It may have been around for two decades, but PPC (pay-per-click) marketing is still one of the best ways to develop a reputation whilst making a little extra profit on the side. However, marketers shouldn’t see this form of digital marketing as a walk in the park because it is far from that. In fact, they need to create strategies to make sure campaigns are as effective as possible.

Right ads in the right place

At the very core of PPC marketing are the right ads for the right audience, and vice versa. Unless marketers find which ads will suit their target market, their PPC campaign will end up as nothing but a complete failure. How can marketers find the perfect audience for their ads?

Google’s AdWords

One of the latest practices is audience targeting. Google recently implemented audience targeting in AdWords, and it has continued to improve this service ever since.

Using the platform, marketers can create a target audience based on their age, interest, income, and more. This allows them to create a PPC campaign geared towards an audience that matches their buyer persona. As this is a form of quantitative data, marketers can directly see exactly what kind of audience they are getting into.

Fewer risks

What’s even better about audience targeting is that it’s a step beyond keyword targeting. It is more effective in the sense that there are fewer risks as marketers no longer have to worry about the dynamic searching habits of their customers. Instead, they’ll have to think of ways to better engage with their audience that they are directly reaching out to with audience targeting.

A few flaws

Whilst it’s currently a boon for marketers, audience targeting isn’t without its flaws. For starters, audience targeting requires marketers to be at least familiar with the buyer’s persona. Another issue is the fact that just because a company and a consumer share the same interests, it doesn’t mean that the latter will always click on the ads they are presented with.

It’s a risky approach to finding the right audience for a PPC campaign, but for now, it seems more likely that this is the best option yet.

Be creative

According to Jacob Brown, account manager at digital marketing agency Hanapin Marketing, marketers need to “be analytical and creative, finding different ways to look at results that make the most sense for your particular account.”

Whether they are using Google AdWords or some other PPC platform, marketers need to be creative and devoted to finding the right ads for their audience if they want to succeed.

Written by Josh Wardini, co-founder of rank tracker tool Serpwatch