns. This particular PPC ebook is probably most helpful for people who don’t know much about paid search. The Dos and Don’ts section is probably the most helpful. Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn in each section.
What Is Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
In this section, you’ll learn about the four main types of online advertising for PPC.
Why Choose Ads
In this section you’ll learn the benefits of using paid advertisements as part of your digital marketing strategy.
Picking Your Target
In this section, you’ll learn some of the methods for deciding who your target audience is and how to target the right audiences with your PPC campaigns.
Set Your Budget
In this section, you’ll get a brief overview of setting PPC campaign budgets.
Making Great Ads
In this section, you’ll learn about four types of paid advertisements and selecting the one that’s right for your PPC campaigns. You’ll also get a brief discussion on the importance of linking your ads to relevant, content rich landing pages.
Keyword Strategy
In this section, you’ll learn why selecting the right keywords for your PPC campaigns is so important. You’ll also learnhow using the right keywords for your PPC campaigns will help you target the right audience.
Dos and Don’ts
This section is probably the most informative section of this PPC ebook. Each sub-section is brief, but they’re each packed with really good information. You’ll learn about Google’s quality score system, and how your quality score affects your PPC campaigns. Then, there’s a section about where your ads should direct. That’s followed by more information about keywords. Finally, you’ll learn about structuring and optimizing your ads to make them more effective.
A/B Testing Your Ads
This section gives a brief rundown of A/B testing, also referred to as split testing, and why it’s important.
Track Your Results
This section is really just telling you that you need to track your progress.
How to Squeeze More From Your PPC Campaigns
This PPC ebook really isn’t for beginners. It’s more helpful for established marketers who are looking to get more from their current PPC efforts. It gives a good assessment of how efficient and target methods can really improve your results while simultaneously costing you less. As more and more businesses are aggressively pursuing paid search, this guide can really help you step up your game.
How to squeeze more from your PPC campaigns
This section briefly discusses how competitive PPC advertising has become. Have no fear though! With some fine tuning, you can still get more bang for your buck with your PPC campaigns.
Making your PPC campaigns smaller
In this section, you’ll learn how making your advertising groups smaller can improve the results of your PPC campaigns. It helps you understand why more target ad groups are more effective.
The 3 Step Optimization Process
This section discusses a three step process for optimizing your PPC campaigns. The first step is to increase your click through rate. The second step is to improve your quality score. The third step is testing landing page elements in order to help generate more conversions.
Explore Less Competitive Platforms
This section provides a strong argument for why you should expand your paid search efforts beyond Google Adwords. Just using Adwords is a fairly common mistake among marketers. This section explores reasons for spreading your paid search efforts to other platforms in addition to Adwords.
Embracing New Options
This section discusses the ways in which paid search has changed in the last few years. It makes a good case for using paid or sponsored social media ads too.
Know and Trust the Numbers
This section discusses the importance of taking significant time to understand the data from your PPC campaigns. Every paid search platform offers good analytics reports. Understanding what the numbers mean and how the data applies to the efficacy of your campaigns is crucial to refining those campaigns. A lot of marketers have a tendency to get campaigns going and then forget about reviewing them regularly. This is a common mistake that can really cost you.