How is PPC Advertising Useful for Malaysian SMEs?

SMEs are are using PPC advertising in Malaysia because of its affordability as compared to traditional media. It’s also easy to launch a campaign, track the metrics, control costs and optimise for profitability on Google.

How did PPC advertising on Google begin? Businesses needed people to know about their services, and people required something on the Internet that could sieve through all the content on the internet and offer them solutions instantly.

Through its powerful search engine functions, Google made it easy for businesses and potential customers to connect. Google saw a business opportunity for website owners to advertise their businesses in the search results pages. This is what is today known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

We’ll go on to explain how PPC advertising can impact SMEs in Malaysia as well as some ideas that will help your small business reach out to customers locally.

What is PPC?

Pay-per-click is a method for business owners to advertise their businesses through bidding on keywords that align with the interest of their target audience or their field of business.

Businesses bid to display their ads as results when a user searches for a particular keyword on search engines. Google displays a list of websites which have this keyword within seconds.

The order of how the websites appear depends on Google’s algorithms. Topical relevance, authority and location are three of the major factors that determine which businesses show up first. However, above all these results, there are two or three businesses that appear. They are ranked according to who has the highest bid for that particular keyword.

Businesses bid higher to attain a higher rank on the search engine, but they only pay after someone clicks their ad and visits their website. Hence, this is why it’s called pay per click: you pay if someone takes an interest in your business.

Advantages of PPC for SMEs

Regardless of whether you’re a small business or a medium sized one, PPC has leveled the playing field for businesses at all stages who have a marketing budget to advertise their products and services.

PPC has many advantages. Here’s why PPC can be beneficial, especially for SMEs:

PPC ads can be created and launched without a complex process

Google has simplified the process of digital advertising by offering various features on their platform. Even if you’re new to it, Google Ads is a user-friendly platform when it comes to creating the account as well as the ads as it is a guided process.

You only pay after users click on your ad

When you run an SEM campaign on Google, you are paying Google to display your ads before the organic search results.

When a user clicks on one of your ads, you pay whatever the current Cost Per Click (CPC) is, and that amount you pay comes from the marketing budget that you’ve set aside.

The cost per click varies depending on certain factors. Major contributing factors are the volume and how many businesses are competing for that particular keyword.

PPC ads are also economical since you only need to pay once people click on your ad. It is viewed by numerous people who are searching for that keyword, but you don’t pay unless they click on your ad.

It helps you outperform your competition

There are several competitive advantages when considering PPC advertising for your SME in Malaysia. The most important one is allowing you to bid for competitive keywords.

If you are able to be smart about your bids, Google will display your ad when a particular keyword is searched and the person seeing your ad will have purchase intent.

However, to outperform your competition, you need to be sure of your customer psychology and their intent when they use certain keywords. Only then will you be able to maximise PPC for your small business.

It offers highly targeted options

Pay-per-click also provides options for targeting your customers on a deeper level. Businesses can target particular keywords, demographics, and locations.

For example, if you own an SME that’s located in the east side of Malaysia and you know your customers are mainly in that area, you can target specific keywords that are connected to your location by using audience targeting options offered by Google Ads. Using PPC, your ads will then show up for specific keywords and to the interested customers in that area only, saving you money spent on customers who are likely not going to convert because they’re located too far away from your small business.

Automated Options

PPC gives small business owners the ability to automate parts of the campaign like setting your maximum daily spend, as well as specific keywords that when searched, determines whether your ads are relevant to the search intent or not.

Starting on Your PPC Strategy

Whether it is your first time using PPC, or if you’re merely trying to improve the results of your current campaign, you can use the steps below to develop your PPC marketing plan.

Researching on Keywords

Back in the day, customers who were looking for a specific product had to look for it in a sales catalogue or call the business up to check if it is available. However, with the rise of search engines, customers no longer need to do this. PPC ads run by businesses who have SEM in place allows customer to find the products they want from the comfort of their home, even from small businesses in Malaysia.

Thus, it is very important for businesses to know the keywords that their potential customers use to search for their products or services on the internet. This way, they can bid for keywords and search queries that are related to their services or products in a smart and conversion driven way.

How do you know what keywords are relevant to the products and services that your SME offers? Several tools can help you to achieve this, including the Google Keyword Planner. It shows you the keywords that your customers are using to look for products and services in your industry.

Create Engaging Content

Creating engaging content that captures your customers’ attention does not happen overnight. It needs input from creative specialists and content creators to know what your customers are searching for and create relevant, useful content that enhances your business’ authority in that subject.

Content is also equally important when creating an ad for your PPC strategy. Your ad copy has to attract the attention of the audience and encourage them to click on it to know more and make a purchase. An ad contains limited characters and that means you only have a certain allowance to capture your audience when they look at your ad. Ensure that your ad copy simple, appealing and relevant.

Examine and optimise for the best results

The best thing about PPC campaigns is that you can monitor the results and eliminate or correct the aspects that are not working. This helps SMEs to maximise their budget as they usually operate on a limited budget.

PPC can help you target show your ads to a specific audience and target a particular keyword, even on a small budget. As the campaign monitoring is done in real time, you can know which parts are not working instantly and discontinue those parts.

By so doing, you prevent wastage of resources on ads that do not bring conversions. An SEM agency will be familiar with these PPC best practices and will be able to advise you on what to optimise.