Pay-Per-Click and Google Ads for Atlanta Businesses

Pay-per-click advertising, usually shortened to PPC, places an ad where a person is already looking and charges the advertiser when someone clicks it. On a search engine such as Google or Bing, an advertiser chooses the searches it wants to appear for, writes the ads and sets a budget and a bidding approach. Each time a matching search happens, the platform runs a quick auction that weighs the bid against how relevant and useful the ad and its landing page are likely to be. The highest bid does not automatically win, because relevance counts as well.

Search is only one setting. Paid ads also run on YouTube, on partner websites and apps, and in the feeds of Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, X and Nextdoor, and many of those can be bought on a cost-per-click basis. The difference is intent. Someone typing a search is usually asking for something right now, so a search ad catches demand that already exists. A social ad reaches people by their interests and profile while they are doing something else, so it tends to create interest more than capture it. Which one fits depends on what the business sells and how people tend to buy it. Our article on creating a Facebook ad that earns a response covers the social side in more detail.

Kirk Donovan started his career in radio, in the dual roles of announcer and sales representative. Early on he came to see that retail advertising must do more than deliver ratings, audience demographics and cute creative copy, and that what counts is whether people respond. Pay-per-click puts that lesson to a direct test, because the platform records what people do after seeing an ad: they click, call or fill in a form, or they do not. Kirk Donovan Enterprises offers pay-per-click advertising to Atlanta-area companies as one of its interactive services.

Interactive advertising as a whole is the use of online media that let a business talk with its audience and promote its products, services and brand. A radio spot or a billboard can set off the search, and a paid ad can be waiting at the moment of decision. How paid ads relate to the other digital channels is laid out in the interactive advertising overview.

Google Ads has moved well beyond the plain text ads many people remember. The main campaign types now suit different goals. Our article on reasons to use Google Ads sets out the case for search advertising.

Search campaigns use responsive search ads, where the advertiser supplies several headlines and descriptions and Google tests combinations to see which work. Automation is strong at that kind of testing, but it relies on what it is given, so vague goals, weak creative or poor tracking produce poor outcomes faster. A sensible first step for a local business is one focused search campaign, with other types added once the basics are measured. Bing has its own search ads platform, which can be added after the Google campaigns are stable.

Keywords tell the platform which searches an ad is eligible for. Match types decide how loosely or tightly a search can differ from a keyword: exact match is tight, phrase match allows some variation around the meaning, and broad match lets the system show ads for related searches. Broad match paired with automated bidding is common today, and it can uncover searches an advertiser would not have thought of, but it needs supervision.

That supervision rests on two habits. The first is adding negative keywords, which exclude searches that are not a fit, such as job seekers or people looking for a freebie when the business sells a paid service. The second is reading the search terms report, which lists what people actually typed before clicking and is often the most revealing page in an account. Separating branded searches, where people already know the business, from unbranded ones keeps the numbers honest, because the two behave very differently. Grouping closely related terms together makes it easier to write ads and choose landing pages that match what the person was looking for.

An ad earns the click by matching what the searcher wanted. The headline should echo the search, the description should say what the business offers and where, and the ad should make the next step plain. Vague wording that could describe any company attracts clicks from people who were never going to buy, while clear wording filters them out before the business pays for them.

Google Ads also lets an advertiser attach assets, which used to be called extensions, to an ad. Sitelinks send people to specific pages, callouts add short selling points, a call asset places a phone button on mobile, and a location asset shows the business address with a map link. Each one takes up more room on the results page and gives the searcher another way to act. They only help when they are accurate, so they need the same upkeep as the ad copy.

Every ad makes a promise, and the landing page has to keep it. A person who clicks an ad about a specific service should arrive on a page about that service, not a general home page. The page should load quickly, read well on a phone, put the main action in plain view and, for businesses that take calls, make tapping to call simple. What a site needs in order to keep that promise is covered under website design.

Conversion tracking should be set up before any budget is spent. It records the actions that matter, such as calls, form submissions and purchases, and reports them to the ad platform and to analytics. Not every conversion is equal, so it helps to separate a qualified inquiry from a wrong number. Automated bidding strategies use that information to decide how much to bid for each search. They need enough conversions to learn from, which is why a new or small campaign often starts with simpler settings, and why frequent large changes make a campaign harder to judge, since the system has to learn again.

Some options sit beside ordinary search campaigns. In certain service categories and locations, Local Services Ads show a screened business profile above the regular results and charge for leads instead of clicks, so availability depends on the category and the area. Remarketing shows ads to people who have already visited the site, which suits purchases that take several visits to decide, and it should be used in line with the site's privacy policy and with consent settings.

Bidding on the business's own name keeps a competitor from occupying the space when a customer searches for it directly, so it is worth checking from time to time who else appears for that name. Whether to bid on it at all depends on how strong the organic listing already is and on how much the competition is doing.

A daily budget caps spending, and the money should be concentrated where it can produce enough activity to learn from. Spreading a small budget across many campaigns leaves each one with too little data to judge. The early weeks of a campaign are a learning period, so a decision made in that stretch is often a decision made on noise.

A campaign needs regular attention after launch. That means reviewing the search terms, locations, devices and times of day that bring responses, testing new ad wording, pausing what is not working and noting each change so its effect can be understood later. It also means keeping ownership clear: the advertiser should own the ad account and the billing, with anyone helping to manage it added as a user.

• Counting clicks instead of customers. Clicks are the cost, and responses are the value. A campaign with many clicks and no calls is not working.
• Skipping negative keywords. Without them, the budget leaks into searches that were never a fit.
• Overlooking the location settings. The default options can include people who have only shown interest in an area. Check that the setting matches the real service area, whether that means a handful of neighborhoods or the entire Atlanta metro area.
• Changing everything at once. When several settings move together, nobody can tell which change mattered.
• Treating paid and organic as rivals. Terms from paid campaigns suggest pages worth building, and a strong organic listing may reduce the need to bid on the same words. Search engine optimization covers the organic side.

Measurement ties these together. For help reading the numbers without fooling yourself, see marketing analytics.